In the Shadow of the Nazi Past: Post-war Reconstruction and the Claims of the Jewish Community in Salonika

In: European history quarterly, Band 46, Heft 2, S. 262-290

Abstract

Faced with vast human and economic losses, the small number of Jews in Greece who had survived the Second World War found themselves shortly afterwards in great need of social and financial assistance simply to survive in the post-war world. Although some humanitarian relief had been provided immediately after the end of the once Italian, Bulgarian and German occupations, the reconstruction of Jewish communities and development of a legal framework for property restitution in Greece were long-term processes. This is also true of the post-war German government's provisions regarding compensation for the victims of Nazism. The article analyses Jewish efforts to receive compensation in the wider context of Greek–German relations in case of Salonika, a former metropolis of Sephardic Jews beyond the Balkans. Drawing on rich primary sources, in particularly archive records from the German Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office (PA AA), the article examines the links between humanitarian aid, moral obligations of the political elites, and political as well as economic pragmatism in Greek-German relations on both the national and international levels between the Second World War and 1961, when a bilateral compensation agreement was ratified by both countries.