The Holocaust in Greece 

The Holocaust would claim six million Jews, among them over 67,000 Greek Jews, 87% of the Jewish population of Greece, statistically the highest percentage of Jewish loss of any officially occupied country.

The purpose of the following entries on this page of our website is to formally list as many as possible (to the best of our knowledge) the names of those Greek Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the information on Yad Vashem’s "Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names” is flawed, there are many errors and many duplications, some contradictory. It is our hope to assure that the names of Greek Jewish victims of the Holocaust are inscribed correctly for eternity. The information on the lists that follow has been gathered from a number of sources, The Book of Memory published in Greece (in Greek) in the 1970’s, personal interviews with survivors and Yad Vashem. There will, undoubtedly, be errors. 

The time of the Holocaust and the Occupation of Greece was so horrific. Jews were attempting to escape deportation and fleeing from city to city. Family members who realized after the liberation of Greece that their relatives were lost forever often did not have accurate knowledge of how and where they perished. There are still names missing from many of the lists, and it is our hope that by making these lists public now, we will still have the opportunity to correct some of the errors and fill in some of the missing names. 

Why so many Greek Jews were lost is a complicated question. KKJ's Museum Director, Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos, has conducted extensive research to explore the underlying conditions that affected the high losses for Greek Jewry in the Holocaust. In addition to her work, Greek Holocaust Survivor and former President of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki (Salonica) Heinz Kounio has produced comprehensive documentation listing the over 50,000 Jews of pre-War Salonica who were depoted to concentration camps. 

It is our intention to give a name to each and every one of the 67,000 Greek Jews who were victims of the Holocaust, so that they will be remembered for eternity.