THESSALONIKI JEWISH MUSEUM

This small museum founded in 2005 (Εβραϊκό Μουσείο Θεσσαλονίκης/Evraïko Mousio Thessalonikis) traces the long history of the city's Jewish community. It is housed in a handsome neoclassical building dating from 1904. It housed the headquarters of the French-language Jewish daily L'Indépendant, a competitor in the 1910-1930 period to La Liberté, Le Progrès and the Ladino-languageEl Messagero. With its wealth of details, this museum, run by Thessaloniki's small Jewish community, plunges visitors back into the hustle and bustle of the "Jerusalem of the Balkans". Going back to antiquity, we discover a collection of tombstones from what was once the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe, east of the ramparts, as well as carved elements from synagogues that were also razed to the ground during the Occupation. Everyday objects and photographs show social diversity, from the dockers of Ladadika to the wealthy Villa Alatini (1898), which belonged to the ancestors of the Dassault family. Finally, the beautiful, colorful traditional costumes are matched by the grim, striped garments of the death camps. Nearby, in Eleftehrias Square, stands the Menorah in Flames (1997), the latest work by Serbia's great Jewish sculptor Nandor Glid, paying tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. The creation of the Holocaust Museum, announced by the State in 2017, is also awaited, but construction work near the port had still not begun in 2024.