Devin E. Naar is an Honors History student at Washington University in St. Louis (USA).
He is writing his Thesis on the causes for Jewish emigration from Thessaloniki during the early 20 th Century.
He has also served as the chairman of Washington University 's
Holocaust Awareness and Education Committee.
Over the hill, beyond the ancient wall that once had served to enclose the Old City , I finally came to Odos Odysseus, the street on which my grandfather, Nono , and his family, had lived. The street, off the beaten track, clearly had never served as a main thoroughfare. Nonetheless, I continued down Odos Odysseus in anticipation, searching for number ten—for their house. I soon came upon a small building, modern-looking yet dilapidated, the bottom floor of which appeared to be an abandoned supplies store. This had to be the spot.
Perhaps the name of my family's street is fitting: like the epic Greek protagonist Odysseus, my family, one of many Sephardic families who had lived in Thessaloniki during the last half-millennium, had journeyed across the globe, evading obstacles and perils in search of the place they safely could call home. Beginning with the promulgation of the Edict of Expulsion from Spain in 1492, the Naars, with many other Sephardic Jews, began a trans-Mediterranean journey to Thessaloniki . In 1924, many generations later, the Naars decided to leave their city and embarked on another journey—this one, trans-Atlantic. I am sure Nono 's father—my great grandfather—Rabbi Benjamin Haim Naar, as a practitioner of kabala ma'asit (practical kabala) in Thessaloniki and the United States , would have found the anagrammatic relationship bet-ween 1492 and 1924 to be a meaningful harbinger.
Since the day that Nono left Thessaloniki in September, 1924, he has not once returned. My father, first generation American, has never seen the birth city of his father. I went to Thessaloniki for the first time in June, 2004, to see for myself the city where Nono , his parents, and their parents, and generations before, were born, grew up, and died. I realized that I was the first of my direct line to walk the streets of Thessaloniki in exactly eighty years. I could not help but romanticize the fact that the same streets, the same steps that I took could have been the same ones that my ancestors had taken years and even centuries before.
When I hiked back from Odos Odysseus to the main city, I walked along Leoforos Vassileos Konstantinou, the street that butts up against the port. I sat on a bench to contemplate what I had just seen, looking out on the water, following the gradual curve of the shoreline. My eyes stopped suddenly at the end of the curve as I viewed with amazement the massive Yedí Kulé ( White Tower ), the defining landmark of Thessaloniki 's shoreline which had been erected during the same era in which the Sephardic Jews began arriving. I thought to myself, even if Nono may not have walked the same exact path as I, surely as a child, he gazed up in awe at the Yedi Kulé just as I did that day.
Yet so much has changed in those eighty years. What was the Thessaloniki of 1924 like? What compelled my family to immigrate to the United States ? As I sat on the bench by the water, observing the Yedí Kulé , I reflected on the less frequently studied history of this period.
Nono was born during a very complicated and tumultuous time in the history of Thessaloniki , especially for the Jews whose vicissitudes would increase exponentially until their extermination. In late February, 1917, during the height of World War I, with French and British troops stationed in all corners of Thessaloniki , my great grand-mother gave birth to Nono . Only several months later, in August, the Vardaris wind swept through the city, catapulting a small fire into an immense conflagration that burned down much of the center of the city, leaving tens of thousands of residents, mainly Jews, without food or shelter, and destroying numerous synago-gues, schools, libraries and archives, and hundreds of businesses, mostly Jewish owned.
The Greek government faced the difficult task of aiding thousands of their citizens and rebuilding the center of a city, which only five years earlier had come under Greek control as a result of cessions made by the Ottoman Empire following the Balkan Wars. The Greek government's plan for the reconstruction of Thessaloniki —in the name of urbanization and modernization—proved to alienate many of the Jews by preventing them from rebuilding their homes and businesses in the city's center. Rather than remove themselves to the periphery of the city, many Jews opted for expatriation, emigrating to France , Italy and the United States .
By this time, my great grandfather's two younger brothers had already made their way to the United States in search of improved business opportunities. Other Sephardim had likewise come to the United States from Thessaloniki to escape compulsory military conscription newly imposed by both the Young Turk regime and later the Greek government. Many settled in New York City ; however, some established a satellite community in New Brunswick , New Jersey , where a fledgling Sephardic congregation emerged. These two Naar brothers, Sam and Alberto, continued their business begun in Thessaloniki as zarzavatchis , opening a successful greengrocery store in New Brunswick . Back in Thessaloniki , however, things continued to degenerate for the Jews.
In the wake of World War I, the seemingly perpetual Greco-Turkish conflict evolved into the Asia Minor War. With the Greek defeat, the 1923 peace treaty called for a forced exchange of populations. Ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor poured into Greece , while ethnic Turks exited en masse. In all, over one hundred thousand Greek refugees found themselves in Thessaloniki . This altered permanently the demographic fabric of the city as now the Greeks became the preponderant majority in the multi-ethnic city, irrevocably outnumbering the Jews, who had, for the previous four hundred years, constituted the most populous ethnic group. The arrival of these Greek refugees exacerbated the still lingering burden resulting from the displacement of many Thessalonikan residents, primarily Jews, as a consequence of the Fire of 1917 and the plan for reconstruction. Furthermore, the subsequent economic competition that immediately emerged proved a foreboding of sorely strained Greco-Jewish relations.
By 1924, economic compe-tition between Greeks and Jews, who both vied for major roles in the various port industries, came to a head. The Greek government—in a so-called attempt to prevent either group from gaining the upper hand economically—declared a law making only one day—Sunday—the obligatory Day of Rest thereby ending the four hundred year custom in Thessaloniki of resting on Saturday. Despite ardent protests from the local Jewish leaders and the Chief Rabbi, petitions from prominent international Jewish organiza-tions, and even appeals to the League of Nations , the obligatory Day of Rest law came into effect in July, 1924. Many Jews consequently found themselves locked in a catch-22: either violate the Sabbath and work on Saturday or observe the Sabbath and loose another day of business. For some, emigration appeared the only viable option.
On May 17, 1924, only several weeks before the pronouncement of the Sunday Day of Rest law, the leaders of Etz Ahaim, the fledgling Sephardic congregation in New Brunswick, requested a visa for my great grandfather, Rabbi Benjamin Haim Naar, to come to their congregation to officiate the approaching High Holiday services, which otherwise would be led by lay members of the community. The request came just in time, as on May 26, 1924 , the United States passed the Immigration Restriction Act, which, based on a system of quotas, severely limited the number of immigrants originating from Southeastern Europe . In late September of 1924, in the wake of these events, Nono , his father (Rabbi Naar), mother, grandmother, and seven siblings boarded a ship at the port of Piraeus , in southern Greece , destined for the United States . On the ship, my great grandmother gave birth to her tenth and youngest daughter, born on American seas and thus the first to become an American citizen. Rabbi Naar and family finally reunited with his brothers in New Brunswick .
Back in Thessaloniki , not only had the Naars left behind their home at 10 Odos Odysseus and other property, but also family. My Nono 's oldest brother, Salomon, chose to remain in Thessaloniki because of his recently acquired position at Thessaloniki 's branch of the New York Standard Oil Company, as well as to be with his new bride, Esther née Pinhas. Meanwhile, within a year of the promulgation of the Sunday Day of Rest, in May 1925, the Jewish Communal Council of Thessaloniki resigned in protest.
Subsequent events further diminished the status of the Jewish Community of Thessa-loniki, which suffered several blows to its autonomy and cultural identity: the implemen-tation of government-enforced education reforms requiring the use of the Greek language in Jewish schools in order to promote the cultural assimilation of the Ladino-speaking Jews into Greek society; the creation of a separate—and not-so-equal—electoral college for the Jews that underminded their political rights; and a proposal to expropriate the four hundred year-old Jewish cemetery, again for the so-called benefit of modernization. During these years, many more Jews opted for emigration, joining their co-religionists in other parts of Europe and the Americas .
Greco-Jewish conflict in Thessaloniki erupted again in June 1931. Already suffering from the economic drain affecting the entire Western world, and stirred by anti-Semitic articles published in local Greek newspapers, members of the EEE (National Union of Greece) and Greek refugees from Asia Minor set fire to the Campbell quarter, a settlement of houses which had been established in the wake of the Fire of 1917 for affected Jews. In the aftermath of this attack, many more Jews chose to leave, this time, to Palestine —which they hoped would one day become the Jewish safe haven.
During this time, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America in New York, on behalf of my great grandfather, had begun correspondence with the Chief Rabbi of Thessaloniki, in the hope of obtaining visas to bring my great uncle, Salomon, his wife, and now, his two small children—my second cousins—to the United States. However, for reasons not altogether known, but probably due to the restrictions following the Immigration Act of 1924 and a lack of funding, Salomon and his family were unable to secure passage out of Thessaloniki .
In 1937, the Metaxas dictatorship finally passed a law to expropriate the Jewish cemetery, allocating the land to the University of Thessaloniki . In April 1941, the Nazis invaded Thessaloniki and completed the expropriation of the cemetery during the following year. The Jewish Community suffered its final blow from March to August, 1943, when the Nazis deported my great uncle Salomon, and his wife and family, along with another 46 thousand of Thessaloniki 's Jews, most of whom met their fate at Auschwitz-Birkenau. My great uncle Salomon and his family were part of the ninety six percent of Thessaloniki 's Jews eradicated by the Nazis.
As I walked back from the port to the city, I passed one of the two still extant synagogues and the Offices of the Jewish Community as they exist today on Tsmiski Street . I reminded myself that, despite the insurmountable loss wreaked upon the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki during World War II, all is not vanquished.
Today, approximately one thousand Jews live in Thessaloniki , almost all of whom are survivors of the Nazi genocide or their descendants. Although small, the community is very active, as three hundred members contribute to a wide variety of committees, some of which dedicate themselves to the preservation of the culture and history of the Jewish Community. Although not even one member of my generation of the Jewish Community speaks Ladino, the Ladino Society nonetheless works diligently to preserve this remnant of the Sephardic past by holding conferences and publishing.
As I neared my hotel, located on Ermou Street , I passed by the fish market. I weaved my way up and down the cobblestone aisles, watching the fishmongers yell in Greek at passing customers, hawking their fish for sale. I realized that this was the Modiano fish market where my Nono may have walked eighty years ago and heard the peshkadores yelling in Ladino.
In Thessaloniki , I had the pleasure of meeting several members of the Jewish Community, including historian Alberto Naar, and his son Victor—of the last surviving Naar family of Thessaloniki . While treating me warmly as family, Alberto informed me that his grandfather, Avraam Yiouda Naar, like many other Naars in Thessaloniki , had been engaged in the fishing business. Walking through the Modiano market, I wondered where Avraam's stand might have been, what type of fish he sold, whether, per chance, my great grandfather was one of his customers, and how their conversation, undoubtedly in Ladino, might have gone.
Later that evening, when I sat at the synagogue in Thessaloniki , I could not help but call to mind a memory from my youth. Congregation Etz Ahaim—the synagogue I attended as a small child, where my father became Bar Mitzvah, where my great grandfather served as Rabbi and that his brothers helped found—still employs many of the same undeniably Sephardic melodies. When the congregants in Thessaloniki began chanting the Ladino prayer, Bendicho su nombre , I joined in and thought to myself that, despite all odds, the Sephardic heritage miraculously survives—albeit discreetly in some cases—not only in Thessaloniki, but in the United States, Israel, Turkey and elsewhere.
The journey from Odos Odysseus had come full circle yet has not ended there. I came to realize that the legacy of the “ Jerusalem of the Balkans” lives on.
Devin E. Naar