A particularly important decision was announced today, Wednesday, by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his joint statements with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Sochi.
Mr Putin announced Russia’s decision to hand over to Greece the archives of Nazi Jewish communities found in Moscow. This is valuable archival material that the German occupying forces took with them in 1943 and which was found in the spring of 1945 in Berlin by men of the Soviet army, which eventually led to its transfer to Moscow.
According to the website of the Israeli Community of Thessaloniki: “In the spring of 1943, the German occupying forces implemented the methodical plan to exterminate our 50,000 brothers in the concentration camps. Thessaloniki, the metropolis of Sephardicism, has lost a vital part of itself, the prosperous Israeli Community. This loss concerns not only the population dimension but also the annihilation of all that our ancestors had created in 2000 and more years of their presence in the city. Cultural centers, libraries, charities, Synagogues, our historical archive and our Cemetery were not spared from the conquerors. “In August 1943, with the last mission to the concentration camps, the destruction was completed with the elimination of any element that could even remind us of the presence of Jews in the city.”
It should be noted that in the past other attempts were made to return the archival material to Greece but this was not possible.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis thanked the Russian president for the interest he showed in the archives of the Jewish communities “which” as he said “will return to Greece, thus resolving a decades-long issue”.
grtimes.gr
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