‘Schindler’s List’ Escape Room Opens In Greek City With Storied Jewish History

Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki, Greece Image by wikicommons

By Alyssa Fisher January 10, 2019

There’s a “Schindler’s List”-themed escape room in Greece — and it’s in a city that lost 96% of its Jewish population in the Holocaust.

In escape rooms, participants are locked in a room and tasked with finding clues to break out. Freelance writer Margarita Gokun Silver wrote about her experience at one such room, in Thessaloniki, Greece, which was actually called “Schindler’s List” and played the theme song from the Steven Spielberg film during the opening instructions.

The escape room was decorated to look like 1930s Europe, with antique furniture, soft lighting and yellowing books. It was harrowingly reminiscent of the Holocaust, Gokun Silver wrote, with references to the Auschwitz death camp in the introduction and the background sounds of people screaming and Germans shouting. A suitcase was placed under the couch, a metal-mesh fence lined the room and hints were announced with a gunshot. The objective, she explained, was to find “a list of innocents.”

The escape room can be found just a block away from both the Jewish Museum and the offices of Jewish Community Center. Silver found the activity shocking, especially since it had no mention of the city’s history: For five centuries, Thessaloniki was the center of Greece’s Jewish life, known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans. By the time of World War II, there were 50,000 Jews.

Then the Germany army took over. The Nazis humiliated the Jewish citizens for two years before deporting almost 44,000 to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

There are now about 1,300 members of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, Silver reported. There’s a memorial for Jewish victims, and a Holocaust museum is being built. The prominent members of the Thessaloniki Jewish community told Silver they didn’t know about the “Schindler’s List” escape room.

Silver said the owners of the escape room didn’t seem to be concerned; in fact, the staff said they considered it educational. They changed the name from Schindler’s List to Secret Agent within hours of her visit, but they didn’t show up to a scheduled interview and ignored multiple requests for comment. The parent company in Athens refused to speak, as well, and both continue to offer the game.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO