(JTA) — A Greek official is accused of abusing the memory of the Holocaust by mentioning Gaza during a speech about the genocide, and saying that “victims become bullies.” The criticism by The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a watchdog group, was over a speech that Panagiotis Sgouridis, a deputy minister of rural development, gave on June…
The Greek city of Thessaloniki remembered its nearly 50,000 Jews sent to Nazi death camps during World War II. A memorial marking the 72nd anniversary of the roundup and deportation of Thessaloniki Jews was held Saturday. Participants placed flowers on train tracks where the Jews were taken away in cattle cars headed for Auschwitz-Birkenau, The…
Germany condemned on Friday a cartoon published in a Greek leftist newspaper close to the new ruling party in Athens that depicts Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in a Nazi uniform making comments that invoke the Holocaust. In the cartoon, carried in the daily Avgi (The Dawn), mouthpiece of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza party,…
If Greek Jews are calmly greeting the election of a hard left party strongly critical of Israel, one reason may be that they have been hit no less hard than other Greeks by the country’s current economic devastation, which the election victors vow to reverse. At the Jewish Museum of Greece, in Athens, a relaxed…
Panos Kammenos, a right-wing politician who said Jews don’t pay taxes, was appointed the defense minister of Greece. Kammenos, who heads the ultranationalist Independent Greeks, was appointed to the post in the new government on Tuesday after joining the coalition of the newly elected far-left Syriza party, which won handily in Sunday’s national elections. While…
The head of Greece’s Jewish community welcomed the election victory Sunday of Syriza, a leftist, anti-austerity party, despite that party’s scepticism towards existing close ties between Greece and Israel. “We congratulate Syriza, the winning party of yesterday’s elections, and convey our best wishes,” said board president Moises Contantinis, who is currently in Krakow for Tuesday’s…
The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party maintained its strength in Greek national elections as the far-left party Syriza came to power. With almost all votes counted from Sunday’s election, Golden Dawn received 6.3 percent of the national vote, giving it 17 seats in the 300-member national parliament and leaving it the third-largest party in Greece. The…
A massive winter storm toppled trees and caused significant damage to the historic Jewish cemetery in the northern Greek city of Ioannina. The storm over the weekend uprooted several trees, crushing about 20 gravestones and destroying the flagstone path that leads into the cemetery, said Allegra Matsa, one of the Ioannina Jewish community leaders. Three…
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