Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday morning in Thessaloniki to honour the memory of the city's Jewish community. The commemoration took place at the Old Railway Station, the site from which 19 deportation trains transported thousands of the city's Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp between March and August 1943.
Once home to one of Europe's largest Sephardic Jewish communities, Thessaloniki lost the vast majority of its Jewish population, approximately 50,000 people, during the Holocaust.
The event followed the launch ceremony for a new Holocaust memorial park at Eleftherias (Freedom) Square. After the ceremony, participants of all ages walked silently from the square to the Old Railway Station in a "March of Memory", holding balloons bearing the message "Never Again".
Relatives of Holocaust victims, survivors, residents, academics, political representatives and members of the Jewish community joined the procession, which moved through the city in complete silence as a gesture of respect for those who never returned.
Among the speakers was Holocaust survivor Lola Angel, who addressed the crowd before a minute's silence was observed. "Today we do not walk only with our steps, but also with our memories. Memory is responsibility, and we shout 'Never Again'," she said.
David Saltiel, president of Greece's Central Board of Jewish Communities and the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, spoke emotionally about the fate of the deported Jews. "These people had committed one 'crime': they were born Jews. And so they were loaded onto cattle wagons, impoverished, humiliated and degraded," he said.
Representatives from Thessaloniki's three universities and several national and local political figures also attended the commemoration. Thessaloniki mayor Stelios Angeloudis described the March of Memory as "an act of responsibility and conscience and a promise that we will never forget."
By Vasiliki Anagnostou - adapted from Greek by Vassia Barba
