Text by Filia Xilas
Pattakou
and Alexis Menexiadis
The First
Cemetery of Athens is comprised of an Orthodox section (by far the largest part
of the cemetery), a Protestant section, an Armed Forces section, and a Jewish section that is rarely used
today.
The
Jewish section occupies about two thousand square meters in the south west
corner of the cemetery. It is protected with walls and has its own separate gate
on Ilioupoleos Street. Today it is not
open to the public and serves mainly as a place of religious pilgrimage.
I had the
good fortune to meet Alexios Menexiadis at the Special Civic Registry where I
work. He was conducting a survey to locate records of the names of Greek Jews
who perished in concentration camps during the German occupation. Mr. Menexiadis made it possible for me to
visit the cemetery along with Rabbi Gabriel Negrin, Seçil Öznur Yakan, the historian Eleni Kouki, and
epigraphist specialist Anastasia Loudarou.
A Short
History
The first Jewish
community in Athens was well established by 1890. A significant number had come to Greece with
King Otto. Romaniote Jews and Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal also
came to Athens. Others came from Crete, Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Chalkida.
From 1884
to 1919 the Jewish cemetery expanded under the tenures of mayors Dimitrios Soutsos, and
Spiros Mercouris. It expanded once more in 1916 and again in 1920 when Avraam
Konstaninis and Anastasios Pappou brought adjacent property and donated it to
the cemetery.
Some names
from King Ottos’ era are Rothschild, Eskenazy, and the well known Yussurum family (an area near Monastiraki took their name).
Also buried in the Jewish cemetery is Joseph Eliyia (or Joseph Kapoulia)
an intellectual, poet, and member of the workers’ movement from Ioannina who had
been brought to Athens in 1931 because of typhoid fever. He succumbed and was
subsequently buried in the First
Cemetery.
The poet Joseph Eliyia
Most of
the graves have the Star of David and names etched in Hebrew. On many graves there
are Hebrew epitaphs as well.
The text
of the epitaph reads: 'This is the end/ be afraid of God and/
guard his commandments/ because this is everything for / man'.
The fact
that there are tombs with palmettes, stelae,
and small classical temples on pediments, all motifs common in the Orthodox
section of the cemetery, shows that the Jewish community felt included in
Athenian society.
Sculptor: Nikolaos
Georgantis
Today the
Jewish cemetery accepts very few new burials. One exception was Minos Matsas,
the founder of the record company Minos
EMI.
The 27th
of January has been designated as the Day of Commemoration for the Greek Jews who
were victims, Heroes of the Holocaust.
In all of Greece, there were 59,000
victims.
In Athens the commemoration takes place in the
forecourt of the Athens Synagogue near the site of the Keramikos Archaeological
site. Nearby, a sculpture by Deanna Maganias was placed in 2010 on the site
where the Athenian Jews were gathered together before deportation in 1944.
It consists of 7
marble pieces: six triangles and a large hexagon. (1)
It is a
tombstone as well as a monument– meant to give a place of eternal rest to those
who were not able to have their own graves.
Footnote
(1) For more on the memorial, see https://www.koshergreece.com/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/2217393/jewish/Holocaust-Memorial.htm
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