A Difficult Return: Aspects of the Rebuilding of the Jewish Communities in Greece, 1945–1947

Abstract

The Holocaust claimed the lives of over 85% of Greece’s Jews, a percentage among the highest in the continent. As with most of their coreligionists in liberated Europe, in the wake of the Holocaust, Greek Jews found themselves in dire straits. Looking through early 1945 reports, which the Athens-based Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (CBJCG) sent to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency appealing for immediate assistance, one is inundated with images of embitterment and desperation. Of some 4,800 Jews in Athens alone, a figure that did not include survivors of the death camps who had yet to return, it was claimed that 85% were completely short of any kind of means to live on, 10% needed partial assistance, and only 5% were entirely financially independent. Severe food shortages, sleeping rough, and the ongoing civil war in the streets of the capital in the winter of 1944–45 had led to a considerable number of deaths. Worryingly, it was also asserted that “owing to their misery” many Jews had attempted to commit suicide.