Two Friends in Axis-Occupied Greece: The Rescue Efforts of Yomtov Yacoel and Asher Moisis

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses Jewish-Gentile relations ahead of and during the deportation of the Jews from Thessaloniki, Greece. It focuses on Yomtov Yacoel and Asher Moisis, two classmates, business partners, friends and prominent Jewish leaders who marked with their actions Greek Jewry in the twentieth century. They ascended very quickly in leadership positions, and in their mid-30s Moisis became president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, while Yacoel acted as the Jewish Community's legal advisor and also as president of B’nei B’rith. The war found the two childhood friends and long-time colleagues separated, Moisis in Italian-occupied Athens and Yacoel in German-occupied Thessaloniki. The article amplifies existing knowledge and offers new unknown details on the efforts of Greek Jews for the aid and rescue of their coreligionists in this critical period, showing the Jews as agents and not as passive victims. Yacoel and Moisis tried to reach out to Greek Christian elites in both cities and elicit their mobilization in support of the Jews of Thessaloniki undergoing Nazi deportations. Nevertheless, their efforts were not met with the same success: Moisis was able to mobilize a larger force in support of the Jews of Thessaloniki in Athens than Yacoel in their native city. Thus, this article argues that in some cases – like that of the Jews in Thessaloniki – help was easier organized from the outside rather than from the inside. In addition, the article provides a detailed timeline and background on the efforts for the rescue of the Jews of Thessaloniki in Athens. The stories of Moisis and Yacoel make clear that it was often individual Jewish actions and initiatives that triggered efforts of aid and mobilization of solidarity by the Christian population. It also adds an important microhistorical approach to the Holocaust in Greece, laying bare the vulnerability of Jews as citizens in “young” nation-states, during processes of consolidation of state structures and national identities.