City's Elite Research Articles

Double‐edged stars: Michelin stars, reactivity, and restaurant exits in New York City

AbstractResearch SummaryThis article develops a theoretical framework to explicate how third parties, who are not transactionally involved in a given exchange relationship, can promote or impede the creation and capture of value by influencing market actor beliefs and behaviors. I investigate these issues empirically through an abductive mixed‐method case study of the Michelin Guide's entry into New York City. An examination of two decades of the openings and closings of New York City's elite restaurants indicates that receiving a Michelin star corresponded to an increased likelihood of restaurant exit. Michelin stars appear to have fostered disruptions at recipients' upstream and downstream interfaces, which inhibited their ability to capture value. This ultimately underscores how value network reactivity to third‐party evaluations may lead to unintended consequences for firms.Managerial SummaryThis article explains how third‐party evaluators' reviews, ratings, and rankings can promote or impede the creation and capture of value. This occurs because third‐party evaluations engender reactions by those being evaluated, as well as reactions by other market actors such as competitors and exchange partners. I study these issues within the context of the Michelin Guide's entry into New York City, and my findings indicate that restaurants that received a Michelin star were more likely to close in subsequent years. Evidence suggests that intensified bargaining problems with landlords, suppliers, and employees, along with heightened consumer expectations, created new challenges for these Michelin‐starred restaurants, which ultimately made it more difficult for them to stay in business.

Trumbull Talk: White Vernacular and the Politics of Persecution, 1953-1954

Following in the microhistory tradition, this essay draws on an unpublished report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to delve deeply into the political worldviews of working-class white mill workers in 1950s South Deering, Chicago, during their massive resistance to the racial integration of a local public housing project in the post-World War II period. A close analysis of casual conversations between members of this insular white community demonstrates that an intense fear of demographic change, exacerbated by a certainty that white city elites had “sold out their race” and were working with civil rights organizations to promote the interests of Black Chicagoans, instilled in South Deering’s whites a sense of powerlessness that failed to ease even as evidence mounted that white city leaders were giving the neighborhood segregationists much of what they wanted.

For and against climate capitalism

AbstractThis paper starts from the point that our current political‐economic‐climate conjuncture demands new engagements at the dynamic interface of climate capitalism. Using two cases of climate capitalist responses to climate challenges, I demonstrate the reparative potentials that emerge from the tensions and ambiguities that typify that conjuncture. In the first case, I examine financialised climate infrastructure in Jakarta, Indonesia, that promises to protect the city from flooding while enriching city elites, but against which diverse social movements and collectives have organised. The second case is about a cooperative energy provider in Australia, operating on the terrain of a neoliberalised electricity market and climate change, and working towards multifaceted repair by collectivising and redistributing surplus and modelling democratic engagement. Those involved in these vastly different cases both pursue repair and reparations through climate capitalist projects by reckoning with historical and present climate debts while constructing forward‐looking programs. As such, they chart the first steps towards reparative climate futures.

Understanding the search for more autonomy in Greater Manchester: an alternative perspective on the politics of devolution in England

Critical social scientific accounts of the confused and inconsistent process of “devolution” in England in recent years have rightly emphasized the place that Greater Manchester and, most recently, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has occupied at the forefront of UK metropolitan institutional reform. They typically give little credit, however, to the long-running, independent processes of mobilization and institution-building that have resulted in Greater Manchester achieving this vanguard position. This article challenges the idea that contemporary metropolitan governance in Greater Manchester can be seen merely as a pawn in the hands of a regressive, centralist state or else as an undemocratic vehicle designed to enable a city elite to dominate its metropolitan neighbors. In taking a longer historical perspective than is common to critical accounts, the article demonstrates that metropolitanization in England has not followed a coherent centralizing script and neither has the current Combined Authority been constrained, or chosen, to adopt the narrow economic development logic its critics allege. The latter is exemplified by an empirical examination of the work done in Greater Manchester on the theme of work and health. The article concludes with an assessment of how a fragile and very English form of devolution might develop in the difficult context in which the UK now finds itself, arguing that social scientific analysis can perform much better in identifying ways in which further enhancements of sub-national autonomy can support the realization of progressive social and environmental goals.

‘Moving from protest to policy’: civil society responses to carceral governance

Baltimore’s exclusionary divisions are palpable in the city's long-standing concentration and segregation of its African American population and in its institutions of governance. The city is synonymous with carceral governance, or governance via the criminal justice system and other practices of control, which constrains the political expression of urban citizenship. A focus on the period since the city uprising in 2015, triggered by racist police violence, underlines that the fundamental struggle concerns the democratisation of the city’s governance and how this is envisaged. The research affirms a key schism between incremental change, associated with co-option into the status quo, and visions of radical, transformative change. But considering the choices and activities of three civil society organisations refines this bifurcated understanding of civil society responses to carceral governance. The organisations move from protest to policy by combining outsider strategies, focused on youth leadership development, with insider strategies of collaboration with, and policy advocacy targeted at, different tiers of government. In making choices about when they work with and when they work against the state and city elites, the organisations navigate the co-optive risks of incrementalism when it is perceived as contributing towards their vision of transformative change.

Social effects of neoliberal policy in post-Soviet Saint Petersburg: Urban space contestation revisited

Neoliberal city policy has become central for urban planning and (re)development in postsoviet St. Petersburg. Competing views on how urban space should be organized make citizens consolidate and buck the decisions of strong advocacy groups. This paper considers the contestation of urban space by urban dwellers and city elites in the early times of establishment and spread of neoliberal rhetoric and policy. It focuses on four cases of local communities struggling against spot construction, demolition, and renovation of historical areas (2005–2012). Empirically, the paper relies on a series of semi-structured interviews with local residents and activists as well as materials of semi-formalized observations at local gatherings and rallies. We use theories of urban political regimes to analyze the decisions on urban futures made by administrations and developers, and the theories of Lefebvre, Scott, and de Certeau providing insights into everyday grassroots resistance of citizens to structural pressures, domination and exploitation — to describe the responses of urbanites. Our data shows that these theories need to be adapted to the local context, where struggles over urban space unfolded under the conditions of total uncertainty including multiple property regimes, unstable legal frameworks, non-transparent decision-making by city authorities and investors, and rising tradition of civic participation. As a result, we question the scholarly convention about the paternalistic relations between urbanites and powerholders, and problematize the boundaries between the core concepts of urban theory: in particular, we demonstrate the relative nonbinary character of the opposition of spatial strategies vs. spatial tactics.

Nascita dei Comuni e memoria di Roma: un legame da riscoprire

Abstract The historiography on the Italian Communes has investigated the motives behind the new city governments. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur and Chris Wickham have stressed different rationales in the actions of the communal elites. However, we should avoid underestimating the cultural power of a model still very much present in the Middle Ages: imperial Rome. In the crisis linked to the struggle for investiture, city elites were inspired by the Roman institutional model, albeit following different ‚models‘ (classical, Byzantine, Carolingian and Saxon). The communal world interpreted this legacy with the contribution of the Roman Church. In this context, the use of spolia as an instrument of legitimization, stressed by Arnold Esch, should be re-evaluated. The interpretation in a Roman key of institutions, laws, political and artistic languages presupposed a sound cultural education on the part of the people of the commune, based on the classical tradition and, politically, on Roman law and institutions. These concepts were visually expressed in the new artistic style – later called the ‚Romanesque‘ due to the obvious desire to reinterpret classical models. Finally, the equestrian group of Oldrado da Tresseno (1233) on the facade of the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan, the only known example of this type of municipal political representation in the first half of the 13th century, allows us to assess the power of the Roman model in legitimising municipal policies.

The Late 4th - Early 5th c. Mosaic Pavements in Philippopolis and Augusta Traiana in Thrace

The present paper deals with the mosaic pavements that embellished the public buildings, semi-public and private houses between the 80s of 4th c. and the first two decades of 5th c. in the two most important cities in late antique province of Thrace - Philippopolis and Augusta Traiana that are unearthed so far. This was a period of great significance for the mosaic development in both cities which though developed in different way until that time, were now united with the use of the full geometrization. Although already entered in the private mosaic pavements in Thrace in the time of the Tetrarchy, the full geometric composition did not receive wide acceptance in the aulae of the private houses and the figural compositions with real emblema or pseudo-emblem are persistent. The inclusion of the Christianity into the new imperial ideology in the time of Theodosius I and Arcadius and the establishment of the symphonia between the State and Church reflected on the importance of the Christian bishop, but also impacted on the stylistic development of the mosaic art in both cities with the abrupt abandonment of any other compositions and motifs than the geometric in order to avoid any link with the paganism and its art. The examples studied reveal that the full, ‘orthodox’ geometric composition and motifs, with humble colouring, were distributed in the private houses of the Christian clergy, while these geometric mosaics with the inclusion of few specific symbols – in the Christian basilicas, related to the liturgical need. It is without any doubt that the mosaic pavements in the Christian basilicas inspired the mosaic pavement decoration of the aulae of the elites in both cities since the middle of 5th c. onward and therefore the Christianity dominating the official and private culture. At last, but not at least are the figural compositions that with the inclusion of specific Christian symbols gained Christian connotation. The present study reveals the still underestimated importance of the mosaic pavements for the study of the development of the political process in Thrace in the Late antiquity and link them with specific historical events as it is attested also elsewhere.

The Nobility of Drivasto and Scanderbeg

Abstract This article aims to elaborate on the relationships between Georges Castriota Scanderbeg and noble families from Drivasto. Drivasto was an Albanian medieval city located in the Northern Albania, about 12 km away from Shkodra. Its origin dates to antiquity but it has achieved its cultural, economic, and political peak during the Middle Age. Drivasto had its schools, church, and social life. The city elite consisted of noble families, such as Engjelli, Spani, Suma, Moneta, and Dushmani. The city elite played an important role in the resistance against the establishment of Ottoman rule in Albanian lands, so many figures deriving from that elite closely cooperated with Georges Castriota Scanderbeg. They used their diplomatic and military background to transmit Scanderbeg’s claims abroad or to fight against the Ottomans. Therefore, this article aims also to elaborate on the social aspects of the society of Drivasto and its role in political circumstances, aiming thus to present to the audience some historical and social features and international relations during the Middle Age. The first part of this scientific research provides a brief presentation about the city of Drivasto during the Middle Age, continues with noble families and their role and cooperation with Scanderbeg; lastly summarises circumstances that derived from the return of Scanderbeg until the year 1478 when Drivasto fell under the Ottoman rule. The work “The nobility of Drivasto and Scanderbeg” derived of intensive scientific research. The comparative and synthetic methodologies have been used to draft this article.

Identity and perception of capital cities by the city elites. The case of the Visegrad countries

Identity and perception of capital cities by the city elites. The case of the Visegrad countries

Integrar un reino: La ciudad de México en la monarquía de España, 1621–1628

Integrar un reino: La ciudad de México en la monarquía de España, 1621–1628

Reconstructing the social, economic and demographic trends of Palmyra's elite from funerary data

For almost 300 years wealthy Palmyrenes commemorated their deceased with portraits set up in elaborate family tombs. Now we can use this wealth of information to reconstruct the historical trajectories of the city's elite. We present an extensive analysis of over 3500 funerary portraits and other funerary data collected in the Palmyra Portrait Project and contrasted with other sources of data on the city's wealth and status as well as the historical timeline of the region. We examine whether the trends in portrait production can serve as a proxy for i) demographic changes in the city population, ii) social transitions or iii) economic phenomena.The results of the analysis demonstrate that broad historical trends in the portraits concur with our understanding of Palmyrene history, but the more detailed patterns highlight the impact of particular historical events over other ones. In general, the funerary data reflects the continuously changing socio-economic circumstances of the Palmyrene elite more closely than its demographic history.Although the outline of Palmyra's history is known thanks to written sources, large archaeological datasets can provide a backdrop to historical events by evaluating their impact on the communities involved. Thus combining historical and archaeological data enables us to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social and economic transitions that past societies underwent over century-long time scales.

How Do We Explain the Quiet Demise of Graeco-Roman Religion? An Essay

Abstract Until now, the relatively quiet transition from traditional Graeco-Roman religion to Christianity has gone unexplained. In dialogue with James Rives and Jörg Rüpke, I argue that Christianity made better use than its religious competition of long-term trends in the Roman Empire, such as expanding literacy, the rejection of sacrifice, the movement toward monotheism, and the closing of the distance between gods and their faithful. The growing skepticism within the city elites regarding the credibility of its traditional religion, the decrease in investments in its material side, and the strength of the Christian organizations were additional factors together with contingent events, such as Constantine’s victory and his long rule.

A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s by Jim Blanchard

Reviewed by: A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s by Jim Blanchard Robert Wardhaugh Blanchard, Jim –A Diminished Roar: Winnipeg in the 1920s. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019. Pp. 294. What place and time could be more exciting than Winnipeg in the 1920s? While this question may seem to drip with sarcasm, there is more to it than first meets the eye. Only a generation before, as immigrants poured in and industrialization took hold, this city was heralded as "The Gateway to the West" and more impressively "The Chicago of the North." The rhetoric of boosterism prophesied the heights that Winnipeg would reach. But as Jim Blanchard highlighted in his preceding books, Winnipeg 1912 (2005) and Winnipeg's Great War (2010), the path forward was fraught with obstacles that threatened to derail the path to progress and prosperity. Instead, the Manitoba capital slid into a period of decline that would last decades and dash the dreams of boosters. A sharp recession in 1910 ended the short-lived golden era of the West. The onset of the Great War in 1914 ripped at the very fabric of society, and by 1918, it was clear that the Prairie cities, with Winnipeg at the forefront, had not profited from federal wartime contracts. By 1919, soldiers returned from the trenches to find a city tumbling back into the grips of recession, broiling with labour conflict, and suffering under a global pandemic. Welcome to Winnipeg in 1920. This book is Jim Blanchard's third in his series on the history of Winnipeg. It follows the traditional path of Canadian historians in taking a decade approach to the chronology following the end of the Great War. But as Blanchard makes clear in the book's title, Winnipeg did not experience the "Roaring Twenties." In truth, neither did the rest of Canada. This decade descriptor is more suitable to the experience of the United States. The 1920s was a difficult decade for Canada. And nowhere was this more evident than in Winnipeg. The topic of this book is important and timely. While the tides of nationalism and regionalism have again ebbed with Canadian historians, the focus on the local remains prominent. And Winnipeg, despite its contemporary reputation, has a fascinating history. Meanwhile, the so-called interwar period continues to receive scant attention, with the twenties playing the role of the forgotten sibling next to the "Dirty Thirties" and the Great Depression. This book has the potential of killing two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, Blanchard only manages to maim the bird. A Diminished Roar provides a traditional approach to Winnipeg's history. It is a top-down perspective from the view of the disappointed city elite whose dreams of Winnipeg's greatness are repeatedly dashed. The reader is led on a journey through the bitter aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, an atmosphere roiling with class antagonism but one in which the business elite, symbolized by the Citizens' Committee of 1000, has clearly emerged victorious. While we get a sense of the anger simmering just beneath the surface, through detailed accounts of battles waged in city council and for the position of mayor, Blanchard makes no attempt to tell the story of Winnipeg's infamous North End or its racial, ethnic, and class cleavages. Instead, the story is decorated with mini-biographies of the "great men" who came mainly from southern Ontario in an attempt to make their fortunes but were instead met by the disappointment of a declining city. The Métis [End Page 183] and Indigenous nations had been pushed from the margins of the dominant story by 1920 and Blanchard leaves them in the shadows. Winnipeg's kaleidoscope of ethnicity so recently created by the western immigration boom from 1896 to 1910 is likewise ignored. The reader learns in considerable detail about the elite's struggle to construct Winnipeg's commercial edifices, boulevards, parks, highways, and festivals, but learns little of the daily struggles, concerns, and aspirations of its average citizens. While Winnipeg may have boasted one of the most progressive and effective women's movements, resulting in the province being the first in Canada to win the right to vote...

Traces of Seismic Activity in Architectural Monuments in Derbent, Dagestan

As a result of studies conducted in the city of Derbent, it is established that its monumental fortification structures erected at the end of the 560s AD underwent numerous strong seismic shocks during their existence. The number and approximate ages of the strong seismic events that affected Derbent throughout its history are determined by the age of the deformed stone masonry. Five episodes of seismogenic destructions are identified. Clockwise rotations around the vertical axis along the interblock joints at the segment of the Sasanian masonry of the curtain wall and the tower of the southern wall of the citadel are noted to occur in late Sasanian and early Arab times (from the 6th century to the beginning of the 8th century). They were large in value and caused by seismic action. Numerous cases of rebuilding and relaying in the defensive walls of the city are also revealed. The building works during the Arab period, especially in the 8th century, described in written sources, were probably caused not only by the military confrontation of the Arab Caliphate and the Khazar Khaganate (the Arab–Khazar wars), which led to the damage of some segments in the defensive walls, but also by seismic activity. At the boundary of the Arab period and the rise of the Derbent Emirate (8th–11th centuries), a significant seismogenic rupture occurred in the upper part of the northern wall of the city between the citadel and the Dzharchi-Kapi Gate. The character of deformations corresponds to seismic shocks from the northwest. It is established that the repair and building works on reinforcing the defensive walls in the Sasanian citadel by later masonry (including rustication) were performed during the existence of the Derbent Emirate and in the Seljuk period. These works could be not only a consequence of destruction during the confrontation between the Derbent emirs with the city elite and the Shirvanshah state, which is described in the Tarikh al-Bab chronicle, but also as a result of the seismic destructions in the fortifications. The destruction and repair of the Juma Mosque occurred in the middle of 14th century (the 1360s). The seismic shocks, resulting in the destruction, arrived from the north. This destruction apparently caused the subsequent building activity in the Derbendi Shirvanshah period in the 15th century, especially during the reign of Khalilullah I (1417–1462), which was described in the building inscriptions and the typical features of Shirvan architecture (the Orta-Kapi Gate, Minaret Mosque). The women’s bathhouse, which was damaged by seismic oscillations propagating in submeridional direction, was repaired at the end of 18th century. The tectonic displacement of the basement blocks in the dugout of Peter the Great dates to this period as well.

The Erber: tracing global trade through a London building

AbstractThrough a case-study of one significant courtyard house owned by the Drapers’ Company and known as ‘The Erber’, this article argues that mercantile livery companies supported London's growing centrality within an expanding network of trade through the use and development of corporate properties. The micro-history at the heart of this article reveals that the ‘everyday’ built environment of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London was shaped not just by the city elite. Also relevant to that process were the different sorts of tenants of the Drapers’ Company, who benefited from the expansion at all levels of London's mercantile activity. The trickle-down effects of global mercantilism affected spaces small and large. The investigation of the Erber highlights the domestic implications of global commercial expansion.

ROMAN NAMES IN OLBIAN PROSOPOGRAPHY

Prosopographical data is one of the most important sources for the study of ethnic structure of the Ancient Greek population in the Northern Pontic area. It should be noted that prosopography reflects mostly wealthier and usually socially privileged strata, the representatives of city elite and the officials whose names are recorded in epigraphic records. Roman names from Greek and Latin inscriptions of the first centuries AD in the lapidary epigraphy from Olbia are presented in the paper.
 The names are put in the order according not to their traditional classification but to another approach basing on the name structure. Consequently the Roman names are divided into three groups: 1 — names with Greek structure; 2 — names with Roman structure and 3 — those composed of a single name. Each group consists of subgroups in which the ethnic origin of name is determined. Greek names with Roman structure, Roman (Latin) names with Greek structure, as well as mixed names including the elements of various ethnic and linguistic origin fit into this classification well. According to the name structure it can be already suggested that the bearers of the names of first group did not have the Roman citizenship, while the names of the second group belonged to the Roman citizens. Having received the Roman citizenship the names of new citizens should have consisted of three or two parts, not always Latin, but the name structure had to become traditional Roman one. The classification proposed the possibility to understand fundamental Greek traditions and new phenomena in prosopography of the first centuries AD. The list of names with short information is presented in the Appendix.
 Nineteen Roman names with Greek structure (personal name and patronymic in the genitive case) and twenty four names with Roman structure are recorded in the Olbian lapidary epigraphy. They appeared in the city onomastics comparatively late: in the first half of the 2nd century.
 There are only four names with Roman elements in the group of names of Greek structure. They have mostly mixed nature and compound Greek and Roman, Greek, Roman and Iranian, Roman and Iranian elements.
 The group of names with Roman structure and Roman components contain mostly names consisting of two parts, peculiar for the Late Roman period onomastics. The subgroup of names with mixed elements contains the spesimens of two and three parts of Greek and Roman, Roman and Iranian and Roman and Thracian origin. It should be also noted that each single individual name cannot be considered the direct representation of ethnicity of its bearer.
 The third group of Roman prosopography in Olbia is represented by a single name. Such names do not clearly indicate the social position of their bearers: they could be either socially depended or full citizens.
 Consequently, there are 52 names with at least one Roman element. If we proceed from the fact that the Olbian onomastics of the first centuries AD is represented by 299 names, the Roman names make approximately 17.4 % and the people with Roman citizenship was approximately 8.4 % of general number of the Olbiopolites whose names are recorded in epigraphic monuments of Olbia.
 Unlike Chersonesos and Tyras the members of Olbian civic community rarely received the rights of Roman citizenship and the percentage of names with Roman elements was lower here. This fact indicates first of all a certain peculiarity of Roman-Olbian relations in the general Roman policy towards North Pontic region. This circumstance reasoned the later and relatively weak Roman provincial influence on the city population which reflected in the prosopographical material from Olbia.

A ‘cultural Cold War’?

ABSTRACTThis article examines the development of the Institute of People’s Culture (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, Lekra) in West Java in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on contemporary publications, oral histories and archival documents, the article incorporates views ‘from below’ into an account of what became a vibrant cultural force. It shows how Lekra attracted a cultural elite but also wove itself into everyday life, as part of a web of organisations linked to the Indonesian Communist Party. Lekra in West Java combined an outward looking engagement in cultural diplomacy with efforts to reform Sundanese culture. Some developments in West Java paralleled national trends, including Lekra’s intensifying politicisation and growing cultural polarisation. However, developments in the province also had their own dynamics, manifesting in the contributions of prominent Sundanese Lekra figures to the ‘wayang controversy’ and in the role of a group of Sundanese writers who rejected the choice between Lekra and a rival group supporting the Cultural Manifesto. The article highlights challenges in applying a Cold War framework to cultural life in the decolonising world, and the need to move beyond elites in capital cities to incorporate views from the provinces and the grassroots.

Paradise and Perdition: Jesuit Visions of Santiago, Chile, before and after the Earthquake of 1647

Abstract This study inserts Santiago, Chile, into contemporary discussions of colonial Latin America by reading two Jesuit documents—a map and a letter—created prior to and following the devastating earthquake of 1647, respectively. Alonso de Ovalle's Prospectiva y planta de la ciudad de Santiago (1646) presents an urban paradise in accordance with Spanish and Catholic ideals, a New World Jerusalem. This depiction is juxtaposed with a letter by Juan González Chaparro that describes postearthquake Santiago as “ruined at the powerful hand of the Almighty.” Focusing on the 1647 earthquake's religious dimensions and perceived causes, the study concludes that the religious authorities of Santiago stand out in the colonial Spanish Americas for assigning fault for such a disaster to their city's elites rather than to its underclasses.

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

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.