Greece 23: Strange Things, Sad Things

Sparta Museum

In Athens I saw something I never expected to witness in real life.  On a busy pedestrian walk there was a young man with a small table on a high stand.  On the table were three cups.

It was the shell game, live and in person!  The thimblerig has been recorded all the way back to  ancient Greece, and here it was in allegedly modern times.

If we hadn't been with a group I would have walked closer for  a better view, with my hand firmly on my wallet - not because I would have been tempted to bet, but because pickpockets love to orbit these scams.  

One day in Athens we were driving to a museum and we got stuck behind a march/protest/demonstration. A lot of people were carrying a giant Greek flag. A Greek person in the car said that there was a phoenix in the middle of the flag, which was the symbol of the military coup that ran Greece in the sixties/seventies. This meant, said my informant, that these were neo-nazis.

Assuming this is correct, we were following neo-nazis on our way to visit the Jewish Museum of Greece. Yeah, I know.

So, let's talk about Greece during the Holocaust. Most Jewish Greeks (about 43,000) lived in Salonika in the north. They were captured, with the help of local authorities I believe, and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.

On the other hand, the police chief of Athens provided local Jews with authentic identity cards proving that they were Christians. We saw some of them in the museum.

And then there is the island of Zakynthos. The nazis ordered the mayor and bishop to provide the names of all the 400+ Jews living on the island. They submitted only two names: those of the mayor and the bishop. The bishop also sent a letter offering to be responsible for the actions of the island's Jews. While the occupiers tried to figure out how to deal with this, the Jewish residents slipped out to the countryside where their fellow islanders hid them for the rest of the war.

Outside the Athens synagogue (which we also visited) there is a huge metal book listing the Righteous Gentiles who protected their fellow countrymen.

By the way, the Jewish Museum is small but interesting in a beautifully redesigned old building.

Next stop: Reflections