World War II Day by Day

German 12th Army HQ, Larissa, Greece • April 21, 1941

After their prime minis­ter’s sui­cide three days earlier repre­sen­ta­tives of the leader­less Greek govern­ment signed a docu­ment of capi­tu­la­tion at the head­quarters of the German 12th Army at Larissa in Central Greece on this date in 1941. Four­teen Greek divi­sions laid down their arms. An armi­stice that included Italy was con­cluded on April 23, 1941. Four days later sol­diers of the Wehr­macht (German Armed Forces) raised their swas­tika war banner (Reich­kriegs­flagge) over the Acrop­olis, the ancient Greek monu­men­tal com­plex over­looking Athens, the Greek capital. At month’s end, April 30, the Wehr­macht jugger­naut reached Greece’s south­ern shore and cap­tured 7,000 British and Common­wealth sol­diers out of the roughly 58,000 dis­patched by British Prime Mini­ster Win­ston Chur­chill at the top of the month. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and their ally Bul­ga­ria divid­ed their Hel­len­ic spoils among themselves (see map below).

With a collaborationist Greek govern­ment sitting in Athens, the Germans were able to im­plant their anti-Semitic doc­trines on foreign soil. When Oper­a­tion Marita, the joint German-Italian attack on Greece, kicked off on April 6, 1941, an esti­mated 74,000–86,000 Jews and their ances­tors had been living in Greece since the 4th century BCE. In 1940 Jews repre­sented roughly 1.1 per­cent of the Greek popu­la­tion of 7,344,860. Around 50 CE Paul the Apostle and 3 com­pan­ions preached to the Jewish com­mu­ni­ties in Mace­do­nia, North­eastern Greece. The oldest and the most char­ac­te­ristic Jewish group that has inhab­ited Greece are Greek-speaking Roman­iotes, also known as “Greek Jews,” who hail from present-day Roma­nia. A smaller group, the 53,000-strong (1943 esti­mate) Seph­ardic Jewish com­mu­nity of Thes­sa­lo­niki (aka Salo­nica,) in Mace­donia orig­i­nated when they fled Spain, Por­tu­gal, and Italy during the late Middle Ages.

Gradually German and Bulgarian military authori­ties imposed a series of decrees limiting Jewish par­ti­ci­pation in public life in their zones of occu­pa­tion. (Until Septem­ber 1943 the Italian occu­pa­tion zone was hardly affected by German and Bul­garian anti-Semitic ordi­nances and depor­ta­tions to work and death camps.) In the second half of 1941, the first depor­ta­tions to the camps came about when the Bul­ga­rians agreed to German requests to be allowed to round up all Jews then living in Mace­donia, who made up more than half of Thes­sa­lo­niki’s popu­la­tion until the early 1900s, and in neig­hboring Thrace in North­eastern Greece. Despite efforts by Greeks to pro­tect their war­time Jewish popu­la­tion, some 4,000 Jews were deported from Thrace in the Bul­ga­rian occu­pa­tion zone to the Treb­linka exter­mi­na­tion camp 50 miles/­80 km north­east of Warsaw, Poland. On July 11, 1942, the Germans rounded up the Jews of Thes­sa­lo­niki in pre­pa­rat­ion for forced labor assign­ments (Arbeits­einsaetze). The com­munity paid a ran­som of 2 bil­lion drach­mas (a period of cata­stro­phic hyper­in­fla­tion and famine) for their short-lived free­dom. Of the 55,000 Thes­sa­lo­niki Jews the Germans deported to work and exter­mi­na­tion camps in 1943 in Poland, mainly to Auschwitz, fewer than 5,000 sur­vived by hiding or joining Greek resistance groups.

Beside Thes­sa­lo­niki’s, losses were signif­i­cant in places like Io­a­nnina in North­western Greece, Corfu, an island off North­western Greece, and the island of Rhodes in the South­eastern Aegean Sea, where most of the Jewish popu­la­tion was deported and killed. In con­trast, larger per­cen­tages of Jews were able to sur­vive where local resi­dents such as Athenians and citizens in Laris­sa in North Cen­tral Greece and Volos, a city and port in East­ern Greece, hid the per­se­cuted Jews. Per­haps the most impor­tant rescue efforts took place in the Greek capi­tal, where some 1,200 Jews were given false iden­ti­ty cards fol­lowing the efforts of Athens’ arch­bishop and police chief. Sadly, by 1945, after the German and Bul­ga­rian occu­piers had been expelled from the coun­try, between 82 and 92 per­cent of Greek Jews had been mur­dered, one of the highest proportions of Jewish deaths in Europe.

Greek Holocaust, 1941–1944

Above: The Axis occupation of Greece was divided between Germany, Italy, and Bul­garia. German forces occupied the most stra­tegically impor­tant areas—namely Athens and its harbor Piraeus, Thes­sa­lo­niki, Central Mace­donia, and several Aegean Islands lying west and south of main­land Greece, including most of Crete. East Mace­donia and Thrace came under Bul­ga­rian occu­pa­tion and were annexed to Bul­ga­ria, which had long claimed these ter­ri­tories. The remaining two-thirds of Greece were occu­pied by Italy, with the Ionian Islands west of the main­land directly admin­is­tered as Ital­ian ter­r­itories. Following the dis­mis­sal and arrest of Ital­ian dic­ta­tor Benito Musso­lini on July 24–25, 1943, and Italy’s capit­u­la­tion to the West­ern Allies on Septem­ber 3, 1943, Greece’s Ital­ian zone was taken over by Germans at gun­point. During the triple occu­pa­tion the Jewish popu­lation of Greece was nearly erad­i­cated. Of its pre­war popu­la­tion of 75,000–77,000, around 11,000–12,000 sur­vived, often by joining the Greek resistance or being hidden by locals.

Left: After Greece, Germany, and Italy concluded an armi­stice on April 23, 1941, the citi­zens of Athens braced for the arrival of the Axis vic­tors by staying indoors, their windows shut. On the night of April 26, Athens Radio urged their listeners: “Brothers! Have cour­age and patience. Be stout hearted. We will over­come these hard­ships.” German and Ital­ian troops marched into Athens on April 27, the Germans driving straight to the Acrop­o­lis to hoist their battle flag. Nearly 3½ years later, on Octo­ber 12, 1944, the Germans aban­doned the Greek cap­i­tal and by the end of the month they had been chased from main­land Greece. British troops returned on Octo­ber 14 and 4 days later the Greek govern­ment-in-exile returned as well. Based on 1939 census figures between 7 and just over 11 per­cent of Greece’s 7.2 mil­lion inhab­i­tants had died during the Axis occu­pa­tion and the events leading up to it: 171,188 civil­ian deaths due to mili­tary activ­ity and crimes against human­ity, 300,000–600,000 civil­ian deaths due to war-related famine and dis­ease, and 35,100 military deaths from all causes.

Right: On July 11, 1942, the German chief civilian administrator imposed forced labor on Thes­sa­lo­niki’s Jewish popu­la­tion. Jews between the ages of 18 and 45 reported to Eleftherias (Liberty) Square that sab­bath morning as shown in this photo. In extreme heat 9,000 fully clothed men were forced to per­form calis­then­ics for 6½ hours. Some 2,000 unfor­tu­nates were snared as forced laborers for the German Army. “Black Sab­bath” is remem­bered as the begin­ning of the destruc­tion of the 56,000-strong Jewish com­mu­nity of Thes­sa­lo­niki. The next Feb­ru­ary Thes­sa­lo­niki’s Jews were con­fined to 2 ghetto-like areas of the city. In March 1943 German and Bul­ga­rian offi­cials began mass depor­ta­tions, sending the Jews of Thes­sa­lo­niki and Thrace in packed box­cars to dis­tant Auschwitz and Tre­blinka in Poland. By the sum­mer of 1943, Jews in German and Bul­ga­rian zones were prac­ti­cally gone; only Jews in the Ital­ian zone remained up to Sep­tem­ber 1943. Ninety-one per­cent of Thes­sa­lo­niki’s Jews perished during the Greek Holo­caust. In the Bul­ga­rian zone, death rates surpassed 90 percent.

Left: At the beginning of World War II the Jewish com­mu­nity of Ioan­nina in North­west Greece num­bered about 5,000. Their pre­sence in Ioan­nina was an ancient one, going back perhaps to the 4th cen­tury BCE. They were Roma­niote Jews, Greek-speaking Jews who had absorbed Helle­nistic cul­ture and now com­prised some 15 per­cent of Ioan­nina’s inhab­i­tants. Most of the Jews of Ioan­nina were traveling mer­chants, laborers, and shop keepers. As of April 1941 the city found itself in the Ital­ian zone of occu­pa­tion. With Mus­so­lini’s sacking in Sep­tem­ber 1943, Ioan­nina came under German con­trol. The days of the com­mu­nity were num­bered. The fateful number came due the next year, on March 25, Greek Inde­pen­dence Day. Only given time to gather up a few pos­ses­sions, the Jewish com­mu­nity was herded onto trucks, taken to Laris­sa, kept for over a week, then placed in cattle cars and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Their jour­ney ended on April 11, 1944. Most were ushered to the gas cham­bers on arrival. After the Holo­caust barely 160 Ioannina Jews found their way home.

Right: Not all atrocities and crimes against human­ity in Greece that were com­mitted by Germans or, to a lesser extent, by Bul­ga­rians and Ital­ians were directed at Jewish civil­ians. A par­tic­u­larly egre­gious example by German sol­diers directed at blame­less Greek villagers was the Dis­tomo mas­sa­cre. This mas­sacre of Greek inno­cents—one of more than 90 during World War II—is also part of the Greek Holo­caust. The Wehr­macht had standing orders to use terror to frighten Greeks into not supporting the andartes (Greek partisans). On June 10, 1944, an andarte band ambushed a Waffen-SS convoy near the small vil­lage of Dis­tomo in Central Greece. Hun­dreds of revenge-seeking Germans retal­i­ated with demonic fero­city, shooting peo­ple and ani­mals as they later advanced on the vil­lage. Once in Dis­tomo they raped all females, muti­lated their wombs and severed their breasts, cut the throats of infants, shot or hanged all boys and men, and used bayo­nets to crucify men on trees lining the roads. The German clean-up oper­a­tion, or Sauberungs­unter­nehmen, bagged 228 civil­ian dead. A Swedish Red Cross worker driving a truck­load of food and medi­cines to Dis­tomo on June 14, 1944, entered the vil­lage, parts still engulfed in flames, empty of life, looted of household goods, utterly destroyed.

The Axis Occupation of Greece, April 1941 to October 1944