Why go
Read this history alongside the city's Ottoman and modern chapters. Sephardic Jews who arrived after the 1492 expulsion from Spain helped make Thessaloniki a major Jewish centre. Their role in its economy, culture and labour movement changes how the city around you reads.
The full story
Jewish life in Thessaloniki reaches back to antiquity. Under Ottoman rule, the city became a major centre of Sephardic Jewish life after Jews expelled from Spain settled here. The community developed a strong culture and played a central part in the city's trade and industry. In the nineteenth century, new schools, businesses and ideas from Western Europe reshaped that life; Jewish workers also took part in the growing labour movement. This is a history of a city made by several communities, not a separate chapter beside it. During the German occupation in the Second World War, Jews were persecuted, confined near the railway lines and deported in 1943. Most of those deported were killed. Keep that rupture in mind when reading about the earlier centuries: the scale of Jewish Thessaloniki is much greater than the community that survived the war.