"In remembrance of the Holocaust of the Greek Jews" Top 5 Page for this destination Thessaloniki Travelogue by Yiannis2000

I am very pleased to be here because somehow Thessaloniki has played an important role in my family and my life. I am a student of history and when I think of Thessaloniki I think of this long, long history of people betrayed, of people with character, wisdom, knowledge and courage. The fact that you, for instance, that Sabbetai Zevi, the false Messiah, was in Thessaloniki, that has always fascinated me. Sabbetai Zevi chose Thessaloniki as one of his bases of course. His teaching reached even my little town in the Carpathian Mountains. We heard about it many centuries later. I thank you also for the atmosphere, the ambience you created here, and your welcome to my wife and me.

We heard today the choir of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. Maybe you do not know that I was in France after the war. I was in a childrens home, an orphanage and I was there the choir conductor. So actually, I could have been a choir conductor here in Thessaloniki, I could have come and taught you some songs and then you would have been left to remember songs which could have been better than to remember my ideas. I was especially moved with the choirs song of peace Shir Ashalom- that was the last song Yitzhak Rabin heard before he was killed.

And the Ladino; I loved the Ladino songs. I love Ladino literature and I wish I could read it. I always enjoyed the culture of the Spanish-Jewish people - the Judeo-Spanish background.

Now, speaking of memory in books, memory itself can be unfair. For instance, it is unfair because it does not, it did not anyway, teach enough about the role, the tragic role, of the Sephardic Jews in the Holocaust. We speak so much about the Polish Jews, the Hungarian Jews and the Russian Jews and not at all about the Judeo-Spanish, the Sephardic Jews who were there. That is why I feel as Andre Malraux, the great French writer, who wrote, Art is a way of correcting injustices.I use my words wherever I can to correct injustice. We have not thought enough to say, Hey, I remember the Sephardic Jews from Bulgaria, from Thessaloniki, from Athens, from all of Greece, from Italy, even from Algeria and you do, too.Why arent they remembered with the same perfection, the same extraordinary amount of detail that we hear about other people?

I am so pleased to be in Thessaloniki, and I will at least try to tell you how it feels to speak to you about their memories, which should be mine as well. You mentioned Jack Handali, who is here today, and whose book I have prefaced. Jack Handali and I walk together. We knew each other before and after the war, in Israel. Whenever I go there, I have to tell you, I meet Jack and speak to him and say things that cant be said to anybody else. What does one do with memories? It is unfair. You collect them. It is hard but you collect them.

My good friends, what you heard from Ambassador Miller is not literature or political science, because any human endeavor must have a moral dimension. Without it everything goes wrong. How can one understand really, how cultured people, educated people, people with university diplomas, doctors in philosophy, in medicine, in theology, became murderers of children, Jewish children - hundreds every day. You would wonder how that was possible. How was that possible? Is not culture a shield against brutality? Is not culture a remedy to ignorance? And yet it happened. Maybe the answer is, they had knowledge but no morals.

What is morality? We, in the Jewish tradition know that morality implies a relationship to the other. I define myself not as one who lives alone. God alone is alone. We may not be alone, the human being asks of the other, especially if the other needs me. That is where my humanity is tested; whom do I listen to if not to the one who says, I am also a human being? Christian, or Buddhist or Muslim or Agnostic, I am a human being,says that voice - coming from the other to me. I try to listen. In my classroom, I am the best listener. I teach my students the art of listening, by example. And of course no wonder that again in the Jewish tradition, the word listening is so frequent in the Bible; listen here or listen Israel, pay attention, naturally, unfortunately. Unfortunately, there were times that nobody would listen to us; it is true; there were times that indifference existed. I will tell you all here. I will give you an example.

You heard about my appointment in Washington at the Holocaust Museum. In 1978, President Carter - he was the first President I had met, and I am honored and proud for actually having been and still am the presidential appointee of five Presidents, but he was the first - wanted me to become the Chairman of the Presidents Commission on the Holocaust and at first I did not want to. I know how to write, how to read, how to teach but what do I know of public service? But then, President Carter did something that was so beautiful. He said, You know, before you came I asked my CIA director what do we know about the places that you had been and he found in the archives, pictures shot from the areas bombed and that showed a great amount of detail. The allied aircrafts used to take pictures, whenever they bombed targets, because they wanted to know how did it work, what the impact of the bombing was. And it happened a few times that the navigator forgot to close the camera, flying over Auschwitz. So, the pictures came back, and here they are,said the President, in the envelope and no one has seen them before, since the war.So I became the guide around Auschwitz for the President in the Oval Office. I could not believe it, it is there, they knew. They knew it all: in the Vatican, in Stockholm, in Washington, in London, in Switzerland, they knew. But we did not know - they did.

This is going to be the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews. At that time it was the last huge Jewish Community still alive. The only one that could have been saved and it was not. When we came, we did not know what it meant - we saw the name Auschwitz in the railway station. We did not know what it meant and nobody cared to tell us. And so what I decided in my life was that people should know. If it is Rwanda, if it is Bosnia, if it is Cambodia, now we know. And therefore we must do our part. We cannot leave the victims in despair. Therefore, we invoke memory, and it is good that all European nations that respect themselves have adopted January 27th as a day of remembrance. It is good that now nations know that memory is an important element of prevention.

So my good friends, I thank you very much for the honor of giving me membership in your community, which I accept in gratitude. I do not know the obligations but I do know the privileges. I can tell you that you have actually given two memberships, because whatever I do, I do it with my wife. So if I come you must accept her as well.

Thank you very much.