Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950





In Salonica, City of Ghosts, Mark Mazower chronicles the very long history of this city, following its economic and social vicissitudes, and how people of varied ethnic and religious persuasions have both ruled and lived in its borders.

One is struck by what a crossroads city Salonica was (it is no longer a crossroad).  It was located at the nexus of the Greek, Slavic, Jewish and Muslim worlds, and all four peoples/faith communities have played a substantial part in its history.

Despite such a varied and rich history, this work is ultimately about the erosion and erasure of history.  When the Greeks gained control over Salonica in the early twentieth century, they tried to eradicate the long Muslim history of the town.  When Salonika’s Jewish community was deported to its death in World War Two by the Germans, its ancient cemetery was desecrated by order of Greek municipal officials, not the Nazis, who had long wanted the land to expand the city.

Today, Aristotle University sits atop Jewish bones, and it was only recently that the university placed a memorial on its campus.  It was destroyed by vandals in early 2019 .  The heartless ethnic scrubbing of this city continues.  It is not the ghosts of the city of Salonika that are the abiding problem - it is its living people.




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