page_title: History of the Jews in Thessaloniki
section_title: Fire of 1917 and inter-communal tensions
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Thessaloniki / Greek administration / Fire of 1917 and inter-communal tensions
caption_attribution_description: The old central market of Modiano (Kapani) in Thessaloniki, Greece.
context_page_description: The history of the Jews of Thessaloniki reaches back two thousand years.
  The city of Thessaloniki housed a major Jewish community, mostly Eastern Sephardim, until the middle of the Second World War. It is the only known example of a city of this size in the Jewish diaspora that retained a Jewish majority for centuries.
  Sephardic Jews immigrated to the city following their expulsion from Spain by Christian rulers under the Alhambra Decree in 1492. This community influenced the Sephardic world both culturally and economically, and the city was nicknamed la madre de Israel. The community experienced a "golden age" in the 16th century, when they developed a strong culture in the city. Like other groups in the Ottoman Empire, they continued to practice traditional culture during the time when western Europe was undergoing industrialization. In the middle of the 19th century, Jewish educators and entrepreneurs came to Thessaloniki from Western Europe to develop schools and industries; they brought contemporary ideas from Europe that changed the culture of the city.
context_section_description: The Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 was a disaster for the community. The Jewish community was concentrated in the lower part of town and was thus the one most affected: the fire destroyed the seat of the Grand Rabbinate and its archives, as well as 16 of 33 synagogues in the city. 52,000 Jews were left homeless. Opting for a different course from the reconstruction that had taken place after the fire of 1890, the Greek administration decided on a modern urban redevelopment plan by the Frenchman Ernest Hebrard. Therefore, it expropriated all land from residents, giving them nevertheless a right of first refusal on new housing reconstructed according to a new plan. It was, however, the Greeks who mostly populated the new neighborhoods, while Jews often chose to resettle the city's new suburbs.
  Although the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was celebrated with a splendor unmatched in Europe, the decline had begun. The influx of tens of thousands of Greek refugees from Asia Minor, and the departure of Dönme Jews and Muslims from the region as a result of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), significantly changed the ethnic composition of the city. The Jews ceased to constitute an absolute majority and, on the eve of the Second World War, they accounted for just 40% of the population.
  During the period, a segment of the population began to demonstrate an increasingly less conciliatory policy towards the Jews. The Jewish population reacted by siding with the Greek monarchists during the Greek National Schism (opposing Eleftherios Venizelos, who had the overwhelming support of refugees and the lower income classes). This would set the stage for a 20-year period during which the relationship of the Jews with the Greek state and people would oscillate as Greek politics changed.
  In 1922, work was banned on Sunday (forcing Jews to either work on Shabbat or lose income), posters in foreign languages were prohibited, and the authority of rabbinical courts to rule on commercial cases was taken away. As in countries such as Hungary and Romania, a significant current of antisemitism grew in inner Salonika, but "never reached the level of violence in these two countries". It was very much driven by Greek arrivals from Asia Minor, mostly poor and in direct competition with Jews for housing and work. This current of sentiment was, nevertheless, relayed by the Makedonia daily, which was close to Venizelos' Liberal Party, and the National Union of Greece (Ethniki Enosis Ellados, EEE) ultra-nationalist organization accusing the Jewish population of not wanting to blend in with the Greek nation, and viewing the development of Communism and Zionism in the community with suspicion. Venizelist Greek governments themselves largely adopted an ambivalent attitude, pursuing a policy of engagement while not distancing themselves unequivocally from the current of antisemitism.
  In 1931, an antisemitic riot, led by National Union of Greece, took place in Camp Campbell, where a Jewish neighborhood was completely burned, leaving 500 families homeless and one Jewish resident dead.
caption: View of Modiano Market, built between 1922 and 1925, which took its name by the Jewish architect Eli Modiano
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