Greece I: The Jews of Ioannina

The ancient synagogue in Ioannina: Jews only come as visitors

The synagogue lies hidden behind a high stone wall. The Hebrew words “Baruch Hashem,” blessed be God, or in colloquial usage, thank God, is carved into the stone. This was once a place of living prayer. Today, it is above all a place of remembrance. “Five thousand visitors come here each year,” says Allegria Matsa over the phone. “They come from Israel, but also from the US, Sweden, and France.” But anyone who arrives without an appointment finds themselves in front of a locked brown door emblazoned with two signs from local security companies. “For security reasons, we only open upon request,” says Allegria Matsa.

Ioannina, capital of the Epirus region of northwestern Greece, boasts an impressive castle complex, the beautiful Lake Pamvotida, and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The local Jews are called “Romaniotes,” and Allegria Matsa is the general secretary of this community. “Romaniote Jews,” she explains, “brought their rites and customs with them

from the time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.”

Thessaloniki may have been the center of the Jewish life in Greece simply because of numbers. The city was known as “Mother of Israel,” as up to 20,000 Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal settled here at the close of the 15th century. The Ottoman rulers welcomed them as they enriched the economy and intellectual life. But to their fellow

Romaniote Jews, at home in Greece since ancient times, they were considered more like newcommers. “We have no influence whatsoever from Sephardic Judaism,” says Allegria Matsa firmly, “and that remains the case to this day, of course.”

For the Nazis, that made no difference. They murdered the Romaniotes of Ioannina just as they murdered the Sephardic Jews of Thessaloniki. On March 25, 1944, during Passover, the German occupiers ordered all the Jews of the city to vacate their homes and gather at an assemblage point within three hours. Trucks and buses transported them to Larissa, and from there on trains to Auschwitz. From Ioannina, 1,850 Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Only 181 survived. Some hid in forests and fought with the partisans.

Allegria Matsa’s parents also escaped the Nazi mania for annihilation. They remained in Ioannina afterward; their daughter is now 75 years old. But the community, which Allegria Matsa leads, numbers a mere 50 members.

Unlike in France, where 500,000 make up the largest Jewish community in Europe, or in Germany, the country of perpetrators, where Jewish life has revived with more than 100,000 community members, Jews in Greece remain marginalized. More than 60,000 were murdered in the Holocaust. Today, only 5,000 Jews live in the entire country. In Thessaloniki, where they once constituted the majority of the population, they now represent 0.3 percent.

But Ioannina is also unusual here: In 2019, Greece’s first Jewish mayor

was elected here. Moses Elisaf, a doctor and independent politician, had to endure being vilified as a “Mossad agent“ during the election campaign. He then declared his victory as proof that ‘the old stereotypes and prejudices had been defeated.” “He did a lot for us,” says Allegria Matsa. Sadly, he passed away in 2023 during his first term in office at just 68 years old.

But even the Jewish mayor was unable to rescue Jewish life in Ioannina from the shadows. There is no longer a rabbi or a cantor here. The old synagogue is more like a museum and is often used for concerts. “Religious ceremonies only take place on major holidays,” says Allegria Matsa. “On Yom Kippur, the synagogue is full. A rabbi comes from Athens, and we

have Jewish visitors from all over the world.”

Romaniote survivors of the Holocaust mainly emigrated to Israel or the US. Romaniote partner synagogues with Torah scrolls from Ioannina can be found in Jerusalem and New York. It is the descendants who often come to the city today as tourists, searching for their roots, for lost traces. In Ioannina, they find the old synagogue and a stone memorial commemorating the city’s Jews murdered in a pogrom in 1850. They are immersed in the

darkness of the past, but as they walk through the streets, they also see graffiti on quite a few walls these days demanding “Free Palestine,” along with a slogan scrawled specifically in Hebrew: “Israel rozachat” - Israel murders. “This is new,” says Allegria Matsa.

Ioannina, June 2025

Translation: Lisa Kremer