What I can see

The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki makes known the city’s heritage of the Sefaradites, after the 15^th century. The Sefaradites were Spanish Jews, displaced in 1492, by Spain’s royals Ferdinandro and Isabella. The museum is housed in one of the few eclectic buildings in the area, which survived the 1917 fire. It hosts permanent exhibitions, photographic exhibitions, a research centre and a library. On the ground floor, gravestones, tomb stones and photos of the Jewish cemetery from around 1914 are displayed. On the first floor, the city’s Jewish history until the Second World War is shown, including architectural parts of synagogues destroyed by the Nazis and exhibits showing a general picture of the daily life of Thessaloniki’s Jews (paintings, letters, clothing, carpets). Finally, there is a special exhibition room about the Holocaust.

What I can't see

The museum’s mission is to preserve the history of the city’s Jewish population. These displays highlight the contribution of the Sefaradites, who brought cultural elements and knowledge from Western Europe to the Ottoman Empire. The community influenced 32 other Jewish communities, prompting the Jewish presence in Thessaloniki to peak in prosperity during the 16^th century and Thessaloniki to be named the “Mother of Israel”. The biggest part of the Jewish quarter was destroyed in the 1917 fire but the “coup de grace” came in the German occupation with the killing of approximately 50,000 Thessalonian Jews in Polish concentration camps.

Info

• Address: 13 Aghiou Mina St.
• Phone: +30 2310 250406
• E-mail: [email protected]
• Website: http://www.jmth.gr/

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