Books on Greek Jewry

From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back, 1926–1996

by Erika Myriam Kounio-Amariglio

Translated by Theresa Sundt

This is the story of Erika Kounio, deported in 1943 from Saloniki to the KZ Auschwitz, where she worked for two years as a scribe in the Gestapo office. It ends with her liberation, reunion with various members of her family, and her decision to continue to love and embrace life.

Yiannina Jews

by Rae Dalven

The Greek-speaking Jews of Greece, the Romaniotes, have suffered both neglect and indifference from modern scholars. Neither Ashkenazi nor Sepharadi, they have maintained traditions and customs stretching far back into antiquity. They are, in fact, a tangible contact with the world of Hellenistic Jewry, which was the matrix in which Christianity was born and developed and out of which great rabbis and scholars influenced Jewish life throughout the Balkans and even Europe in the Middle Ages. This fine work by Rae Dalven, herself a Romaniote, is a much needed initial work on not only the Romaniotes but on the life of the once quite significant Romaniote community in Ioannina. It is a little known and badly recorded world and one that has all but vanished into the past. One is hopeful that, through the work of Dr. Dalven, young scholars may be inspired to further study and document other Romaniote communities in Greece.

A Journey into the Past

by Eftyhia Nahman

This book is a testimony of the war years in the Romaniot Jewish community of Yannina          ( Ioannina ) in Northern Greece. The Romaniots were the oldest Jewish communities in Greece, dating back to before the 2nd century BCE, and the community of Yannina was most important. The book also includes testimonies of Yannina Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, as well as those of local Greek Orthodox people who witnessed the capture of their Jewish friends.