Jewish Cemetery

Often places, objects, and sounds remind us of painful events. These memories underscore the need for a constant confrontation with the past in order to understand and accept the trauma. This is the case for the Jewish people of Xanthi, a community of Spanish-Jewish Sephardim who spoke the Ladino language and numbered more than 500 people until World War II. Then, on March 4, 1943, at dawn, nearly all the members of the community were arrested by the Bulgarian occupation forces and taken to Treblinka, from where none of them returned. Today, few reminders of their presence remain. The synagogue, built between 1924 and 1926 with a donation from Isaac Daniel, existed till 1995. The Jewish cemetery on the Xanthi-Diomideia road still survives. In 2022, the city erected a monument in honor of the Jewish people of Xanthi, who were victims of the Holocaust. The photo depicts the Jewish cemetery after its restoration by PAKETHRA.

Creator: Άγνωστος
Source: Wikimedia commons