THESSALONIKI, Greece (WJC)– The re-elected mayor of Greece’s second city Thessaloniki, Yiannis Boutaris, wore a yellow Star of David at his swearing-in ceremony last week as a reminder that 90 percent of the city’s population was murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
The badge was in fact a pamphlet handed out by Councilor Eleana Iaonnidou, who was elected for the Green Party. Boutaris pinned the badge to his jacket amid protests against the presence of the extremist Golden Dawn’s Artemis Matthaiopoulos on the City Council. Mathaiopoulos gained 7.7 percent of the vote when he stood for Thessaloniki mayor in May’s elections, helping Golden Dawn elect two councilors. Protesters exchanged chants and insults with Golden Dawn supporters who sat in the opposite public gallery at the council.
Boutaris pleaded with both sides to calm down. “The City Council is not a coffee house or a soccer stadium,” he said.
The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece congratulated Boutaris on his symbolic gesture. This “reminds of the most dark and sad page in the contemporary history of your city, of our country and of the entire Europe as well. Yet, beyond remembrance, your gesture sends a strong and clear message to those nostalgic of Nazism and fascism that under your leadership your city will continue to fight against any phenomena of racism, intolerance and anti-Semitism,” the KIS said in a letter to Boutaris.
In 1943, the Nazi German forces occupying Greece forced the Jews in Thessaloniki into a ghetto near the railway station and later deported them to concentration and labor camps, where most of Thessaloniki’s 60,000 Jews died. This resulted in the near-extermination of the community. Only 1,200 Jews live in the city today.
During his first term as mayor, Boutaris was very active in reviving the memory of the Nazi atrocities.
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Preceding provided by the World Jewish Congress
I was moved by Boutaris’s gesture. There is so much negative reporting on Greek anti Semitism it is good to hear there are those Greeks willing to confront anti Semitism, racism in general, and the clearly racist and anti Semitic Golden Dawn Party.