Although the Jewish population in Crete is extremely small, Jews have lived in Greece since ancient times.

Yet, strangely enough, there was no such thing as a "Greek Jew" until the early 1900s, according to K.E. Fleming, author of Greece – A Jewish History. Ms. Fleming, who is a professor of Mediterranean and Modern Greek History at New York University and the director of its Hellenic Studies programme, explains the incongruity in her comprehensive 328-page illustrated study published by Princeton University Press.

(While the current edition is in English, the Greek rights have been sold to Editions Odysseas and a Greek translated version is expected before the end of the year.)
Salonika, which had the largest Jewish community in Greece prior to the Holocaust, was ceded to Greece in 1912. Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace passed into Greek hands between 1881 and 1920, and Crete joined Greece in 1913.

Jews, as a national group with a distinct Greek identity, were officially recognized by Greece only after World War I, says Mrs. Fleming.

Under a law adopted in 1920, Jews were recognized as a protected minority and, for the first time, were regarded officially as Greek Jews.

The Greek government began funding Greek language classes at Jewish schools in Salonika. By the 1930s, young Jews invariably spoke Greek, and the first signs of a true Greek Jewish culture began to be noticed.

During the period from the end of World War I to the outbreak of World War II, overt anti-Semitism was not uncommon in Greece, the author suggests.

The prime minister of Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos, assured the Jewish community that such views did not reflect the government’s position.

In 1943, during the Holocaust, Nazi transports from Salonika were the first to leave German-occupied Greece, and Crete’s entire Jewish community was rounded up in 1944.

Greek Orthodox Christians assisted Jews, hiding them in the mountains with Christian families.  But in Corfu, a senior Greek official collaborated with the Germans, facilitating the deportation and murder of more than three-quarters of the island’s 2,000 Jews.

Greece was inhabited by about 70,000 Jews when the German army invaded the country in 1940. When Greece was liberated, only 10,000 Jews had survived the slaughter.

Greece, impoverished by the Nazi occupation, was plunged into civil war in 1946, and Jews who tried to reclaim their properties were rebuffed.

Yet Greece was the first European country to introduce laws to help such Jews. These laws, however, were not fully enforced, and many Greek Jews immigrated to other countries, leaving only about 5,000 Jews living in Greece today.