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ROBERT EAGLES
Princeton University
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DAN GEORGAKAS
ELENA FRANGAKIS-SYRETT
Queens College, CUNY
Queens College
ALEXANDER KITROEFF
Haverford College
MATOULA TOMARA-SIDERIS
Panteion University
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The National Herald, NY
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West
Chester University
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National / International
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ANDRE GEROLYMATOS
Simon Fraser Univ., Barnaby, Canada
YIORGOS D. KALOYERAS
University of Thessaloniki, Greece
NICOS MOUZELIS
London School of Econ., England
ALEXANDER NEHAMAS
Princeton University
PETER PAPPAS
greekworks.com , Paris, France
JAMES PETR AS
SUNY at Binghampton
ADAMANTIA POWS
New School for Social Research
WILLIAM V. SPANOS
SUNY at Binghampton
CONSTANTINOS TSOUCALAS
University of Athens, Greece
STEVEN BOWMAN
University of Cincinnati
STELIOS VASILAKIS
greekworks.com , New York, NY
STAVROS DELIGIORGIS
The University of Iowa
SPEROS VRYONTS, JR.
New York University, Emeritus
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Copyright © 2009 by Pella Publishing Company, Inc.
ISSN 0364-2976
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VOL. 35.1 (2009)
GENERAL ISSUE
CONTENTS
ESSAYS
ANDRE GEROLYMATOS
The Road to Authoritarianism:
The Greek Army in Politics, 1935-1949
7
DESPINA MOUZAKI
Manos Zakharias 27
GIORGOS B RAMOS
The Traveller of Memory 29
MARIA KATSOUNAKI
A Long and Creative Journey:
An interview with Manos Zakharias 37
DEVIN E. NAAR
Between "New Greece" and the "New World":
Salonikan Jewish Immigration to America 45
AARON RICHARDSON
The Basil John V lavianos Papers (1890-1994) 91
SPYROS D. ORFANOS
So the Clerks Will Not Be Able to Fool You 105
CONFERENCE REVIEW
JOSEPH SMITH
Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories, Identities
Liverpool, May 23-24, 2008 113
BOOK REVIEWS
ADRIANNE KALFOPOULOU
Broken Greek: a language to belong
(Review by Dan Georgakas) 121
DEAN KOSTOS
Pomegranate Seeds
(Review by Andrianne Kalfopoulou) 124
Publisher's Note
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ESSAYS
The Road to Authoritarianism: The
Greek Army in Politics, 1935-1949
by ANDRE GEROLYMATOS
Perhaps it was not unusual that the junta in 1967 chose to
remove King Constantine, in reaction to his attempted countercoup against them, but the fact that in 1974 the right-wing
colonels decided to abolish the monarchy raises some interesting
questions about the allegiance and composition of the Greek officer corps in the post-Civil War period. What made this elimination of the crown remarkable was that after the Second World War,
certainly at the end of the Civil War, the officer corps had been
purged of any suspected left-leaning and or republican-minded
officers resulting in what appeared to be a homogeneous body
committed to authoritarianism and monarchism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism. Yet, this organization supported a small
group of colonels and a few senior officers who wanted to end
monarchical rule in Greece, an institution that as officers they had
sworn to uphold.
The antecedents of the military intervention reach back into
the turbulent years of the 1920s and 1930s and can even be traced
to the first decade of the modern Greek state during which the
army intervened in the political affairs of the Greek state. In 1843
the Athens garrison, led by General Kalergis forced the first king
of Greece, Othon I, to grant a constitution.' Although the
monarch had agreed to do so at the beginning of his reign, he only
agreed to act accordingly after the prospect of military force. In
August 1909, a secret society of Greek officers, the Military
.
ANDRE GEROLYMATOS is Chair of Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. His books include Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage in Greece1940-1944, Espionage and Treason in Classical Greece, and The. Balkan
Wars.
,
7
League, forced another king of Greece, George I, to grant a series
of popular reforms and bring to power Eleftherios Venizelos, one
of Greece's most successful politicians.
This event has been ably covered by Victor Papacosmas, while
Thanos Veremis has provided an in depth analysis on the intervention of the Greek Army in politics up to and after the period
of the Colonels junta.' However, the focus of this study is to consider the transformation of the Greek military during and after the
Second World War from a body honeycombed with factions of
diverse loyalties into a unified body committed to authoritarian
rule and ultimately one indifferent to the monarchy.
Prior to the Second World War the Greek officer corps was riddled with factions and secret societies and had not evolved into a
single and ideologically cohesive body. 3 During the interwar
period, groups within the officer corps had become integral participants in the turbulent political changes that shaped the Greek
state in the 1920s and 1930s. 4 It is important to note, however,
that the Greek officer corps did not intervene in the political
upheavals after the First World War as a unified body but was
divided along professional and political lines.
According to Thanos Veremis this deviation of the traditional
role of the officer corps occurred after certain important changes
took place in Greek society. Greek officers began to participate in
the political arena because their social structure was altered by
political and social changes that transpired between 1912-1923.
An increase in the military academy's admissions and the introduction of free tuition in 1917 opened up a military career to the
less advantaged classes, while at the same time it discouraged the
sons of more prominent members of Greek society from joining its
ranks. Between 1911-1919, in response to the Balkan War (19121913), Greek participation in the First World War and the intervention in Asia Minor, the Greek army expanded considerably,
necessitating a substantial increase in the officer corps. Most of the
new officers came from the reserves as well as from promotions in
the field. The new additions owed their status and rank to Venizelos and they represented a distinct entity within the academy
trained pre-war body of officers. 5 The division of Greek society
into supporters of Venizelos, and his advocacy of Greece's entry
into the First World War on the side of the Entente contrasted to
those who followed Constantine I and his policy of neutrality. The
8
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
officer corps also reflected this division, which was further compounded by the eventual victory of Venizelos in 1917 and the
expulsion of Constantine.
The officer corps that had been increased to meet the demands
of war, contracted after the First World War and the Asia Minor
catastrophe creating competition not only for promotion but also
for professional survival in the post-war army. 6 The fear of early
retirement made most officers vulnerable and ultimately susceptible to political intervention as they opted to follow the fortunes of
the pro-Venizelos forces or those of the monarchy in the interwar
period. As a result the struggle between the Venizelist liberals and
Royalist conservatives also co-opted the Greek, officers into their
political rivalry and infighting. Some officers were motivated by
loyalty to the monarchy and others to the Venizelist cause, while
most joined one side or the other simply in order to protect their
careers.?
Accordingly, during the inter-war period, the officer corps and
the Greek military in general, mirrored the divisions in Greek
society between the Venizelist and Royalists. These divisions
within the officer corps, except for a small number of higher-ranking officers, did not represent distinct political entities or factions
of officers devoted to a specific political cause. Instead, the armed
forces were honeycombed with loose groupings of officers who
gravitated to the Venizelists or Royalists depending on their allegiance to senior military commanders who themselves were affiliated with a particular political party. Consequently, the fortunes of
the officers were directly affected by the outcomes of the coups in
the 1920s and 1930s, which were mounted by the supporters of
monarchy or those of Venizelos. In the process these loyalties
undermined the stability of the Greek state. As Leonidas Spais
later reflected in his memoirs, the minuet of party factions, combined with greed and acrimonious partisan politics led the country to the great 1922 disaster in Asia Minor. 8
One of the results of the Great Disaster was that the army
acquired a taste for power. In late September 1922, a few army
units that had been evacuated from Turkey reached Athens, and
with little resistance took over Greece and proclaimed a new
order. 9 The principal leaders of the coup and members of the subsequent Revolutionary Committee included Colonel Stylianos
Gonatas, Colonel Nikolaos Plastiras and Captain Nikolaos Phokas.
The Road to Authoritarianism
9
For the sake of appearances and under pressure from the British
and French, the colonels setup a puppet government led by S.
Krokidas. A short while later that government was replaced by one
headed by Colonel Gonatas, dropping any pretence of civilian rule.
On 26 September the military issued an ultimatum to the government demanding, among other things, the removal of King
Constantine, who agreed to leave Greece, which he did on 30 September (he died in Palermo, Italy one year later). His eldest son,
George, who had replaced Constantine for a short time, went into
exile in 1924 when Greece became a republic. Following the exile
of Constantine the Revolutionary Committee ordered the arrest of
six politicians, one prince, one general and an admiral.'° Ultimately, only the general and five of the politicians were chosen to
pay with their lives for crimes against the state."
The execution of the Six, however, was an aberration and tantamount to a blood feud between the royalists and Venizelists.
Although coups and countercoups were part of the shuffleboard of
Greek politics, they were relatively bloodless affairs. Mass killing,
torture and harsh imprisonment grew out of the cult of ideology
and fear that plagued Greek society during the civil wars in the
1940s. Prior to 1922, the wrong end of a political conspiracy usually meant loss of office and influence and the inability to compensate the followers of one party with rewards from the
government's largess. However, these shifts in fortune were temporary and rectified by the next election or coup. Albeit strong
emotion and some degree of violence often accompanied major
shifts in the power politics of the country, but the prospect of death
as punishment for political failure represented a finality that few
were prepared to countenance.
Regardless of these sentiments and wishful thinking, the army
(more specifically the officer corps), desperately needed to distance
itself from the defeat in Asia Minor. As was the case with the military of the other Balkan states, the army officers saw themselves
as the embodiment of the nation and the protectors of the state.
Any stigma of defeat or humiliation had to be deflected and consigned to unscrupulous politicians or to the Great Powers. Consequently, the Greek military invoked a "stab in the back" apologia
to explain their part in the 1922 defeat and to preserve the role of
the army as the guardian of Greece. The revolution of 1922 not
only forced the abolition of the monarchy but also heralded a new
10
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
era of direct intervention by the army in the making and unmaking of governments. Each coup, whether successful or not, was followed by a purge of the armed forces.
During the 1930s the officer corps underwent several more
purges that further deepened the ill will between conservative royalists and the liberal Venizelists—labels that still had less to do
with any particular ideological bend than commitment to the
leader of a political faction. The end result for most officers facing
defeat in a coup was forcible retirement and a dramatic loss in
income. Since most Greek officers relied on their salaries and did
not have private means of support, the end of a military career
meant certain poverty.
For example, in the attempted coup of 1933, forty officers were
removed, but after the 1935 coup attempt another 1,500 more
were cashiered. By1940, as a result of the coups and attempted
coups, approximately 4,500 officers had been forced to retire early
or had left the armed forces as a result of court-martials. As a group
these men represented a significant percentage of the officer corps,
which in April of 1940 was just over 5,000 professional officers
and another 10,000 in the reserves.' 2
In the earlier coups of the 1920s those officers forced out of the
army came from the ranks of the monarchists, but in the attempted
coups of 1933 and 1935, the axe fell on mostly republican officers
so that by 1940 almost all anti-monarchists had been forced into
retirement. 13 As a result, control of the armed forces reverted to
royalist officers, who, in conjunction with some members of the
Populist Party (the traditional party of the royalists), began to
clamor for the restitution of the monarchy. In 1932, the Populists
had disavowed their allegiance to the crown, but as George Dafnis
observed, their rejection was superficial and three years later (in
1935), they reasserted their support for George 11. 14 After the
Populist victory at the polls immediately following the March
1935 coup attempt, tremendous pressure was placed on Panagiotis Tsaldaris, the Populist premier, to bring about an immediate
restoration of the monarchy.
Tsaldaris had promised a referendum on the issue of the
monarchy, but following the landslide victory in the 1935 general
election many in his party, and primarily those senior army officers, demanded that he abolish the republic and invite George II
to return to Greece. 15 When Tsaldaris refused, his government was
,
The Road to Authoritarianism
11
promptly overthrown by the military. General George Kondylis,
one of the conspirators, replaced him and upon assuming office
declared the end of the republic and advanced the date for the referendum on the monarchy to 3 November 1935. The results of the
plebiscite were outlandish even to the most credulous supporters
of the monarchy, out of 1,492,992 votes cast only a paltry 34,454
opposed the return of George 11. 16
The reinstatement of George II did not heal the fissures of
Greek society, and the elections of 1936 showed this clearly by
producing a parliament divided almost evenly between the Liberals and Populists along with fifteen Communist deputies who held
the balance of power. Both major parties initiated talks with the
Communists, and the Liberals actually managed to reach an agreement with them, but these efforts at political compromise were
stillborn. When news of a possible Liberal-KKE coalition leaked
out, Alexander Papagos, the minister of army affairs, with the support of the chiefs of the air force, navy, and gendarmerie, informed
the king that the armed forces would not countenance a government that included Communists. 17
In the absence of a majority government or coalition, a caretaker government headed by Constantine Demertzis administered
the country. Unfortunately, Demertzis died in April and Ioannis
Metaxas, the deputy premier and the leader of a small right-wing
party, succeeded him as head of the government. The death of
Demertzis had been preceded by the demise of a number of other
prominent political figures including: Kondylis, Venizelos, Tsaldaris, and Alexander Papanastasiou, which at this critical juncture
deprived the country of some its most influential and experienced
leaders. The coincidence between the deaths of these individuals
and the labor unrest sweeping over Greece provided an opportunity for Metaxas, with the support of the king, to gain control of
the state. The Workers' Federation had declared a twenty-fourhour general strike for 5 August. On 4 August, Metaxas persuaded
the king to suspend certain articles of the constitution and declare
martial law in order to avert a Communist revolution.' 8 In effect,
on 4 August 1936, King George II gave Metaxas the authority to
establish a dictatorship that lasted even beyond Metaxas' death in
January 1941, until the exiled king reinstated the constitution in
February 1942.
Metaxas inherited an army commanded by predominantly roy12
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
alist officers and an officer corps that for the first time in the history of Greece was ideologically homogeneous. 19 Consequently, by
the beginning of the Italian invasion the Greek armed forces,
purged of most men who had Venizelist sympathies, now provided
the main prop for the monarchy and the Metaxas regime. Subsequently most professional Greek officers, including those who
retained their commissions as well as those in retirement or forced
into the reserves had become politicized. Those who kept their
rank had a vested interest in the survival of the monarchy but those
who were drummed out of the service anticipated the day when
the next coup would restore their commission and salary.
Despite the purges and the efficiency of the Metaxas security
services, small groups of professional officers established anti-dictatorship cells within the army. In March 1938, E. Tsellos formed
the ME0 (Mistiki Epanastatiki Organosis) whose goal was the
removal of the dictatorship by force. The military membership of
the organization included primarily lower ranking officers but also
several colonels and two generals (General Achileas Protosygkellos and General Platis, the deputy chief of the General staff). 20
Another cell that represented a group of slightly lower ranking officers had been formed in 1933 but remained dormant
between 1933-1940. However, both organizations kept close contact with the KKE, and although they achieved little success
against the Metaxas regime, during the occupation some of their
members played an active role in the resistance and assisted in the
organization of ELAS. 21
The royalist dominated officer corps after the 1935 coup, no
longer followed the political leaders of any party but had themselves become the power-brokers and potentially could impose
their will on who was to govern. 22 The Venizelists who had been
compelled to leave the armed forces filled the ranks of the main
opposition groups to the monarchy and Metaxas. A number of
them formed secret organizations, while others joined British
secret organizations that would eventually amalgamate into the
Special Operations Executive (SOE), which began to organize
embryonic clandestine networks in Greece. Until Metaxas refused
to accept Mussolini's terms in October 1940, the British Foreign
Office harbored deep suspicions of the Greek dictator. 23
Although foreign office officials did not approve of the SOS's
activities, the British Government was convinced that sooner or
The Road to Authoritarianism
13
later Greece would be overrun by the Axis and plans for an eventual resistance were essential. Since the Metaxas regime was determined to remain neutral, the British intelligence services and
particularly the SOE viewed the Venizelist officers, the communists and other revolutionary groups as ideal recruits for a network
of underground cells that would spring to life after Greece was
occupied. 24 Another consideration was that if Metaxas brought
Greece into the Axis alliance, then the same groups would be used
to organize resistance against the dictatorship.
The SOE's plans for resistance activity in an occupied Greece
gathered additional momentum and more recruits after the outbreak of hostilities on 28 October 1940. When Metaxas decided
to reject Mussolini's ultimatum, the British ceased to plan for
organized opposition to him and concentrated instead on the likely
prospect that the Axis would overrun Greece. Effectively, the
British still relied on the Venizelist faction for recruits as well as
on other organizations opposed to the Metaxas regime. One contributing factor was that the ideological division between the
Venizelists and the Royalists deepened during the war when only
3,000 of the former were recalled to active duty. Another 1,500,
mostly those of higher rank were kept from participating in the
war and many of them gravitated to the embryonic cells being
organized by the British intelligence services. 25
Colonel Evripidis Bakirdzis, a leading Venizelist officer who
had been implicated in several inter-war coups, was an early link
between British intelligence and the Venizelist groups opposed to
Metaxas and later served as an important contact between the
emerging resistance organizations and the Special Operations
Executive. 26 For such officers the Axis occupation represented simply a change of authoritarian rule and offered the opportunity for
the establishment of a patriotic front against the occupation forces
that could also be used in the post-occupation period. Effectively
these men and women were optimistic for an allied victory partly
out of conviction and partly out of necessity. Consequently, resistance meant not only resistance to the occupation but also meant to
reshape the post-war Greek political landscape. The royalist faction, on the other hand, confronted the occupation of Greece as a
cohesive and ideologically united group loyal to the monarchy and
to the social status quo. However this group, as was the case with
the Venizelist officers, had to deal with the prospect of resistance.
14
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
The government of George II had made no plans for the organization of a resistance movement to carry on the struggle after the
government went into exile. From the beginning of the occupation, royalist officers who wished to fight were encouraged by the
government of George II to join the Greek armed forces in the
Middle East. About 2,500 did, while others followed the lead of
General Papagos and other senior royalist officers and abstained
from joining the forces of the Greek Government-in-exile or participating in any resistance activity. However, many royalist officers refused to remain idle and followed the example of the
Venizelists who had early on begun to join the resistance organizations forming in the fall and winter of 1941-1942. As a result,
both EDES and ELAS acquired a considerable number of professional officers. 27
In the case of ELAS, there were approximately 600 royalist
officers, 1,200 former permanent officers who were essentially
Venizelists, and 2,000 lower ranking reserve officers. For EDES it
is more difficult to identify the percentage of royalist officers at
least in the early stages of the occupation. One constant factor,
however, is that in the later years of the occupation when EDES
units were dispersed by ELS and reformed (1943-1944), replacements came from the ranks of the royalist officers. This was further
facilitated by the reconciliation between Napoleon Zervas, the
head of EDES and George II in March of 1943. 28 This surprising
move by Zervas, whether motivated by pressure from the British
or was outright opportunism, discredited the Venizelist cause. As
a result, EAM-ELAS became the sole organization to continue to
oppose the monarchy, thus attracting many fervent Venizelists
who, abandoned EDES after Zervas' reconciliation with the king.
Indeed, the dynamics of the resistance movement and the
political aspirations of those in and out of occupied Greece had
wreaked havoc with the Venizelist faction of Greek officers. Effectively, they fell into three categories—die-hard republicans who
joined ELAS since EDES had ceased to represent their political
sentiments. Another faction, especially those who suffered at the
hands of ELAS, during the dispersing of their guerrilla bands,
found refuge or sought revenge by joining the Security Battalions
organized by the Rallis puppet government in 1943 under the
control of the Nazis. 29 By the end of the occupation, at least 1,000
professional officers were serving in the Security Battalions, most
The Road to Authoritarianism 15
of who had been members of the Venizelist faction. 3 ° The last
group of republican officers feared communism more than the
king and followed the example of Zervas by making their peace
with the monarchy. 3 '
In contrast, the situation of the officers in the ELAS units continued to remain constant. Furthermore, the presence of wellrespected Venizelist officers such as Stefanos Sarafis, in ELAS as
well as other well-known republican officers such as Bakirdzis,
Mandakas, and A. Othonaios attracted many Venizelists and other
professional officers from the armed forces. Consequently, by the
end of the occupation the Greek officer corps had re-aligned politically as a result of their wartime experience. The royalistVenizelist schism had been replaced by fear of communism.
Meanwhile, the Left versus Right division that emerged with such
deadly force during the occupation came to dominate the political
discourse in Greece during and after the occupation. Indeed, the
label of "right or left" determined the professional fate of the
Greek officer corps in the period after liberation.
After the December crisis of 1944, all officers affiliated with
ELAS or any other left-wing organization were essentially barred
from re-admission into the new National Army. The armed forces
were now the prerogative of those officers who fought with Zervas,
remained inactive during the occupation, supported the monarchy
throughout the course of the uprisings of the Greek armed forces
in the Middle East, and the officers who served in the Security Battalions. The latter were released from detention in order to support
the British and Greek forces fighting against ELAS during the
December events. 32
During this period the officer corps was once again honeycombed with secret leagues and associations. The structure of these
organizations was shadowy, and some only represented a loose collection of officers with common professional interests. 33 To a great
extent these factions were a reaction to constant political intervention in the armed forces in the aftermath of the post-Varkiza
period. For almost a decade few governments held power for more
than a year and some for only a couple of months. The succession
of governments only served to highlight the insecurity felt by the
officers in the new National Army regardless of their pre-war affiliations. Royalist officers who had sat out the occupation feared
those who had joined the resistance or fought in the Middle East.
16
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
The most vulnerable group were the former Venizelists who
had recanted and accepted the monarchy as the price for re-admission into the armed forces. Although during the 1946 government
of Plastiras many former republicans had been reinstated, the short
tenure of Plastiras brought back the old professional insecuritis. 34
At the same time, the royalist faction saw many of its senior commanders lose their posts to former republicans and they responded
by forming secret organizations to protect themselves from retirement or dismissal.
Ultimately, the most influential group was the Sacred Association of Nationalist Officers (IDEA), formed in late 1943 by the
merger of ENA (Enosis Neon Axiomatikon) 35 and Triaina. The
goals of IDEA were to keep its members form politics and defend
the nation. Triana, on the other hand was created as a clandestine
organization during the occupation and beyond that little is know
about it or who had established it. IDEA quickly expanded within
the officer corps and eventually spread its tentacles throughout the
army. 36 In the summer of 1946, IDEA intervened on behalf of the
officers who had served in the Security Battalions and managed to
have them reinstated in the army. 37 However, little effort was
made to address the issue of professional officers who had fought
with ELAS during the occupation. Initially, 221 officers who had
served in ELAS were given appointments in the new army but they
were soon placed on the inactive list. 38 Many of the officers
excluded from the armed forces bore the brunt of the "white terror" that inflicted Greece in the aftermath of the Varkiza Agreement. A year later some of them took up arms and helped to create
the Democratic Army, but hundreds of these former professional
officers ultimately languished in detention and internal exile. 39
The Communist force, unlike the National Army, 4° eventually
established a cohesive officer corps that included some professional
officers as well as experienced guerrilla commanders with considerable skills at partisan warfare. Although some of these guerrilla
commanders had served as reserve officers in the Greek army, many
had become officers during the occupation. Some were graduates
of the ELAS military school in the mountains, while many others
had earned their rank as a result of direct military experience in
the field. 4 '
The National Army, on the other hand, entered the civil war
riddled with factionalism and subjected to political intervention
The Road to Authoritarianism 17
that extended to the operational level. For example, many units
were committed to defend static positions in order to protect a
region represented by a influential politician. 42 Although well
supplied and possessing considerable more firepower, the National
Army was no match for the mobility and hit-and-run tactics of the
Democratic Army. Most of the officers who commanded the units
of the new National Army lacked experience in counter-insurgency warfare and a large number had seen little action during the
occupation. On the other hand, officers who had such experience
from fighting in the guerrilla units of ELAS were excluded from
the National Army and remained in detention camps for the duration of the civil war. 43
The failure of the National Army to destroy the Communist
forces, for almost the duration of the civil war, compelled the
British and later the Americans to intervene and re-organize the
Greek officer corps and bring it beyond the reach of the political
leadership. Admiral Petros Voulgaris, prime minister at the time,
initiated the process in June 1945 and gave the British Military
Mission (BMM) executive authority over the organization of the
Greek armed forces. 44
The mechanism established by the British and followed by the
Americans by which to intervene directly in the military affairs of
Greece, was the Supreme Military Council that included the head
of the BMM as a non-voting member. However, the other members of the council were given to understand that the chief of the
British Military Mission would prevail in military affairs. After
the implementation of the Truman doctrine in 1947, the Americans followed the British example and supported the independence of the Greek military from political intervention and
ultimately from political contro1. 45
Despite these changes and considerable military aid from the
United States the National Army was not able to defeat the communist forces. The US military advisors ultimately were forced to
intervene directly in the overall strategic and tactical planning of
operations. Furthermore, the Americans opted for greater control
of the Greek armed forces and made every effort to distance it from
Greek politicians. The American advisors succeeded in establishing direct links with the Greek officer corps bypassing the Greek
political establishment. More significantly, the US military advisors and the recently created CIA also developed close ties with
18
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
IDEA, which by the end of the civil war had come to dominate the
Greek officer corps. 46
The end of the Greek civil war and the onset of the Cold War
had convinced the US Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff that Greece was not in
a position to defend herself from aggression by any of the communist Balkan states or the Soviet Union without massive American support. The US relegated Greece to the role of a tripping
wire that would alert NATO of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Southeastern Europe. In this strategic construct, the primary function of
the Greek army was to provide security against an internal threat.
The US only altered Greece strategic status in the 1960s but for
fifteen years the Greek army was essentially equipped and trained
primarily for internal security. 47 Effectively, security meant that
the mission of the military was to prevent communists or any leftwing organization from gaining control of the state. Part of this
task included a political role for the army in that it undertook to
support covertly anti-communist organizations. In effect, US policy toward Greece reflected the attitude of the officer corps and
IDEA, which had already defined the duty of the military as the
guardian of the state from internal as well as external forces.
In the period after the Civil War, IDEA became a dominant
force in the Greek army and a rallying point for officers disaffected
with the propensity of the monarchy to favor officers close to the
palace. The secret organization, consequently, shifted its loyalty to
General Alexandros Papagos and believed that he would be able to
counter the influence of royal family in matters of promotion.
Papagos was a hero of the Greek-Italian War and responsible for
the defeat of the Democratic Army. Although Papagos had been a
devoted supporter of the monarchy, the king resented the growing
influence of the general and relations between the two had become
strained. 48 In 1951 Papagos resigned as head of the army over a
disagreement with the king, but a year later he ran for office and
won a resounding victory in the 1952 elections. Thanks to the support of Papagos members of IDEA assumed key positions in the
army and in KYP (Kratiki Yperesia Pliroforion) 49 , Greece's intelligence service.
A significant number of IDEA members had also served in the
Security Battalions during the occupation and prior to the Second
World War had been followers of Venizelos and opponents of the
monarchy, but they had quickly pledged their loyalty to the king
The Road to Authoritarianism
19
in the post-liberation period. Some of these former Venizelists had
through opportunism or fear found refuge in the Security Battalions, others had opted for the monarchy as less ideologically odious than communism. Although the puppet Prime Minister
Ioannis Rallis had been tried as a collaborator after the occupation,
all charges with respect to the Security Battalions had been dismissed. The court ruled that Rallis did not break any Greek laws
because the aim of the battalions had been to maintain law and
order and internal security. 50 Thus in chaotic post-war Greece, the
court provided a fig leaf of anti-communism and nationalism for
the former members of the liberal-Venizelist factions to mask their
collaborationist past.
The former officers of the Security Battalions quickly
expanded their control of IDEA and as the secret organization
expanded its influence in the army, it also advanced the careers of
the former collaborationists. For example, Colonel Gerakinis, an
officer in the Security Battalions, was appointed deputy director of
the military academy. Some such as colonels Papathanasopoulos
and Plytzanopoulos were relatively well known, but many more
remained anonymous and became the backbone of the 1967
junta. 51The mantra of these officers was the notion of national-mindedness (ethnikophrones), a concept that defined less an ideology than
the self-proclaimed struggle against communism and opposition
to all individuals and organizations of the left. 52 Over the next fifteen years IDEA and its offshoots, such as the National Union of
Young Officers led by the future dictator, George Papadopoulos,
tightened their grip on the officer corps and in 1967 took over the
Greek state. On 21 April 1967 these officers took over the Greek
state and soon re-discovered their antimonarchism that they had
conveniently abandoned in exchange for reinstatement in the
army.
Notes
'George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 2 Vols. (London: Zeno, Vol.
2), offers a detail description of the crisis between Othon I and the Athenian
garrison led by General Kalergis.
20
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
ZS. Victor Papacosmas, The Military in Greek Politics, the 1909 Coup d'e'tat
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1977); Thanos Veremis, The Military
in Greek Politics: from Independence to Democracy (New York: Black Rose Books,
1997).
3 Thanos Veremis and Andre Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force in Greece, 1940-1949," Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. 17.1,
1991, pp. 105-107
4Thanos Veremis, of epemvaseis tou Ellinikou stratou stin politiki 1916-1939
(Athens: Hexantes 1977, passim, provides an excellent account of the history of
the Greek officer up to the Metaxas dictatorship. For a theoretical examination
of the subject see: George Dertilis, Koinonikos metaschematismos, kai stratiotiki
epemvasi, 7880-1909, Athens 1977, passim. On the period after 1936 and the
occupation see: Andre Gerolymatos, Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage in Greece,
1940 - 1944, (New York: Pella, 1992), pp. 321-334; J.L. Hondros, "Too
Weighty a Weapon: Britain and the Greek Security Battalions, 1943-1944,"
Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. XV, Nos. 1 and 2 (1988), pp. 33-48; Andre
Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps in the Resistance, Journal of
the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. XI, No. 3, (Fall 1984), pp. 69-79; Hagen Fleischer,
"The Anomalies in the Greek Middle East Forces, 1941-1944,Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. V No. 3, (Fall 1978), pp. 5-36.
'During the Balkan wars a new category of officers, reserve officers, was created in the officer corps. According to Veremis ("The Military in Greek Politics," pp. 36-37), reserve officers had been granted regular commissions and by
1920 formed the largest group of officers in the Army lists. However, they were
not accepted as equals by the academy trained officers and hence, out of professional necessity and because they acquired their commissions when Venizelos
was prime minister they tended to remain loyal to the liberal leader and opposed
to the monarchy.
6 Thanos Veremis and Andre Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," pp. 103-105.
7 Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," pp.
104-105; Nikos Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery (London: Macmillan,
1986), p. 98.
'The disruption in the chain of command by the replacement of experienced officers in the armed forces in Asia Minor with less qualified royalist commanders, according to L. Spais, was a contributing factor to the defeat of the
Greek army in Turkey (Leonidas Spais, Peninda Chronia Stratiotis (Athens:
Melissa 1970), pp. 144-145).
°On 28 September, part of the main army (12,000) marched into the capital in good order (Michael L. Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 19191922 (London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd), p. 314).
wThe court-martial was concluded with guilty verdicts on 27 November
1922 and the executions followed the next morning. The court martial board
consisted of ten officers headed by General Othonaios.
' 1 Upon arrival in Athens, the leaders of the coup ordered the arrest of Dimitris Gounaris, Nikolaos Theotokis, Petros Protopapadakis, Nikolaos Stratos
and Admiral Michael Goudas, who they planned to execute immediately and
then declare a general amnesty. They also had arrested Prince Andrew, one of
The Road to Authoritarianism
21
Constantine's younger sons. After protests from the British and French ambassadors, they decided to wait. Subsequently they arrested Georgios Baltazzis
General Hatzianestis and Xenephon Stratigos. All were found guilty, six condemned to death and two (Goudas and Sratigos sentenced to life imprisonment,
but released after a few years).
"Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps," pp. 70-71; and
notes 3-6.
13 The purge of royalist officers in 1922 was followed by the dismissal of
1,500 republican officers because of the unsuccessful coups of 1933 and 1935
(Andre Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps in the Resistance,"
Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora Vol. XI, No. 3 (Fall 1984), p. 71, note 7).
'George Dafnis, I Ellas Metaxi Dio Polemon 1923-1940, 2 vols. (Athens;
Ikaros 1974), Vol. 2, p. 369. Dafnis attributes the Populist victory to the strong
backing of the middle class. He points out, however, that this support did not
translate into endorsement of the monarchy, but rather the rejection of the Liberal party.
"A critical factor in the victory of the Populists was the boycott of the elections by the Venizelists.
' 6According to the American ambassador, Lincoln MacVeagh (Ambassador
MacVeagh Reports: Greece, 1933-1947, ed. J. 0. latrides (Princeton: Princeton
University Press 1980), p. 60), the number given for the monarchist vote was
higher by a margin of 400,000 votes than the total vote cast by all parties in
any previous election. Hagen Fleischer (Stemma kai Swastika (Athens: Papazisis
1988, p. 54) adds that the Danish ambassador in Athens commented that the
entire process was a farce and "the greatest comedy performed on the European
scene for a long time."
"J.S. Koliopoulos, Greece and the British Connection 1935-1941 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press 1977), p. 40.
mMetaxas confided in his diary that the country was on the eve of a communist revolution. Communist propaganda, he wrote, had already infiltrated
the civil service and threatened to paralyze the state, and it had started eroding
the discipline of the armed forces (Ioannis Metaxas, To Prosopiko ton lmerologio,
ed. C. Christidis (Athens: Ekdosis Gkobosti) [Vols. 1-2, 1896-1920,], P. M.
Siphnaios [Vol. 3, 19211, P. Vranas (Vol. 4, 1933-19411, pp. 222-223, 4 August
1936, Athens 1951-1964).
19Thanos Veremis, The Military in Greek Politics, p. 132.
21 Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps," p. 70, note 2.
21Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps," p. 70, note 2.
22
Metaxas, in particular, was aware that the Officer Corps could challenge
his position as the dictator of Greece and placed considerable emphasis on establishing reliable security services (Gerolymatos, Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage,
p. 31). However, during the short period of the 4th of August Regime King
George II exercised considerable influence over the armed forces whose mostly
royalist officers looked to him as the legitimate head of state as well as the primary guarantor of maintaining their professional careers (Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," p. 105).
23 Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambassador to Athens, attempted to
convince King George II to remove Metaxas but met with little success (Athens
22
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Telegram No. 185, 6 October 1938, FO 371/22362). Metaxas for his part confided in his diary that the British did not like the dictatorship and he feared
British intrigues against his regime (Ioannis Metaxas, Imerologio, Vol. 7, p. 359,
Sunday 19 March 1939).
24This policy of using political revolutionaries and groups opposed to their
own governments was not exclusive to SOE's activities in Greece but based on
a broader concept that such groups were by their very nature ideally suited to
participate in clandestine (Gerolymatos, Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage, p. 132135).
25 Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps," p. 71
'Another important consideration for the continued, and almost exclusive, employment of opponents of the Metaxas regime by the SOE after the
occupation was that the representatives of the British organization in Athens
had little or no contact with the intelligence services, ministries, or individuals
close to the Greek government. Consequently, after the fall of Greece and the
rapid withdrawal of the British military and intelligence forces from the mainland, there was no opportunity or time to establish contacts with the agencies
and individuals that represented the monarchy and the Metaxas regime and
cooperate with them in the organization of clandestine networks that would
operate after the Axis occupation (Gerolymatos, Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage,
pp. 54-55).
27 According to Veremis and Gerolymatos (The Military as a Sociopolitical
Force, pp. 105-106), One important factor that led many of the Greek officers
to follow different resistance organizations and clandestine groups was the
breakdown of legitimate political authority in Greece. The puppet regimes
established by the Germans had little credibility thus most officers did not have
any allegiance to what was an illegitimate government. In the ensuing vacuum
of genuine authority many Greek officers were left free to follow a course of
action motivated by patriotism, a spirit of defiance against the Axis forces in
Greece or their own political beliefs. Some joined the Greek forces in the Middle East; others followed the guerrilla bands in the mountains, while some opted
to enlist in the Security Battalions of the Rallis puppet government our of fear
of communism, revenge, or simple self-interest.
"Gerolymatos, "The Role of the Greek Officer Corps," pp. 74-76.
29 Andre Gerolymatos, "The Security Battalions and the Greek Civil War,"
Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. XII, no. 1 (Spring 1985), p. 19.
3 °Gerolymatos, "The Security Battalions," pp. 20-21.
31 The same conditions applied to the Greek armed forces in the Middle
East, particularly after the mutinies in 1943 and 1944. Republican officers
either accepted the monarchy or were purged, while others ended up in prison
camps in the Middle East.
32 Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," p.
114, and note 41.
"Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," p.
115.
34Dispatches of Lincoln MacVeagh," ed. Y. Chouliaras and D. Georgakas,
Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 12.1 (1985), p. 48.
"Union of Young Officers.
The Road to Authoritarianism 23
36 0n the creation and organization of IDEA see: Karigianis, 1940-1952,
To Drama tis Ellados: Epe kai Athliotites, (Athens: n.p. 1963), pp. 206-207.
37 Karagianis, 1940-1952, To drama tis Ellados, p. 234; EN. Grigoriadis,
Emphilios Polemos, 1944-1949, Vol. 10 (Athens: Neokosmos 1975), pp. 90-92.
38 Gerolymatos, "The Security Battalions," pp. 23-24 and note 34; NARS
RG 226 L 57536.
39 David Close and Thanos Veremis, "The Military Struggle, 1945-1949,"
The Greek Civil War 1943-1950: Studies of Polarization, ed. David Close (London
and New York: Rutledge, 1993, pp. 99-100; Stefanos. Sarafis, ELAS Greek Resistance Army (London: Merlin Press 1980), p. lxxvii; George Alexander, The Prelude to the Truman Doctrine: British Policy in Greece-1944-1947, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press 1982), pp. 161-162, Tsakalotos, 40 Chronia Stratiotis tis Ellados, Vol. 1, p. 47; Markos Vaphiadis, Apomnimonevmata," Emphilios," 5 Vols.
(Athens: Diphros 1992), Vol. 1, pp. 128-129.
°The term "National" Army was used during the course of the Civil War
and found in most primary documents of the period. It is not certain who came
up with this designation of the government forces but it was a clever use of
words and subtle propaganda similar to the acronym of ELAS (which means
Greece) used by the left during the occupation. For the sake of historical consistency "National" Army will refer to the government forces and Democratic
Army for those of the communists.
41David Close and Thanos Veremis, "The Military Struggle," pp. 103-104;
Vaphiadis, Apomnimonevmata, Vol., 5, p. 146.
42 Verernis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," p.
120.
43 Close and Veremis, "Military Struggle," pp. 104-105; Harry Truman
Library, President's Secretary File, SR-10, BOX 259.
"Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as A Sociopolitical Force," pp.
116-118.
45 Y.P. Roubatis, Tangled Webs: The U.S. in Greece, 1947-1967 (New York:
Pella 1987), p. 74.
46 Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force,"
pp.122-123.
47 Roubatis, Tangled Webs, pp. 72-79; p.p.125-127; p. 131.
48 There was also the persistent rumor that Papagos was the illegitimate son
of King Constantine.
49 State Information Service.
5 °Gerolymatos, "The Security Battalions," p. 25.
”Triandafilos Ath. Gerozisis, To Soma Axiomatikon kai e Thesi ton sti
Sygchronyi Elliniki Koinonia, 1821-1975 (Athens: Ekdoseis Dodoni, 1996), pp.
824-825
52 Solon Grigoriadis, Dekenvris-Emphilios, 1944-1949 (Athens: Kapopoulos
1984), p. 189, writes that the fear of the left and anti-communism surpassed
the pre-war political schism and that the opposition to EAM-ELAS-KKE was
extended to include all individuals and organizations who did not identify with
the political ideology, such as it was, of the right-wing and the monarchy. Those
who did defined themselves as "ethnikophrones," a term which during the occupation defined not only those who supported the monarchy but included con-
24
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
servative republicans. The ideology of the ethnikophrones, writes, Grigoriadis
manifested itself as fear of the left and developed greater impetus after the
December 1944 uprising and the Varkiza Agreement. According to Th.
Tsakalotos, (50 Chronia Stratiotis, Vol. 1, 1960, p. 399) a pre-war republican but
a post-war monarchist, opposition to communism transcended any other political sentiments amongst the officer corps (Veremis and Gerolymatos, "The Military as a Sociopolitical Force," p. 116).
The Road to Authoritarianism
25
Photo by Vicky Georgopoulou
A Cinema of Choice: Manos Zakharias
This feature on the life and films of Manos Zakharias is
being presented in cooperation with the Thessaloniki
International Film Festival. The material is excerpted
from the Festival's, publication of a book on Manos
Zakharias, which was part of the Festival's continuing educational efforts on behalf of Greek cinema.' This is the first
lengthy consideration of the films of Manos Zakharias to
appear in any American publication
Manos Zakharias
by DESPINA MOUZAKI
With a story that could provide the material for a script, an
inherent charm that would have made an ideal lead actor, and a
passion that defined his road in life and art, Manos Zakharias is a
filmmaker who, in Greece at least, constitutes an almost legendary
figure. The man who helped Greek cinema acquire a legal infrastructure and an entity as a result of his tireless work as Cinema
Advisor to Melina Mercouri, the filmmaker who was a member of
the resistance in the ranks of ELAS (Greek People's Liberation
Army), the person who until recently was the consultant to the
president of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, is known to
all who are involved in cinema in Greece, and yet strangely—and
Producer-director DESPINA MOUZAKI is the director of the Thessaloniki
International Film Festival and an Assistant Professor in Film Production
at the Films Studies Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
27
unjustly—not for his truly outstanding work in film It is this
"injustice" that the 49th Thessaloniki Film Festival aimed to rectify by organizing, for the first time, a retrospective of his entire
work, a magnum opus that carries the Greek soul into the world
of Soviet cinema and uplifts it in an affirmation that is truly ecumenical. The seven features and four shorts that Manos made in
Russia contain the philosophy of a filmmaker who never lost his
faith in man, who saw the cinema as a medium for claiming rights
and affirming ideals and he handled it with passion but also with
respect, modesty and an absolute awareness of its power. Intellect
and actions, spirit and works appear to have always gone together
in the life of Manos Zakharias, a man who constitutes a real asset
not only for Greek cinema but also for the history of modern
Greece itself. So this retrospective was not a matter of the Festival
honoring him but on the contrary it is we who were honored that
such an extraordinary person is guiding us so magnanimously on
the footpaths of his art and life.
Note
'The material in these pages has been slighted edited by Dan Georgakas
with the assistance of Barbara Saltz to meet the needs of American readers. The
essays originally were published in the bilingual (Greek and English) Manos
Zakharias: The Traveller of Memory edited by Giorgos Bram os. The entire publication can be ordered via e-mail (credit cards only) at bookshop@filmfestivalgr.
Prices of all Festival publications can be found at www.filmfestival.gr/bookshop.
28
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
The Traveller of Memory
by GIORGOS BRAMOS
For many years the film work of Manos Zakharias was virtually unknown in Greece. It began to become somewhat known
after he relinquished his institutional role in Greek cinema. Manos
Zakharias, the filmmaker, was honored at the Thessaloniki Film
Festival in 2004. That same year the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation aired a retrospective of his films, and the Parliament
television channel followed with something similar. The retrospective at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2008, however, was
the first time his work was screened in its entirety. Except for his
first film, The Truth about the Children of Greece (1948), 1 all his other
films were shot in the Soviet Union where Zakharias was yet
another Greek political refugee, an exile. His political adventure
became identified with the country's adventure: the German occupation, the Resistance, 2 and the "Mataroa" (the New Zealand
troop ship that carried the best Greek youth to Paris and salvation). 3 Some chose France as their new homeland, but Manos
returned to Greece in order to climb the mountains and join the
rebels. 4 Defeat came and he was forced into political exile in
Tashkent, a city far from the Soviet capital. During the Twentieth
Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956),
Zakharias witnessed one more political and civil tragedy, this time
within the Party.' A little later, in Moscow, at its legendary film
school, he met the holy terrors of Soviet cinema—Mikhail Romm,
Alexander Dovzhenko, Yuli Reisman—and attained maturity as a
filmmaker at their side. In Manos Zakharias' films there is one
dominant element: Greece or more exactly, the memory of Greece.
GIORGOS BRAMOS has worked as a journalist and film critic for newspapers and magazines. He also has co-written screenplays, and he has published two collections of short stories and a novel.
29
The Truth About the Children of Greece . 1948
Of the seven feature films he shot in the Soviet Union, four refer
specifically to Greece, which was for him both a step-motherland
and an unsurpassed and everlasting love. 6
In The Sponge Divers (1960),' the natural setting is an island in
the Aegean. We witness the love of two young people, the difficulties of love, the eternal myth of Romeo and Juliet. The film has
all the typical elements of a folk morality tale. The directing, however, frees the film from this formality. The film's solidity is not
due to academism but to its adherence to the human landscape.
The agony, the toil, and the pain etched on the faces already reveal
a filmmaker who, rather than placating his audience with the usual
manufactured emotions, treads firmly on the great lessons of popular cinema to create genuine emotion.
The End and the Beginning or The Crossroads (1963) 8 once again
offers a Greek subject. The time frame is World War II and the German landing in Crete. The film follows a group of people at war
with the Nazis: a young doctor and his assistant, a Communist
30
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
The Sponge Divers . . . 1960
fugitive and the gendarme who is after him, a soldier who has
deserted the regular army, and a New Zealander who has come from
his distant homeland to fight fascism. Relying here, as he did in The
Sponge Divers, on Yorgos Sevasrikoglou's script. Zakharias focuses on
his characters' inner landscape, on the unpredictable element of
their personalities. As a rule, a film about war is defined by the
weight of rhetoric. Zakharias and Sevastikoglou transcend this rule.
Once again, the directing is austere, effective, and warm. Petros
Sevastikoglou, writing about Beginning and End, has explained how
Zaharias is able to transform what might be mechanical scenes into
something far more provocative and compelling:
The Greeks are preparing to ambush a German patrol. The
SS get out of their vehicle and clamber up a hill looking
for the partisans. The young German troops start out with
the arrogance of the all-powerful conqueror. When they
get lost in the forest, time stops and the soldiers' self-confidence drains away in the silence as fearless warriors are
The Traveller of Memory
31
The Sponge Divers . . . 1960
transformed into frightened boys lost in the woods.
Zakharias is describing men now, not the enemy, and stops
time to narrate for awhile the tales of his enemies, not his
heroes. The bullets that shoot out of the forest and kill the
Germans, one by one, are dispatcher-less; we never sec who
fires them, just the pain and fear of young men faced with
death. 9
If his two previous films referred to the Greece of the past and
the war The Executioner or One of the Firing Spada 968) 10 concerns
Greece's new long night, the dictatorship of the colonels. A soldier
who does not want to be part of a firing squad is replaced by
another. The new executioner considers it normal to be a member
of a firing squad and is only interested in the privileges this "role"
grants him. His realization of the weight of this participation
comes unexpectedly and painfully. He learns that no one can be
"innocent of blood."
32
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Corner of Arbat and Bouboulinas Street (1972)" also features the
Greece of the dictatorship. The film explores the acrid and harsh
taste of forced exile, a life that is lost, its continuity severed. We
share the terrible recollection of those who died in the Resistance
against the Germans, those with graves under the sidewalks of
Athens. The film seeks the parallels between two modern Greek
tragedies—the German Occupation (1941-1944) and the junta
(1967-1974). Then and now it is as though history was being recycled. Zakharias posits that the brief history of individuals—their
loves, their toil, their heroism and their compromises—are always
determined by the dilemma of choosing to be on one side or the
other side.
Regarding the matter of choice, the first and only purely
"Greek" film that Manos Zakharias made was a documentary he
shot while he was a rebel on the Grammos mountains, during the
Civil War. The Truth About the Children of Greece is—precisely!—a
propaganda-type documentary that provides an answer to Queen
Fredericka and the vile accusation regarding the "child gathering"
of the Left. Lost for many years the film resurfaced after the fall of
the Soviet Union and came into the hands of a private collector in
France. Viewed in today's light, the film can be seen as an outdated
document, the testimony of a divided country. What I see is a film
based on specific political expediency that conveys a strange and
powerful emotions. Perhaps this reflects Yorgos Sevastikoglou's
spare yet warm text. Or perhaps it is the sight of leftist fighters on
the mountains of Greece and later, the institutions in then-socialist Czechoslovakia that cared for the exiled children? In short, I
think this documentary is a prologue to the cinematic, political
and existential universe of Manos Zakharias, a cosmos where the
most essential spiritual force is faith in man and his adventure.
An inherent difficulty in Zakharias' "Greek" films is the
believability of their naturalism. How, in other words, can one
recreate the climate, the feeling, and the intensity of the images of
a Greece in the constructed sets of movie studios in the Soviet
Union? How can the characters and the landscapes, the sets and
the language—which, of course, is not Greek but Russian—be
convincing and transcend cinematic convention? Are the Greek
thematology, the Greek names of the characters and the sets that
remind one of Greece enough to give the film authenticity?
If Zakharias' naturalism were static and representational, then
The Traveller of Memory
33
we would have films that did not surpass their constructional adequacy. But they concern us and are valid to this day because they
go beyond the naturalism on which they are seemingly based.
Zakharias does not reconstruct the locations of Greece. He recreates the nation's moral substratum.
The central theme that traverses Zakharias' entire work is the
dilemma of the crucial and decisive moral choice. This material
"belongs" to his generation, a generation that resisted, fought, pitted itself against the greatest evil of its time and saw the flower of
its youth imprisoned and before firing squads.
Moral choice comprises the material and content of Zakharias'
long journey into the memory of the generation. On the one hand
he is a film director who is in control of his expressive means and
allows no empty space. His apprenticeship at the best film school
in the Soviet Union and at the side of the great masters gave him
effective directorial ability. But Zakharias is not a typical Soviet
director. I asked him once during an interview how is it that from
what we know of Soviet cinema the first thing it created was the
shape, the outline, but there is no such shape in his filmmaking.
Everything in his work, including its shape, is the human landscape. He admitted it and reminded me of the set in I am a Soldier,
Mother. "I don't know if you realize it, but the set is painted white.
I had everything painted white so that the setting did not impose
itself on the characters, did not intrude. I wanted to make it a
somewhat imaginary space. I wanted this space to be ethereal, not
a place to sit on one's head, but to be a background where suddenly
you say to yourself what's going on here?"
Zakharias' non-declamatory style, the priorities of his directorial choices that bear no relation to the spectacular gesture but to
its anthropocentric roots, is also evident in the way he uses the
world-famous music of Mikis Theodorakis. He almost never
includes them in the foreground. He keeps them low, almost whisper-like, allowing them to become heart-rending commentary.
The memory of a person who was deprived of his homeland,
who wandered in foreign lands, is often made up of the fragments
that they want to preserve, the past in an embellished form. Such
is not the case with Zakharias. Memory renews itself because each
time it tests the endurance of a collective vision, which—despite
defeat—preserves the feeling of sacrifice and the desire for selflessness, genuinely and in its entirety.
34
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Manos Zakharias' insistence on downplaying his work in film
and, most of all, on putting his creative course on hold when he
took over the central role in the formulation of the institutional
framework for Greek cinema, is a position that is incomprehensible and unjustifiable in these days when egos, both big and small,
prevail. In this respect, the retrospective mounted in Thessaloniki
of Manos' entire surviving body of work was a valuable cinematic
act of many dimensions. The Thessaloniki Film Festival's retrospective of Manos' entire oeuvre was, in many ways, not just from
a purely cinematic point of view, an invaluable act.
Notes
'Script: Yorgos Sevastikoglou. Cinematographer: Apostolos Moussouris.
26 minutes.
2 He was a member of EPON, (United Panhellenic Organization of Youth),
the youth division of EAM (National Liberation Front) He and other students
staged theatrical events in Athenian neighborhoods. He also participated in the
People's Theater whose works were directed by Yorgos Sevastikoglou. He
fought in the Decembrist Uprising and took over command of the Student
Company (newly renamed Lord Byron) when Grigoris Farakos was wounded.
'In Paris, he studied at IDHEC (Institute des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques), France's most prestigious film school.
4 With Yorgos Sevastikoglou and Apostolos Mousouris, he created the
Greek Democratic Army Film Unit. Considerable footage was sent to Socialist
Czechoslovakia, but it has been lost.
'This was the Congress with Khrushchev's historic admission of the crimes
of Stalin.
°Non-Greek-themed Mins made in the USSR were The Night Passenger
(1962), I Am a Soldier. Mother (1966), The Town of First Love (1970), and Code
Name Lukacs (1977), Zakharias also made The Morning Flight (1959) a fifteenminute short about a Greek bus driver. The script is by Zakharias based on a
short story by Menelaos Loudemis of the same title.
'Script by Yorgos Sevastikoglou based on the short story "The Driver" by
Nikos Kasdaglis 81 minutes. B&W.
8 Script by Yorgos Sevastikoglou. 90 minutes. B&W.
9 Giorgos Bramos (editor): Manos Zakharias; The Traveller of Memory, a publication of the Thessaloniki Internal Film Festival, 2008, p. 71.
'"Script by Oleg Stulcalav based on an idea by Yorgos Sevastikoglou. 85
minutes. B&W.
"Script by Galina Shergova. 98 minutes. Color.
The Traveller of Memory
35
A Long and Creative Journey: An
interview with Manos Zakharias
by MARIA KATSOUNAKI
KATSOUNAKI: Could you divide your life into periods?
ZAKHARIAS: The first is Greece. Which means studying, friends,
the Occupation, the Civil War. The next is Paris, France. The third
the Soviet Union, where 'I spent twenty-nine years, a huge chunk
of my life. I studied and worked creatively there. Then came my
return to Greece, another big part of my life.
KATSOUNAKI: Looking back now at your life, from a distance, does it
sadden or anger you, or are you on good terms with your past?
ZAKHARIAS: My life doesn't sadden or anger me one bit. I'd live it
over from scratch again. All four periods in my life have given me
moments I could call my happiest. I've lived a lot, experienced so
much. I wouldn't change a moment.
KATSOUNAKI:
Do you think your daughters' generation has experienced
less, lived less?
ZAKHARIAS: I don't think it goes by generations. I don't think the
experiences of any one generation can be better or worse. It's events
that count, the things that happen. The present day may be a little poorer than mine. People are a little lost. They're searching,
trying to find something. The givens are gone, the values we could
once take for granted. People don't have a clear and solid stance.
They're a bit mixed-up. Is something new on the way? Who
MARIA KATSOUNAKI
is a writer and film critic for the daily newspaper
Kathimerini.
37
The End of the Beginning . . . 1963
knows? Things used to be clear-cut. There was the Occupation, the
enemy, the Resistance. There was no need to search. You could lose
heart and compromise—meaning you wriggled out of the thing—
you could be a traitor, but the overwhelming majority of my generation were in the Resistance. It was amazing what happened. If
you didn't live through it, there's no way you can even imagine it.
They'd be hunting you. They'd set a checkpoint in the street but
could knock on any door and they'd let you in and keep you safe.
Every door was open hack then. I remember a checkpoint in
Aiolou Street in downtown Athens. I went into a shop at random.
The owner took me straight down into the basement and showed
me a back door I could escape through. The atmosphere was amazing. Unprecedented and never to be repeated.
KATSOUNAKI: Did you draw strength from it?
ZAKHARIAS: A lot. We had certainty, self-confidence. It was a time
of exultation. Everything was in the superlative.
KATSOUNAKI: Did lift matter?
ZAKHARIAS: A lot. We had a unique relationship with death.
There were people being executed, arrested, tortured, and there
were others dying of hunger. You'd leave the house in the morning and see five or ten corpses in the street. The cart would come
38
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
by and pick them up. You gradually got used to death. I felt that
even more during the Civil War. We'd set off with the film crew
to film scenes on the battlefield. I remember a terrible battle up on
Grammos—there were bodies everywhere—and a conscript making a cynical comment about how one of them was sitting there,
dead, on a tree trunk.
KATSOUNAKI: What about your years in the Soviet Union? Is this a time
of reflection, of sorting things out in your head?
ZAKHARIAS: Yes. I'm getting things straight. As I've learned more
about history, my position has often changed. I was a member of
the;Communist Party. I left after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I
know what mistakes were made during the Civil War and before
it. But I don't regret what I did. Given the context of the age, my
conscience is clear. I only did what I thought right. Whether I
rethought certain things later on with the benefit of historical
hindsight has no bearing on that. That isn't to say I ever stopped
considering socialism the best way of running a society. That I
lived a long time in a regime whose "Real Socialism" had little in
common with what I would consider socialism has no bearing on
that, either. Even so, in areas like health and education, there is
and never will be a better system than that. In terms of education,
the situation in the Soviet Union was superb. Everyone read. I
remember having to put myself on a six-month waiting-list for the
complete works of Chekov or Stendhal when they came out in new
editions.
KATSOUNAKI: When was that?
ZAKHARIAS: In the Sixties and Seventies. The quality of the health
system was also excellent. One of my daughters had a cough and
two doctors came round to our house. In that respect, you felt
totally secure.
KATSOUNAKI: You were an administrative and production head at
Mosfilm.
ZAKHARIAS: Yes, for twenty-three years, between 1956 and 1979.
A Long and Creative Journey
39
KATSOUNAKI: This was a period during which a lot of directors suffered
censorship under the regime. You hear all sorts of things.
ZAKHARIAS: Yes, you do. That's a very misunderstood era. There
can be no doubt that a system of censorship was in place, but it
was neither direct nor obvious. It worked on two levels. First, there
was self-censorship—self-imposed limits—which was worse. We
knew how far we should and could go. We had a lot of room to
maneuver, but there were limits. The second level was external
censorship. Personally speaking, I can't remember a single film
being shelved. Even Andrei Tarkovsky, who recorded the pressures
of faking films in the USSR in his Martyrology, made his best films
there: Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Stalker, The Mirror. He made
great films abroad, too, but none as great as those he made during
his Russian period. And I made films in spite of it. I may have been
greater leeway because I was a foreigner. But I was able to make a
film about the Spanish civil war with a Jewish protagonist. Meaning I had the space to fight for principles I held dear. And we must
not forget that there were enlightened people in the Mosfilm system, like Romm and Reisman.
KATSOUNAKI: Do you regret any of your actions or decisions?
ZAKHARIAS: No. Everything we did we did with a clear conscience. We weren't unfair with anyone. Although some people
were prevented from doing things, the artist was always invited to
put his side of the argument before the decision was taken.
KATSOUNAKI: But could an artist criticize the regime?
I don't think so. But this was internal self-censorship; you knew
how far you could go.
KATSOUNAKI: Was it a regime that oppressed creativity?
I never felt that. I discerned an antidemocratic tendency; that was
clear enough. The Party line and its commandments were entirely
non-negotiable. You could see there was no democracy in the sense
in which we understand it. Of course, it was this that proved the
worm that ate away the regime. Because it made it hard to control
40
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
A Member of the Firing Squad . . . 1968
and hard to criticize. Which is why the regime collapsed.
KATSOUNAKI: Were you on good terms with Tarkovsky ?
AKFIARIAS: Very good, and with the others, too: Kontsalovsky,
Michalkof and the rest of them.
KATSOUNAKI: You returned to Greece in 1979. Why?
ZAKHARIAS: Primarily, I was returning to my homeland. T was
returning to the land that made me who I am, my language, everything. Now, as to what this homeland was like that I returned to
.. well, it was all over the place. There was joys, hopes, openings
and prospects, but misery, too. They asked me to make a film for
television. They promised me twice the usual time. That is,
episodes were shot in a day but I was to get two! That was the first
and last time I worked with Greek television. This is not snobbishness on my part. I didn't work with them because I didn't
know how to make a film in two days. I would have been leading
them up the garden path. Then Melina [Mercourilcame along
with a proposal from the Ministry of Culture.
;
KATSOUNAKI: What exactly propelled you to come back to Greece?
A Long and Creative Journey
41
ZAKHARIAS: Nostalgia. I couldn't stay in Moscow any longer, even
though I was now in a position to do whatever I wanted at Mosfilm. I was artistic director of one of its four studios. When Romm
died, I took over one of the studios with Reisman. Still, as soon as
I knew I could go back to Greece, something I couldn't have done
before '75, that was that. I was taking five pills a day! My wife, a
civil engineer, was teaching at the university, but realizing nothing on earth would keep me in Moscow, she told me we should go
back. Even though I never made another film after my return, I
was myself again. I was in my land. I saw my old friends. The
Moscow elite back then consisted of artists and intellectuals. That
has changed. Now they're businessmen: capitalists.
KATSOUNAKI: Since 1982, you've held key positions for eight years (film
consultant, President of the Greek Film Centre) in which you wielded considerable power. You were known as the "czar" and the "gravedigger" of
Greek cinema. Why do you think you elicited that sort of reaction?
ZAKHARIAS: There
were such reactions, clearly, but the question
is whether these reactions were justified or helpful. History has
now passed its judgment: the Greek cinema has survived for the
last twenty years That is thanks to the law (on the cinema) I and
Melina championed. As for the new law (drafted by the Gavras
committee), I've only read the preamble find its intentions are
good. I haven't studied the rest very carefully, but I did pick out
two or three potential problems. If they ask, I'll tell them what I
think.
KATSOUNAKI: In your film Corner of Arbat and Bouboulinas Street
one of the protagonists says: "The future's under attack from the past" Do
you still believe that's true?
Most definitely. It's a definitive statement. There's
not a person alive without a past, and that past has left its mark on
them. I divide my past in terms of turning points that have determined my memory and the way I relate to the world.
ZAKHARIAS:
KATSOUNAKI: From your first film The Sponge Divers to your last,
Greece is always present. Was that unavoidable?
42
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
That reflects my inner world, my needs. I wanted to
talk about things Greek. In my first film, for instance, I tried to
recreate Greece in a foreign land, on the coast near Sebastopol. One
day, a naval officer paid me a visit. He said: "I've just served two
months in the Mediterranean in a submarine patrolling the Greek
islands. I get to Sebastopol, up periscope and find myself in the
Greek islands again!"
ZAKHARIAS:
KATSOUNAKI: How far did your administrative role impinge on your
work as a director?
At Mosfilm, not at all. In Greece, now, it was my
choice. I can't blame anyone. I've always hoped to direct again.
ZAKHARIAS:
KATSOUNAKI: In On the Corner of Arbat and Bouboulinas, you
state, "A strange century. The less life you have left, the greater your
responsibility for it". Now that most of your life is behind you do you still
think that's true?
The things you absorb, your reactions to things on an
emotional level, make you more mature, more responsible. They
teach you how to deal with things in a more level-headed way. To
take difficult decisions. That's why responsibility grows larger
with age.
ZAKHARIAS:
Katsounaki: Do you feel responsible for things you wanted to do but
didn't?
might regret not having done them, but not responsible. Yes, I regret not making any more films. I'm sorry that I
stopped before the cycle was complete. I was improving as a director, maturing artistically and creatively. I was at a peak in my
career. I'm sorry because 'I would have made more films. Good or
bad, it's impossible to know. But they would have been made.
ZAKHARIAS: I
Katsounaki: If you made another film, would it be about the past or the
present?
ZAKHARIAS: Not
about the present. I consider myself an observer
of the here and now. I'm not well up on the situation. I imagine it
A Long and Creative Journey
43
Corner of Arbat Bouboulinas Street . . . 1972
would flop. If I made another film, it would either be about an
intense phase from the past (the Occupation or the Civil War),
though I can't see the point of that now I might do something
about the history of the Greek nation which so determined my life.
I'm especially interested in the Cappodistrias period.
KATSOUNAKI: You've been reading scripts for nearly three decades now.
Are we doing well?
ZAKHARIAS: No! We're not!
KATSOUNAKI: Why?
ZAKHARIAS: There's no mystery there. The root cause of all our
problems is the poor level of general and specialized education that
so belabors Greek society and the Greek cinema. How could it not
be! A film school (the Thessaloniki school doesn't count: it's just
another example of something hurriedly thrown together being
made permanent) would allow us to start hoping that, in a good
few years time, the Greek cinema will be able to compete with
other national cinemas.
44
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Between "New Greece" and the "New
World": Salonikan Jewish
Immigration to America'
by DEVIN E. NAAR
Who are these strangers who can be seen in the ghetto of
the East Side, sitting outside of coffee-houses smoking
strange-looking waterpipes, sipping a dark liquid from
tiny cups and playing a game of checkers and dice, a game
that we are not familiar with? See the signs on these institutions. They read: "Cafe Constantinople," "Café Oriental," Cafe Smyrna," and there are other signs in Hebrew
characters that you perhaps cannot read. Are they Jews?
No it cannot be; they do not look like Jews; they do not
speak Yi ddish. Listen; what is that strange tongue they are
using? It sounds like Spanish or Mexican. Are they
Spaniards or Mexicans? If so, where did they get the coffee-houses, an importation from Greece and Turkey?
—Samuel M. Auerbach, "The Levantine Jew" (1916) 2
Writing in The Immigrants in America Review, Auerbach offered
an image of "Levantine Jews" as "strangers" within the context of
a predominantly Yiddish-speaking, eastern European Jewish culture on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the first decades
of the twentieth century. Auerbach, like his contemporaries writing in English or Yiddish, provided a perspective that he felt
would resonate with his readership.' Subsequent accounts of
American Jews have echoed descriptions such as Auerbach's insoDEVIN E. NAAR is a Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, Stanford
University.
45
far as they have treated Jews from the eastern Mediterranean—
described alternatively as "Levantine," "Oriental" or "Sephardi"—
as marginal figures in their narratives. Others have omitted
completely from their accounts the experiences of these Jews, who
stray far from the mold of "normative" American Jewry. In addition to differences in language, culture, geographic origin, and
religious traditions (minhagim), the relatively small demographic
weight of Jews from the eastern Mediterranean also has contributed to their marginalization in American Jewish historiography. Perhaps as many as sixty thousand Jews from the eastern
Mediterranean arrived in the United States between 1880 and
1924, whereas over two million largely Yiddish-speaking Jews
from eastern Europe arrived during the same period. 4 As a result,
Jews from eastern Europe often have stood symbolically for American Jewry of the early twentieth century. 5
Jews from the eastern Mediterranean have thus fallen between
the cracks of American immigrant history. On the margins of
American Jewish history, Jewish immigrants from the eastern
Mediterranean have only recently garnered the limited attention
of other relevant fields, such as those of Greek-American and Turkish-American studies. While the sixty thousand Jews from the
eastern Mediterranean represented only a small group in comparison to the four hundred and fifty thousand Greeks (conventionally defined as Greek Orthodox Christians) who arrived in the
United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their numbers approximate those of the twenty five to fifty
thousand Turks (conventionally defined as Muslims) who immigrated to America. 6 If we consider that many—if not most—of the
Jews from the eastern Mediterranean who arrived in the United
States during the era of mass immigration did so with Greek or
Ottoman (and later Turkish) passports in hand, how does this
change our conception of the boundaries of immigrant histories?
How do we consider immigrants who were "Jewish" and who may
also have been "Greek" or "Ottoman" or "Turkish" in some way?
Recent scholarship in American Jewish history, such as that
issued in conjunction with the 350th anniversary of Jews in America, have not yet succeeded in incorporating these seemingly
anomalous Jewish immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean
into the standard narratives. Scholars begin their accounts of
American Jewish history with the tale of twenty-three refugees
46
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
who fled from the Inquisition in Recife, Brazil, and settled in New
Amsterdam in 1654. 7 These "Old Sephardim," however, constituted a group distinct from those Jews who arrived from the eastern Mediterranean during the early twentieth century, and whom
scholars have labeled the "New Sephardim." Some members of
Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue of the "Old
Sephardim" in New York, initially argued in the 1910s that the
newcomers should not be categorized as "Sephardim" at all.
Rather, they advocated labels such as "Levantine" or "Oriental,"
both terms with derogatory connotations, so as not to muddy their
own reputation as the "noble," well-established "Sephardim," the
true heirs to the legacy of the Spanish golden age. 8 Contributors
to the Ladino and Anglo-Jewish press in America debated and
polemicized over the terms "Levantine," "Oriental," and
"Sephardi," some distinguishing among the Jews from the eastern
Mediterranean according to linguistic community—Ladino,
Greek, and Arabic—and viewing only Ladino-speakers, the perceived descendants of medieval Iberian Jewry, as "Sephardim" in a
strict sense. 9 The only terms of identification not contested during
the early twentieth century were those based on city or town of origin that the newcomers gave themselves and utilized internally.
A few scholars have succeeded in giving voice to the Jews from
the eastern Mediterranean who lived in early twentieth-century
America. They have filled important lacunae by focusing on the
efforts of these immigrants at communal organization, their interactions with other Jews they encountered in the United States, and
their creation of a Ladino press in New York. 1 ° Such scholars point
out city-based identity but often represent it as a source of conflict
and an obstacle to overcome in the formation of a broader group
identity. This article seeks to push even further and reconsider the
received taxonomy of "Levantine," "Sephardi," and "Ladino"—as
well as "Greek," "Ottoman" and "Turkish"—by presenting the case
of one such constituent city-based group. For Jews from Thessaloniki—Selaniklis, as they called themselves—as for many immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean, city-based consciousness
constituted their primary vector of identity, one that transcended
the experiences of emigration and immigration." To tell their story
as Selaniklis (Salonikans) is to tell it in their own terms.
This article also joins recent work, such as that by Rebecca
Kobrin on the Bialystoker "diaspora," that diversifies what we
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 47
know of immigrant American Jewry, community by community,
and requires us to reconsider the geographic and conceptual lines
between "Old World" and "New." 12 As those from the "Jerusalem
of the Balkans," the Salonikans provide a valuable case study of a
community whose story loomed large in the cultural history and
collective memory of the Sephardi world. Utilizing the Ladino
press from New York and Salonika, archives of the Jewish community of Salonika and of the Sephardic Brotherhood of America,
ships' manifests and records of Ellis Island's Special Board of
Inquiries, consular reports from Salonika, memoirs, and a handful
of other archival sources, this article seeks to analyze the reasons
given by Salonikan Jews and their contemporaries to explain why
Salonikan Jews left their natal city and came to the United States
during the early twentieth century, and to explore the distinctiveness of their migration experiences. Their continued identification
as Salonikans provided them with a sense of continuity during a
period of rupture and dislocation. The obstacles the immigrants
encountered during the immigration process and the difficulties
experienced by those who remained in Salonika form part of this
transnational history. Although they physically left Salonika,
those Selaniklis who came to America sought to perpetuate a sense
of Salonikan Jewishness through their cafe culture, caricatured
above by Auerbach, and their early modes of communal organization. As they aimed to maintain this link throughout the interwar
period, they transformed what Salonikan Jewishness meant in the
United States and in Salonika itself.
The "Jerusalem of the Balkans"
The developing trend of Jewish emigration from Salonika during the early twentieth century ironically overturned the established image of the city as a Jewish safe haven. The
sixteenth-century Portuguese Jewish poet, Samuel Usque,
mythologized Salonika as a refuge for Jews following their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and further Iberian persecutions of the
sixteenth century:
It is the mother of Israel which has grown stronger on the
foundations of the religion, which yields excellent plants
48
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
and fruit trees, unequalled the world over. Its fruits are
delicious, because watered by rivers, Jews of other countries, persecuted and banished, have come to seek refuge
there, and this town has received them with love and cordiality, as if it were our revered mother Jerusalem.' 3
Just as in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Salonika served
as a city of refuge for Jews during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries and reinvigorated its mythic status as a Jewish safe haven and as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans."" During this
later period, however, the influx of Jews to Salonika did not result
exclusively from persecutions, although they did play an important role. As a result of a blood libel on the Ionian island of Corfu
in 1891, clashes in the town of Larissa following the GreekOttoman War of 1897, and guerilla warfare during the first years
of the twentieth century between Greek and Bulgarian nationalists in the Macedonian hinterland, Jewish refugees arrived in
Salonika from these locales. These specific incidents accompanied
a general trend of Jews' leaving territories recently annexed by
emerging Balkan nation-states such as Greece and Bulgaria, and
relocating to regions that remained under Ottoman contro1. 15 The
Ottoman state provided the Jews and other monotheistic nonMuslim populations—namely Christians—with the power of selforganization in exchange for certain taxes: Salonika, Istanbul
(Constantinople, the imperial capital), and Izmir (Smyrna) represented the largest urban Jewish communities organized according
to this framework. As non-Muslims, Jews remained second-class
subjects, but such an arrangement seemed preferable to the uncertain position in which Jews in the newly forming Balkan nationstates expected to find themselves.' 6 Jewish refugees fleeing from
eastern Europe in the 1890s and pogroms in Kishenev in 1903 and
Odessa in 1905 also settled in Salonika."
Jewish migration to Salonika should also be situated within
the context of larger population movements tied to increasing
urbanization and industrialization in the Ottoman Empire during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Those living in
provincial Ottoman areas and who were in search of improved economic opportunities—by no means Jews alone—increasingly set
tled in larger cities such as Salonika." In keeping with their
system of organizing subject populations according to religion,
Between "New Greece" and the "New World"
49
the Ottoman authorities maintained a special register of Jews as
part of the 1884 census that listed over one hundred families from
small towns including Gallipoli (Gelibolu), Larissa (Yeni
Dardanelles (Canakkale), Kavalla, Serres, Drama, and Kastoria
who now resided in Salonika.' 9 A register from 1905 similarly
recorded over 350 Jewish families who had settled in Salonika
from many of the same outlying towns. 2 ° Few entries in either register indicated individuals who had come from other urban centers
such as Istanbul or Izmir.
With the increased urban population, industrialization, and
expanded economic opportunities, by the turn of the twentieth
century Jews came to constitute close to half of the 170,000 residents of Salonika. Turks, Greeks, DOnme, Levantines, Bulgarians,
Armenians, and Roma represented the remainder of the population of this cosmopolitan port city on the Aegean Sea. 21 Historians have called the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a
"golden age" for Salonika, especially its Jewish population, whose
members played leading roles in the economy and constituted the
largest Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire. 22 Jews in
Salonika participated in a complex trans-Mediterranean commercial network and played active roles in the Ottoman economy as
middlemen, exporting cereal, cotton, wool, and silk, and opening
some of the first factories for bricks, flour, soap, and tobacco in the
Balkan region. Industrialization of the city and the construction of
a modern port rendered Salonika an important commercial hub for
the eastern Mediterranean. 23
A correspondent for the Catholic World in 1900 even referred
to Salonika as a "New Jerusalem"—a variation on the theme of
"Jerusalem of the Balkans"—which encapsulated the preponderance, prosperity, and diversity of the city's Jewish population at the
time. 24 Jews occupied positions in a variety of social strata, with a
particularly large working class. Some served as lawyers, bankers,
and businessmen, while many more worked as fishermen, stevedores, porters, tobacco laborers, peddlers, and small merchants. 25
When David Ben-Gurion (who later became the first Prime Minister of Israel) visited in 1911, he acknowledged the prominence
of Jews in numerous segments of society, characterizing Salonika
as "a Hebrew labor town, the only one in the world." He was
impressed by the fact that the port of the city closed every Saturday in observance of the Jewish Sabbath. 26 The community also
50
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
benefited from the advent of the Ladino press and of modern education, stemming from the efforts of Jewish institutions such as
the Paris-based Alliance Israelite Universelle, which had established its first school in Salonika in 1873. 27
Alongside the emergence of the new golden age for the Jews
of Salonika and the trend of immigration to the city, a contrasting
trend of out-migration developed during the first two decades of
the twentieth century. Scholars focusing on eastern Mediterranean
Jewish immigrants to the United States argue that "political instability" and "economic hardship," both of which correspond to an
image of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire at the turn of the
twentieth century, provided the overriding "push" factors. 28 In
enumerating five factors that spurred these Jews to emigrate during the period 1880 to 1924, one scholar adds "antisemitism" to
economic hardship, unfavorable political climate, compulsory
Ottoman military conscription, and natural disasters. 29 But the
impetuses for the emigration of Jews during this long period cannot be linked exclusively to a picture of the Ottoman Empire as
the "Sick Man of Europe." Furthermore, specific variables operating in distinct locales affected the rate and extent of emigration
differently: one should not presume that the reasons why Jews left
Salonika could also apply, without modification, to Istanbul, Ioannina, or Aleppo.
Other scholars point to the Young Turk revolution, launched
from Salonika in 1908, which overthrew sultan Abdul Hamid II
and reinstituted the constitution of 1876, as a turning point for
Ottoman Jewry and for Jewish emigration from the empire. 3 ° In
the wake of the revolution, the new administration required Jews
and Christians to serve in the Ottoman military for the first time,
overturning the custom of non-Muslims paying taxes in exchange
for military exemption. Scholars have argued that, following the
declaration of compulsory military conscription (1909), young
Jewish men immediately "voted with their feet" and decided to
emigrate rather than serve in the Ottoman army. 31 They suggest
that evasion of the Ottoman army inaugurated the initial, substantial wave of Jewish emigration from the Ottoman Empire-and
from Salonika-and indicate that the bulk of these emigres went to
the United States. 32 While this may be a valid claim to a certain
extent, it cannot be substantiated by statistics culled from the
ships' manifests of Ellis Island, at least not in the case of Salonika.
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 51
NJ
Year
Table I. Jewish Immigrants from Salonika Recorded at Ellis Island, 1903-1924
(A) Number of
(B) Number of Jews
(C) Total Jewish
(D) Total immigrants
(E) Percent of
Jews recorded
as "Hebrew"
1903
zp:1
0
z
0
immigrants from
Salonika (A+ B)
from Salonika (Jews Salonika immigrants
and non-Jews)
who were Jews (C/D)
4
6
13
12
16
4
46
21.7
47
247
12
77
77
60
148
46.8
14.2
91.7
29.9
27.3
80.0
42
10
22
35
11
23
21
48
97
152
231
55
1915
1916
48
103
316
319
120
283
148
436
602
65.8
69.6
505
1063
86.3
56.6
1917
1918
1919
23
11
28
55
18
70
44
241
48
6
36
1
83
58
14
20
56
324
106
20
56
78.6
40.9
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
32
7
28
93
555
233
66
144
60.2
58.4
45.5
30.3
38.9
1
2
Totals
50
1405
817
2222
3947
4.0
56.3
1905
1906
9
6
6
3
19
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
27
7
14
20
37
77
1913
8
4
9
1
11
20
110
1914
1904
O
recorded as "Greek,"
"Turk," "Arab," etc.
15
81.3
80.0
65.5
Source: Ellis Island Database (www.ellisisland.org ) and JewishGen Ellis Island One-Step Search Tool, Gold Form
(www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellisgold.html), both accessed Sep. 15, 2007. See note 31 for a description of the search method.
These statistics indicate that in 1909 and 1910, the initial years
in which compulsory military conscription was to have gone into
effect, there was no substantial increase in the number of Jews who
arrived at Ellis Island from Salonika. In fact, in relation to the total
population of Salonika, Jews were proportionally underrepresented among the total number of Salonikan immigrants (see
Table I). 33
There are several ways to account for the discrepancy between
claims made by scholars and available statistics. A recent study of
the Ladino press in Istanbul in the wake of the decree of compulsory Ottoman military conscription argues that Jews generally disapproved of this new measure. "Disapproval," however, does not
necessarily translate directly into opting for emigration. 34 Furthermore, the implementation of conscription measures presumably varied from locale to locale, and Jewish responses in Salonika
likely differed from those in the Ottoman capital and other regions
of the empire. Other recent studies even doubt the degree to which
the Young Turks successfully implemented their new conscription
policy; some argue that the conscription of non-Muslims remained
unimplemented for several years after its initial declaration in
1909. 35
Evasion of real or anticipated Ottoman military conscription
still may have provided some impetus for Jewish emigration from
Salonika-let alone other Ottoman cities-regardless of whether such
a claim can be confirmed by statistics tabulated from Ellis Island
passenger lists. But until such confirmation can be ascertained, the
claim should be made more speculatively than the dominant position taken in the scholarly literature. It seems, however, that the
perception of Jewish migration in the wake of the conscription of
non-Muslims developed quickly and became naturalized in the
standard narrative of Jewish emigration from the Ottoman
Empire. "A sin bit the Turk [el togad," Moise Soulam, a Salonikan
native, asserted in a poem published in 1914 in La America, New
York's first Ladino weekly, "for he conscripted the non-Muslim to
the military [askyer),1 because of this, many Jews of Turkey emigrated,/ and the greatest part of them installed themselves in
America." 36 It is noteworthy, however, that Soulam was not among
those who immigrated to evade the Ottoman military; in fact, far
from it. In another contribution to La America, he characterized
himself as a "true Ottoman," implying that his motivation for
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 53
emigration lay elsewhere. 37 Referring to Ottoman Jews living in
the United States, Moise Gadol, the Bulgarian-born editor of La
America, asserted in the journal's inaugural issue in 1910 that
"most of them work in various factories here in America and their
concern is to send money back to their families in Turkey and later
. . . return to their country [to be) beside their beloved ones.""
Interestingly, Gadol noted an economic motive for coming to
America, and indicated an intended temporary sojourn. Ottoman
military conscription is not mentioned. If the immigrants had left
in the first place to avoid military conscription, certainly they
would not be so anxious to return.
The retrospective aspect of accounts like Soulam's—and others like it—indicate that, while there may have been a kernel of
truth to their stress on the threat of conscription under the Young
Turk regime, they may also have served a second narrative function by providing Salonikan Jewish immigrants and their descendants with a rhetorical strategy for bridging the gap between them
and mainstream, predominantly Yiddish-speaking Jews whom
they encountered in the United States. 39 By emphasizing evasion
of military conscription, the tellers of these tales could tap into the
popular mythology about eastern European Jews incoming to
America in order to evade conscription into the czar's army. Such
an emphasis could have provided common ground between Jews
from the eastern Mediterranean and eastern Europe, who, as indicated in Auerbach's description with which this article began,
often confronted seemingly irreconcilable differences in language,
culture, and religious tradition.
A further irony with regard to Jewish migration from
Salonika, in particular, is that many of the first Jews from the city
to arrive at Ellis Island during the late nineteenth century and
prior to the Young Turk revolution were Jews from eastern Europe
who, seeking refuge, utilized Salonika as a transit port en route to
the United States. 4 ° In other words, the first Jewish immigrants to
sail to America from Salonika were not actually Salonikan Jews. A
handful of Ottoman-born Jewish merchants, however, arrived in
America during the same years—in 1893 for the Chicago World's
Fair and in 1904 for the St. Louis World's Fair—although it
remains uncertain how many, if any at all, came from Salonika or
whether they remained in America on a permanent basis. 4 ' Furthermore, a war between the Ottoman Empire and Italy (191154
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
1912) resulted in the expulsion of all Italian subjects from the
Ottoman realm; included among the Italian subjects were numerous Jews from Salonika, some of whom had served as leading
members of the Jewish community. 42 Some of these Jews apparently traversed the Atlantic and settled in the United States. They
may account for the increase in the number of Jewish immigrants
from Salonika recorded on Ellis Island passenger lists in 1911 and
1912. These statistics underscore that Salonikan Jewish immigration to the United States did not reach its height directly following the Young Turk revolution and the introduction of compulsory
military conscription during the waning years of the Ottoman
Empire, but later, following the incorporation of Salonika into
Greece as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Under the
new regime, Salonikan Jews no longer saw themselves as sovereigns of the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," but as an increasingly
marginalized group in new Greek Thessaloniki.
The New Expulsion
Writing of el nuevo gerush (the new expulsion), a Salonikan contributor to El Luzero Sefaradi (The Sephardi Beacon), a monthly
Ladino literary review published in New York in 1927, provocatively recalled the dispersal of the Jews from Salonika once the city
came under Greek contro1. 43 He asserted that this "new expulsion"
was "as tragic as that from Spain." Although the Greeks had not
issued any formal expulsion order against the Jews, the new government nonetheless made a concerted effort, he suggested, to rid
Salonika of its Jewish population and Jewish influence, creating a
massive wave of emigrants who felt as pressured as the refugees of
1492 had to leave their homes and flee to a safer place. In a poem
published in La America in 1914, in the immediate wake of the
Greek annexation of Salonika, Moise Soulam similarly referred to
the notion of expulsion: "the antisemites came to power,/ the gentiles want to expel the entire Jewish community,/ because they no
longer want to see either the Turk or the Jew,/ and out of anguish
the Jews call to God." 44 Here Soulam revealed his own motivations
to emigrate—not evasion of Ottoman military conscription following the Young Turk revolution—but rather the Jews' newfound position in the Greek nation-state. Unlike the case of Jews
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 55
leaving to evade military conscription in 1909 and 1910, emigration during the initial years of Greek rule over Salonika, from 1913
to 1916, can be substantiated as a significant movement by reference to statistics gathered from Ellis Island passenger lists.
Numbering as many as eighty or ninety thousand, nearly half
the city's population-at the turn of the century, the Jewish population of Salonika decreased to about fifty thousand as a result of
emigration by the time of the German occupation of the city in
1941. 45 According to Joseph Nehama, the director of the Alliance
Israelite Universelle school in Salonika, seventy thousand Jews left
Salonika during this period, resettling not only in the United
States, but also in France, Latin America, and Palestine, especially
once the doors to America were shut in 1924. 46 While this figure
appears to be exaggerated, Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue
note that it illustrates the significance that the phenomenon of
emigration carried in the minds of contemporary witnesses such as
Nehama. 47
Jewish emigration emerged not only in response to Jews'
understanding themselves as "outsiders" in their city and victims
of the "new expulsion," but also in response to the communal leadership's inability to effectively deal with the various challenges the
Jewish population faced following its incorporation into Greece.
The Jewish population was not socioeconomically or politically
homogenous, nor was its voice united. Throughout the interwar
period there emerged various Jewish political parties, each vying
to promote conflicting agendas—assimilationist, socialist, and
Zionist—directly to the Greek government and via petitions to
prominent international Jewish organizations. Many ordinary
Jews from Salonika elected or felt forced to leave the city in
response to the unfriendly climate and as a means to opt out of the
difficult political atmosphere they encountered. 48 Jewish socialists, in particular, viewed their ideological goals as impossible to
achieve in the years immediately following the incorporation of
Salonika into "New Greece." Many of the leaders among the
Selaniklis in the United States had been active members of the
Socialist Workers' Federation in Salonika, including the abovementioned Moise Soulam; Maurice Nessim, the editor of El Progressol La Bos del Pueblo, the socialist Ladino weekly founded in
1915 in New York; and others who saw themselves as transplanting their ideological struggle from Salonika to the United States. 49
56
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
The nationalist agenda of the Greek state, animated by the
Megali Idea (Great Idea), aimed at the "reformation" of a "Greater
Greece" and the revival of the glory of ancient Athens and Byzantium through the acquisition of territory on which dwelt all the
widely dispersed "Greek" people, defined in religious and linguistic terms. 5 ° The Balkan Wars, in which Greece participated to this
end, resulted in the cession of Salonika to Greece despite competition from the other Balkan states. While the Greek government
initially promised the Jews freedoms of religion, language, communal organization, and education, the new Greek rulers simultaneously sought to forge a monolithic Greek identity for all of its
inhabitants in keeping with its nationalist agenda." Jews of
Salonika tended to resist these pressures because they desired to
maintain the status quo, which they viewed as the means by which
they could safeguard their Jewish identity, language, religion and
economic position. Jews refused to refer to the city by its Greek
name, Thessaloniki, instead continuing to call it Saloniko (in
Ladino) until a 1937 law compelled them to change-twenty-five
years after the imposition of Greek rule. 52
Greek nationalists questioned Jews' loyalties after Salonika
had changed hands, partly because the Jewish community, in order
to maintain its historic position in the city, had opposed Greece's
annexation of the city in the first place. As alternatives to annexation, Jews had advocated the continued rule of Salonika and the
surrounding region of Macedonia by the Ottomans, annexation by
Bulgaria, or internationalization of the port to be overseen by a
Jewish administration as favored by Austria. 53 Salonika's chief
rabbi, Jacob Meir, who later became chief rabbi of Palestine, had
bluntly affirmed the allegiance that the Jewish community had
wished to maintain to the Ottoman Empire in a meeting with the
Greek king in 1913:
We tried our best to support the course of Turkish domination in Macedonia, and we Jews would have been willing to sacrifice ourselves to preserve that Turkish
domination, should it have been possible. I must report in
all candor that I would have taken up arms if that had not
been an impossibility, in order to prevent the fate which
befell the Turks. 54
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 57
While Meir conceded that he had come to terms with the
"realities" of "Greek rule and domination," he left a strong impression on Greek nationalists, who did not soon forget the ardent
attempts of Jews to prevent the incorporation of Salonika into
Greece. Local Zionist leader David Florentin asserted that
"Salonika is neither Greek, nor Bulgarian, nor Turkish; it is Jewish," in his unsuccessful attempt to promote an autonomous
Salonika with a Jewish administration. 55 In this context, nationalist Greek Orthodox Christians and the Greek government came to
view the Jews of Salonika as a political threat to the goals of the
Greek state and even as "enemy sympathizers" who were proOttoman, pro-Austrian, or pro-Bulgarian. When King George I
of Greece was assassinated during his visit to Salonika in March
1913, Greek newspapers immediately accused the Jews. 56
In addition to political concerns, cultural differences further
emphasized the Jews' evident non-Greekness within the framework of the developing Greek nation-state. As a local Jewish journalist recalled in 1925, the status of the Jews of Salonika as
strangers in their natal land emerged immediately in their new
context: "We were ignorant of Greek customs, of Greek culture, of
the Greeks' race, of its past, its history, its language, its national
ideal, its hope, its destination." 57 The Jewish religion, the Ladino
language, the French cultural orientation that resulted from education provided by the Alliance Israelite Universelle since the late
nineteenth century, and economic ties to the West all positioned
Jews as impediments to the nationalist Greek agenda. 58 The preference especially of middle and upper class Jews to write and speak
in French rather than in Greek, even though Ladino served historically as their vernacular, proved irksome for some Greek nationalists. 59 Coming of age at the French lycee in Salonika, and as the
son of a successful businessman, Leon Sciaky spoke highly of the
French culture with which he and his classmates came into contact. After reading about the French Revolution, the Rights of
Man, and the works of Victor Hugo, Sciaky recalled how "a genuine feeling of patriotism sprung up in me, and the French flag in
front of the school, fluttering in the breeze of sundrenched April
afternoons, moved me singularly with emotions never before experienced." Sciaky then acquired a tricolore of his own, which he flew
from his house whenever the French consulate raised his flag. Sciaky's father, however, disapproved immediately of his son's
58
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
attempt to display patriotism for France. "There are troubles
enough," he asserted, "without our adding oil to the fire. . . . You
can love France and yet not offend the people about you." 6° Salamo
Sciaky alluded to his own awareness that the "multiple allegiances" of the Jews of Salonika threatened the opposing nationalisms developing in the region.' Similarly, when the Greek army
first captured Salonika during the Balkan Wars, the local Greek
residents hung banners with the Greek colors-white and blue-to
express their jubilance. Joseph Nehama noted that the Jews hung
no flag. Rather, they preferred to maintain a discreet profile as they
sensed that Greek rule posed a serious threat to their well-being. 62
Recognizing this "threat" following the incorporation of Salonika
into Greece, Leon Sciaky questioned what chance his family would
have at success with a "purely French education" and little knowledge of Greek. 63 Despite their affinity to French culture, the Sciaky family immigrated not to Paris or Marseille, as did many
fellow townsmen with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, but to
the United States.
Both during and after the incorporation of Salonika into
Greece, some Jews recognized that not only their cultural attributes and economic position were in danger, but also their physical
safety. Such a threatening atmosphere provided a further push for
emigration. Joseph Nehama reported that "among the Greek population, people are talking about a Jewish massacre." 64 According
to some sources, the Greek population, with the support of the
army, had already instigated a series of attacks during the Balkan
Wars that resulted in several murders, the rape of fifty Jewish
women, the ransacking of four hundred stores and three hundred
homes, and the unwarranted arrest of a handful of Jewish notables. 65 "As soon as the Greeks occupied Salonika," Moise Soulam
lamented in a poem in La America in 1913, shortly after his arrival
in New. York, "they already exhibited their barbarity and antiSemitism / in massacring Jews without mercy." 66 Such perceived
"barbarity" transformed into a ritual blood libel accusation that
spread like "spitfire" (azogre) to Salonika from the island of Corfu
in 1915. Due only to chief rabbi Meir's intervention with Greek
authorities did the Jews evade a "pogrom," as one witness, who left
Salonika and fled to New York, called it. 67 David Nahum, who
similarly fled to the United States, reported in La America that the
blood libel accusation led to threats by Greeks to burn down syn-
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 59
agogues and Jewish homes in retaliation. "All the Jews," he predicted, "will abandon Salonika little by little." 68 While "all" Jews
did not "abandon" Salonika at that time, many did, and at a much
greater rate than other populations in the city. Among all immigrants from Salonika recorded at Ellis Island in 1915, Jews were
overrepresented at 86. 3 percent, and Jewish immigration from
Salonika reached its high point in 1915 and 1916 (see Table I). The
editor of La America captured the escalating phenomenon in October 1915: "Our brothers from Salonika are emigrating in great
numbers. . . . Every ship brings a new quantity to New York." 69
An article in La Bos del Pueblo in New York even indicated that
Jews who opted to leave preferred to travel on Italian rather than
Greek ships precisely because, as the reporter indicated, "the
antagonism of race that usually can be seen on Greek ships is not
present on Italian ones." 7 °
A further reason for Jewish emigration emerged during World
War I and was linked to military conscription. After Salonika came
under Greek control during the Balkan Wars, the Jewish population received a temporary exemption from the military reminiscent of the pre-Young Turk period of Ottoman rule. But following
a revolution in Greece in 1916, in which Eliftherius Venizelos, the
head of the liberal, nationalist party, assumed leadership of a government in Salonika in opposition to that of the king in Athens
and advocated Greece's support of the Triple Entente, military
conscription could no longer be postponed. Albert Levy, who
became an active member of the Salonika Brotherhood of America
and editor of La Vara, a Ladino weekly in New York, recounted
how, in response to this measure, "Salonikan youth" fled in droves:
Immediately after the call to arms of the class of 1894, a
strong current of emigration began among the Salonikan
youth, all of whom desired to leave, all of whom prepared
to leave their native city, and all of whom in the end opted
for exile, directing themselves toward the land of rest and
security: America. 71
"Emigration has reached great proportions among our population," a Salonikan correspondent for La Bos del Pueblo of New
York similarly asserted following the call to military service in
1916. "Hundreds and hundreds of young men, as well as entire
6o
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
families opt for exile." The correspondent concluded by indicating
that in the first twenty days of August 1916 alone, 1,800 Jewish
youth left Salonika, with America as their prime destination. 72
The tendency of Jews to favor the king's position of neutrality and
the opposition of Jewish socialists, in particular, to the war may
have factored into the decisions of some Jews to leave Salonika during this period as well.
A Ladino daily in Salonika, El Liberal, regularly published lists
of Jews who evaded conscription into the Greek army-and, to help
blunt the impact of draft evasion, articles encouraging Jews to
express their patriotic sentiments for Greece in a more effective
manner. 73 It would be interesting to compare the lists of Jewish
draft dodgers published in the press in Salonika with passenger
lists at Ellis Island to determine the extent to which the two overlapped. Such a comparison, however, is unnecessary to recognize
that, unlike emigration following the declaration of compulsory
military conscription under the Young Turks in 1909, significant
Jewish emigration in the wake of conscription under the Greek
government in 1916 can be substantiated by statistics drawn from
Ellis Island passenger lists.
In addition to compulsory military conscription during World
War I, an immense fire that burnt down the center of Salonika in
August 1917 compelled further emigration. 74 Seventy thousand
residents, fifty thousand of whom were Jews, found themselves
without food or shelter as a result of the fire, which destroyed
numerous synagogues, schools, libraries and archives, and hundreds of businesses, mostly Jewish owned. 75 The Greek government faced the difficult task of aiding thousands of Salonika's
residents and rebuilding the center of a city, which less than five
years earlier had come under Greek control. The Greek government's plan for the reconstruction of Salonika alienated many
Jews, who perceived it to be attempting to diminish their visibility and remove them from the center of the city. The scheme called
for the expropriation of all of the burnt land and prevented Jews
from immediately rebuilding their homes and businesses in the
city's center. 76 In the spirit of the Greek nationalist dream of the
Megali Idea, the architects hired by the government redesigned the
city with Byzantine architecture and the physical mark on the city
left by the Jews and Muslims over the previous four centuries disappeared. 77 "The impression created on the Jews by that treatment
,
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 61
.
was so profoundly demoralizing," a member of the B'nai B'rith
lodge in Salonika explained to Lucien Wolf of the Board of
Deputies of British Jews, "that it may be said that this was the
main cause for the expatriation of many wealthy Jews to Paris,
Italy, and elsewhere." 78 In 1920, the French consul reported
directly to Alexandre Millerand, the Prime Minister of France,
that the causes of the Jewish "exodus" from Salonika at that time
had less to do with the lack of housing following the fire of 1917,
or even the high cost of living and commercial stagnation, than
with "the antipathy that has always existed between the Israelite
element and the Greek element." 79 The spike in the number of
Jews from Salonika recorded at Ellis Island in 1920 (324 in 1920
compared to fifty-six in 1919) can be attributed to the continued
dissatisfaction with the plan for reconstruction, as well as to the
fact that, although World War I had concluded previously, Ellis
Island only resumed accepting large numbers of immigrants in
1920. 8 °
In addition to the expropriation and reconstruction schemes
following the fire of 1917, subsequent measures put forward by the
Greek government as well as popular sentiment during the interwar period reinforced the perception among many Jews that they
were not welcomed in the Greek nation-state. The influx of Greek
Orthodox Christian refugees from Asia Minor into Greece following the compulsory exchange of populations dictated by the Treaty
of Lausanne (1923) transformed the Jews of Salonika into a statistical minority in terms of numbers for the first time. They now
constituted only one-fifth (rather than nearly one-half) of the city's
total population. The departure of the Muslim population from
Greece, in accordance with the terms of the same treaty, left the
Jews as the most concentrated "non-Greek" population in all of
Greece, save the Muslims of Thrace who were exempted. In 1924,
with Jews no longer the preponderant group in Salonika, the new
Hellenic Republic declared a law making only one day—Sunday—the obligatory day of rest in an attempt to "nationalize" the
economy and reposition commerce in the hands of "true Greeks"
(meaning Greek Orthodox Christians) in Salonika. This brought
to an end the custom in Salonika of resting on Saturday. In
response, Jews again resorted to emigration, but restrictions on
entry to the United States solidified the same year by the JohnsonReed Act situated France, Italy, Latin America, and Palestine as
62
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
the main destinations. 8 ' Mandates requiring that Jewish schools
increase the instruction of the Greek language at the expense of
French, Hebrew, and Ladino, and that accounting books be kept
Greek, as well as proposals to expropriate portions of the centuries'
old Jewish cemetery that, as a result of the fire of 1917 and expansion of the city with the influx of refugees from Asia Minor, suddenly found itself in the new city center, all combined to render
the 1920s a difficult decade for the Jews of Salonika. 82 In 1931,
burdened by the worldwide economic crisis that had taken hold, a
fascist organization and Orthodox Greek Christian refugees from
Asia Minor set fire to the Campbell quarter, a neighborhood established for Jews left homeless by the fire of 1917. 83 In the aftermath
of this attack, as many as ten to fifteen thousand Jews chose to
leave, this time almost exclusively to Palestine, while those
Salonikans established in the United States raised funds in order
to aid their persecuted brethren. 84 Jewish emigration from
Salonika therefore should be understood in relation to particular
political, economic and cultural developments in Salonika that
challenged the self-perception of the Jews, who had previously
considered themselves to be the sovereigns of the "Jerusalem of the
Balkans." Under Greek rule following the Balkan Wars, such a
paradigm increasingly ceased to function, with Jewish emigration
representing a significant response to the new dynamics of the consolidating Greek nation-state.
The Allure of the Goldene Medina and Obstacles En Route
As the Ladino press in New York and other sources indicate,
the United States represented one of several destinations for Jews
leaving Salonika, and a preferred one while its doors remained
open. Contributors to this press described the allure of America,
which represented "the country of the dollar where they [the
immigrants) are certain to earn and eat from the sweat of their hard
work" or—as Albert Levy had called it—"the land of rest and security." 85 In presenting this image, writers mirrored popular conceptions among Yiddish-speaking Jews, who referred to America
as the golden medina (the golden land).
Already extant economic connections as well as the promise of
the "American dream" served to draw immigrants from Salonika
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 63
to the goldene medina. Before immigrating to the United States,
Salamo Sciaky served in Salonika as the regional distributor for an
American shoe and boot company. 86 His son, Leon, who had
attended a French school in Salonika, nonetheless read about the
exploits of Americans and became captivated by stories of the gold
rush and cowboys and Indians in the wild west. 87 The American
vice consulate reported in 1911 that American cinema was by far
the most popular in Salonika and scenes of the American lifestyle
drew Salonikan filmgoers. "The American heroine," he remarked,
"especially appeals to them [Salonikans) with her vivacity, her
freedom and her delightful way of making love." 88 Economic
incentives were in place, and in combination with the allure of the
American Dream and the popular images of the American
lifestyle, the public school system, and the availability of electricity, transportation, and machinery, the United States appeared to
provide a productive environment for hopeful emigres. 89
Beyond the general appeal of the United States, a mythic
image of New York emerged on the pages of the Ladino press in
Salonika that resonated particularly with Salonikan Jews. "The
city of New York," asserted an editorial published in El Liberal of
Salonika in 1915, "has become today the most important Jewish
center in the world. It is the place collecting at its scene all types
of Jews from every corner of the world. " 90 New York embodied the
"Jerusalem" of the goldene medina and appeared to offer the possibilities of a Jewish safe haven that the "Jerusalem of the Balkans,"
now diminishing under Greek rule, could no longer provide. Jewish immigration from Salonika to New York, especially after the
Balkan Wars, signified the transplantation from a "Jerusalem"
under threat to another one on the rise. New York therefore represented the main site of settlement for Jews from Salonika,
whereas satellite communities of Salonikans emerged in smaller
cities including New Brunswick, New Jersey, as well as Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles. 9 '
The total number of Jews from Salonika who came to New
York or to other American cities during the early twentieth century is unknown. While statistics culled from Ellis Island passenger lists most likely account for only a portion of the total, they
are suggestive. Officials at Ellis Island often recorded Jews from
Salonika, like other Jews from the eastern Mediterranean, not as
"Hebrews," but, given their unfamiliar names, languages, looks,
64
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
and places of origin, as "Greeks," "Turks," or "Arabs," thereby
skewing the statistics and also indicating the complexity or even
multiplicity of their identities (see Table I). Salamo Sciaky, for
instance, was recorded at Ellis Island as "Turkish" upon his first
trip to the United States in 1907, whereas in 1916, he was classified as "Greek," in both cases not with regard to his citizenship but
rather his "race or people." 92
These same Ellis Island records provide clues about the socioeconomic status of the Selanikli immigrants. They tended to be classified under the general categories of "laborer" or "workman," in
addition to "clerk" or "merchant." School-aged sons were often
listed as "scholar." 93 The census compiled in Ladino by the Jewish
community of Salonika following the fire of 1917 sometimes
included information about family members abroad, especially
young women. Among those in America were three daughters of
a clerk (empiegado); daughters of a butcher (karnisero); a grocer
(bakal), a student (borsier), and others. 94 Further research is
required to arrive at a more nuanced demographic profile of the
Jewish immigrants from Salonika in the United States. Our
knowledge of their occupations, for example, has been clouded by
popular perceptions both in the United States and in Salonika that
"Oriental" or "Turkish" Jews worked largely as bootblacks on the
Lower East Side. 95 This image was presented in 1915 by El Liberal
of Salonika in the form of a saying (refran) about Salonikan immigrants: "a bootblack I will become, with bread and water I will be
sustained, in the game of luck I will take my chances, so that I
might be saved" (lustradji me ago, ken pan i agua me mantenga, en la
tavla me echo, en tal de salir anado). 96 It is obvious from even the
modest statistical data available that this stereotype does not fully
capture the occupational diversity of Selaniklis in America. 97 It
does, however, point to an overall sense of the working class character of the Salonikan immigrant contingent in the early twentieth century.
Working class or otherwise, some Jews from Salonika who
attempted to secure passage to the United States encountered difficulties. Especially following the fire of 1917, many Jews wanted
to come to the United States from Salonika but the American consul there issued few visas as a result of the United States' involvement in World War I. The consul also prohibited the issuing of
visas for some Jews and Armenians, who, following Salonika's
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 65
incorporation into Greece, apparently retained their Ottoman citizenship in order to evade Greek military conscription. In the
midst of World War I, with the Ottoman state aligned with the
Central Powers, the consul desired to prevent entry into the
United States of any individuals with "enemy sympathies." 98 This
explains in part the dramatic reduction in the number of Jewish
immigrants from Salonika in 1917 and 1918. Beyond this obstacle was the risk of leaving Salonika via ship during World War I,
when submarine warfare terrorized the seas. Albert Saporta
recalled in his memoir how his grandfather's neighbors, the wife
and daughter of a Jewish banker named Matarasso, and his
brother-in-law's cousin, David Recanati, all died on the Mediterranean from submarine torpedoes. 99 Even so, in the months following the fire of 1917, some Jews from Salonika did embark for
the United States, presumably those who held Greek rather than
Ottoman citizenship and were unperturbed by the submarine warfare. In fact, as the American Consul in Salonika noted, "practically all the emigrants from this port are Jews, who do not read or
write Greek," implying that their lack of Greek literacy influenced
their decision to leave.'°° According to figures from the records of
Ellis Island, fifty-five of the seventy immigrants who came from
Greek Thessaloniki in 1917 were Jews, suggesting that they, more
than the other groups affected by the fire, opted for immediate
expatriation—an ironic phenomenon considering that the fact
that they held Greek citizenship actually permitted them to flee
from Greece in the first place.
Some Jews from Salonika encountered further difficulties once
they actually reached the United States. On the pages of the Ladino
press in New York, an image developed of Ellis Island as a "prison"
from which one was to be "liberated" as the immigrant was either
offered admission to the United States or deported.'°' Disease,
which severely affected many immigrants from Salonika in the fall
of 1916, complicated this process. Faced with the threat of deportation in conformity with American immigration laws, some ailing arrivals cited the treacherous conditions, in Salonika as
justification for their need to remain on American soil. One immigrant, Luna Schaki, whose husband David was suffering from
tuberculosis, cried in front of Board of Special Inquiry at Ellis
Island: "Please don't send me back. I can't get into my country.
They won't allow us to go." The board seemed convinced of "how
66
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
perilous a place Saloniki is at the present time," and allowed the
couple, whose children were already established in New York, to
stay, although David died shortly thereafter 02 In the case of
another couple brought before the board, the Hebrew Sheltering
and Immigrant Aid Society again noted the hazardous conditions
in Salonika during World War I: "It is impossible, with a measure
of regard for humanity, to send back these sore-stricken unfortunates to the city they left hopefully, eagerly." 103 Similarly, Sultana
Kamhi, accompanied by her nine-month-old daughter, when faced
with deportation due to the illness of her husband, a bag-maker,
filed an appeal on the basis of "the peril that the alien and her child
will encounter if sent back at the present time to Salonica."° 4 "If
we are returned to Saloniki, we shall all be killed," she pleaded. "I
have no relatives there. We lost everything there." 105 Kamhi later
tempered her comment, stating that what she actually feared was
that her family would starve due to the lack of work to be had. Her
exaggerated effort to prevent deportation, however, illustrates
both the extent to which she imagined America as a safe haven and
Salonika as a horrid place, certainly no longer the "Jerusalem of the
Balkans.' ,106
In 1917, the year after Kamhi pleaded to stay in America, and
the year of the great fire in Salonika, the United States instituted
a new immigration policy that established a literacy test, requiring literacy in some language. This proved troublesome for some
Salonikan Jews who sought entrance to America. David Nahoum,
an Italian subject who fled Salonika during the war between the
Italians and Ottomans (1911-1912) and settled in the United
States, returned to his native city upon the death of his daughter.
When he attempted to regain entry into the United States, he
encountered the literacy requirement. 1 ° 7 Nahoum applied himself
to the study of rabbinic Hebrew in order to fulfill this requirement
and actually gained admittance. 1 ° 8 But others were not as lucky.
Thus, the decline in the number of admissions at Ellis Island from
Salonika during this period can be attributed not only to the conditions created by World War I, but also the imposition of the literacy test, which disadvantaged hopeful Salonikan emigres who
had not benefited from modern-style education provided by the
Alliance Israelite Universelle.
Some remained set on coming to the United States despite the
increasing obstacles to legal immigration. By 1922, for example,
Between "New Greece" and the "New World"
67
the American consul received complaints from the Department of
State encouraging implementation of stronger safeguards against
"undesirable emigration" from Salonika to Cuba, as many of these
emigrants then made their way illegally to the United States." 9
Similarly, twenty-year-old Rafael (Robert) Moshe Fais left
Salonika in 1919 and sailed to Mexico via Istanbul. In 1925, he
crossed the border into Fort Laredo, Texas, under the name
Roberto Farias Jr., bypassing the quotas against southern and eastern Europeans put in force by the Immigration Restriction Act of
1924. Fais made his way to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to join
his brother already established there."° Those Salonikan Jews educated at the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools, like Fais, were
drawn to central New Jersey because businesses like the Frenchbased Michelin Tire Company offered employment opportunities
in a Francophone environment.'" Relatives of Fais through marriage, the Ayash brothers, associated with the "Paris Grocery"
(Groseria Pariziana) in New Brunswick, depended on more standard measures to bring family members over. They successfully
petitioned for visas for their parents to come to the United States
from Salonika in 1923, just before the restrictive immigration
quotas took hold. The three sisters of the Ayash brothers, however,
remained in Salonika and perished at Auschwitz-Bikenau." 2
According to fragmentary records of the Jewish community of
Salonika, few Jews from the city immigrated to the United States
after the implementation of the Immigration Restriction Act of
1924. Ladino language records of the Jewish community of
Salonika that list 425 families living in Kuartier Numero 6, a Jewish neighborhood established after the fire of 1917, indicate that
sixteen of the families, totaling forty-six individuals, left for Palestine around 1934. In contrast, only one family of three immigrated
at that time to the United States: thirty-seven-year-old David
Avram Ezraty, an ambulante (itinerant merchant), his wife, and
young daughter." 3 Furthermore, during the six-month period
from August 1935 to February 1936, the Chief Rabbinate of
Salonika issued 494 certificates for departure for members of the
Jewish community. Only one had the destination of the United
States, whereas 356 were for Palestine." 4 For some Salonikan Jews
during the interwar period, Palestine provided one of the few
remaining destinations where they felt they could shed the garb of
a "stranger." The Ladino periodical Renasensia Djudia, the organ of
68
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
the Zionist Federation of Greece, emphasized this point in 1932
by claiming that Jewish youth from Salonika understood the "Jewish flag" to be their "real" flag, while the flags of Greece or any
other country could never carry such symbolic weight." Ironically, as Katherine Fleming argues, Jews in Palestine later identified Jews from Salonika not as "Jews," but rather as "Greeks,"
much as Jews in the United States did not initially identify Jews
from Salonika as "Jews," but rather as "Orientals."" 6
Selaniklis between "New Greece" and the "New World"
At first glance, the "Oriental" cafes established by Jews from
the eastern Mediterranean on the Lower East Side of New York distinguished them from mainstream American Jewry, as Auerbach's
description at the beginning of this article illustrates. Several of
the characteristics that initially rendered Jews outsiders in Greek
Thessaloniki—speaking Ladino and having ties to the Ottoman
Empire, in particular—also rendered them outsiders in the eyes of
already established American Jews. While they had perceived of
themselves as the sovereigns of Ottoman Salonika, the "Jerusalem
of the Balkans," they came to constitute what Greek nationalists
viewed as a concentrated and conspicuous "non-Greek" population. The prospect of becoming an actual immigrant in America—
the land of rest and security—held more promise than being
marginalized as a virtual "immigrant" in their natal city. Yet many
who came to the United States, knowing no Yiddish and no English, experienced a certain degree of marginalization, if not rejection, by mainstream American Jewry.
The cafe served as the locus for communal gathering that
counteracted the feeling of isolation."" It provided Jewish immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean with a venue for the perpetuation of familiar, city-based identity in the foreign setting of
New York (see Figure I). As indicated by Auerbach's description,
Jews from the eastern Mediterranean congregated at cafes according to town or city of origin. An article in El Mesajero (The Messenger), a Ladino journal in Salonika, indicated that the Selaniklis
were no different. They sought to perpetuate a feeling of connectedness to their native city:
.
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 69
Figure I
In whatever foreign port or station a Selanikli arrives he
first asks: 'Where is the quarter for the Selaniklis?' It is
true that those who emigrated, like me, know that our fellow townsmen in foreign lands establish a cafe for themselves, and there they take pleasure in passing the time in
a nostalgic manner apparent when speaking of our native
c i ty. 118
Writing in 1930, philologist Max A. Luria similarly noted
that the desire to perpetuate distinct city or town identities provided motivation for maintaining separate cafes and other associations:
70
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Not only do the Sephardic Jews form a community apart
[from the Ashkenazim), but even among themselves there
exist distinct groups, organizations, and synagogues tending to preserve in a measure the dialect, customs, and individuality of the community whence they originally
came.. . . A Monastirli would never think of venturing into
a cafe frequented by a Salonicll [sic). Localism is thus carried to an extreme. 119
Explaining this "localism," Albert Matarasso, a leader among
the Salonikans in the United States, recalled: "It is no exaggeration to say that the Sephardic Jew of Salonica, with very few exceptions, did not know much about the one from Constantinople or
from Smyrna, or vice versa," and the same perceived lack of familiarity initially translated to the New York setting. ' 2 ° Luria argued
that the specific "dialect" of Ladino constituted a central feature of
the town-based identity, thereby explaining why for each of the
twenty-two town-based groups in New York, one could find a distinct "dialect" of Ladino—and a cafe.' 21
Selaniklis thus sought to reproduce in New York their café culture from Salonika. In Salonika, the cafe served as the center not
only for recreational gathering but also for communal activity. The
leaders of the Socialist Workers' Federation of Salonika, an organization whose membership was largely Jewish, utilized the various
cafés in Salonika as hubs for disseminating their ideology, giving
lectures, holding debates, and organizing rallies and strikes. 122
Selaniklis in New York, many of whom had been active members
of the federation, similarly transformed The Salonica Restaurant
and Cafe on Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side from one where
"you can find all of your friends and journals from Salonika" into
a site of communal organization. 123 Following the blood libel
accusation in 1915, and during the height of Jewish immigration
from Salonika to the United States, the administrators of the Jewish Insane Asylum (Azilo de Lokos) of Salonika appealed for monetary aid from their "brothers" in America. Mentally unstable Jews
who roamed the streets of Salonika, the Azik de Lokos explained,
constituted easy "prey" for those intent on retaliating for the
alleged ritual murder. Funds were needed to remove these Jews
from the streets not only to protect them, but also to defend the
entire community and restore an "honorable" image before the
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 71
Greek public. 124 About forty Selaniklis in New York answered this
call by converting The Salonica (also known as Cafe Salonique)
into the base for a committee to raise funds on behalf of the Azilo
de Lokos. In the process of setting up this committee, the Selaniklis
also put forward the founding principles for the Salonika Brotherhood of America (Ermandad Salonikiota de Amerika), which would
become the largest mutual aid society among the Jews from the
eastern Mediterranean in the United States.' 25
The notion of organizing according to city or town of origin
was by no means particular to Jews from the eastern Mediterranean, as indicated by the landsmanshaftn established by Jews
from eastern Europe and hometown organization created by other
immigrants. The Yiddish Workers' Group of the Federal Writers'
Project identified 2,468 landsmanshaftn in the 1930s, but did not
include on its list any one of the dozens of similar associations
among the Jews from the eastern Mediterranean. 126 Ironically,
scholars have pointed to the congregations established in Salonika
and other cities in the Ottoman Empire according to specific place
of origin by Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 as the predecessors
of the landmanshaftn.' 27 For working-class Jews from Salonika, as
for most eastern European Jews in America, the services provided
by hometown mutual aid societies constituted a continuation of
practices in Europe, even if the structures of the societies may have
differed from those in the old world.' 28 In Salonika, for example,
port workers gathered together in groups (taifes) whose members
prayed together, maintained funds for sick-benefits and burial
expenses, aided widows of deceased members, and even distributed a bottle of raki (an anise-based aperitif) to each member for
his weekly consumption, all but the latter of which mutual aid
societies and landsmanshaftn in the United States did too. 129
Jewish immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean eventually
recognized that they had replicated the pattern of their ancestors.
Writing in the inaugural edition of El Ermanado (The Brother), a
Ladino annual published in New York in 1922, Rafael Hasan
remarked: "Until now we distinguish among ourselves by city of
origin, in the same manner that the Sephardim congregated when
they immigrated to Turkey after the expulsion from Spain fgerush
Sefaradi." But as Hasan also asserted, the Jews from Spain who settled in the Ottoman Empire according to place of origin "became
obliged to join together in a community when the antagonism
72
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
[between the different groups) became unbearable." 13 ° In effect,
the breaking down of boundaries between various city-based
groups in twentieth century America represented the recognition
that "antagonism" among them had become "unbearable." The
isolation that they experienced from mainstream American Jewry
served to bring together the various groups of Jews from the eastern Mediterranean. Judah L. Magnes, the president of the Kehillah
(the organized Jewish community of New York), reinforced this
notion in a letter in English to La America: "I regret to say that it
is not possible for me to keep up with the difficulties and controversies that seem to disturb the Oriental or Sephardic Jewish community. I do sincerely hope that some way may be found of
bringing about greater harmony and more united activity on
behalf of the Jewish cause." 131 Precisely at that point, leaders of the
Ladino press launched a campaign for "Sephardi" communal unity
distinct from that of the Ashkenazim. In 1922, the organization
that had been founded in 1915 as the Salonika Brotherhood of
America reincorporated itself as the Sephardic Brotherhood of
America, the new name a symbol of the movement away from citybased identification and toward the formation of a broader cornmunal identity (see Figure II). 132
City-based consciousness by no means disappeared. On the
Lower East Side in 1930, for instance, Jewish garment workers and
manufacturers from the eastern Mediterranean continued to divide
themselves according to city of origin, with distinct shops employing those from Kastoria, Ioannina, and Salonika.' 33 Selaniklis continued to send funds back to the Azilo de Lokos, as well as to the
Bikur Holim (which provided social and medical services) and the
Matanoth Laevionim (Jewish soup kitchen) in Salonika throughout
the interwar period, provided monetary aid following the fire of
1917, protested against the compulsory Sunday closing imposed
by the Greek government in 1924, rallied their resources in
response to the arson of Salonika's Campbell neighborhood in
1931, and established the "Salonica Jewish War Relief Committee" during World War 11. 134 Some Salonikans in the United States
returned to their natal city during the interwar period to live on a
permanent basis, to visit family members who had stayed in
Salonika, to wed fiancees, arrange for divorces, or care for inheritance."' Furthermore, Ladino journals established in New York,
such as the satirical El Kirbach Amerikano (the American whip) and
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 73
4
N 71 44 D1t,0 4 t.V.:31P
r.5
rilDD aseminni
rvirru
MIN-11D-11P)12
,tT:7- .17q"
p11 ,,r
1922
Figure 1I
Zionist La Renasensia, paralleled publications in Salonika (El Kirbach and La Renasensia Djudia). When it came to discussions of
Zionism or socialism, these journals transmitted ideas across the
Atlantic in both directions; such dialogue suggests that Salonikans
in America not only imported ways of thinking from their natal
city, but also exported them back as wel1. 136
The gradual acquisition of an "American" consciousness
among Selaniklis in the United States coincided to some extent
with the acquisition of a "Greek" consciousness among Selaniklis
74
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
who remained in Salonika. The processes of "becoming Greek" and
"becoming American" had both begun in 1912-1913, the period
that Salonika came under Greek control and Jewish immigration
to America from Salonika began in earnest. These processes
resulted from pressures to conform to the distinct mainstream cultures in which they found themselves, either the Greek nationstate or the American melting-pot, and profoundly affected the
younger generations, in particular. Concrete, evidence of these
transformations began to appear in the interwar period, when
Salonikans in the United States began using English in their communal records and publications while Salonikans in Salonika
began using Greek in theirs, both in an attempt to attract the
attention of younger community members. Even the Zionist La
Renasensia Djudia began publishing its last page in Greek in 1932,
while the Jewish community of Salonika hired an official "secretary of the Greek language" in 1934.' 37 In New York, an organization called the Sephardic Jewish Community published an
English-language monthly, The Sephardic Bulletin, from 1928 to
1930, and the enduring Ladino weekly, La Vara, began publishing its last page in English in 1934, after having published exclusively in Ladino since its inception in 1922. 138
Despite the links maintained between Salonikans in New York
and those in Salonika, the two groups embarked on divergent
paths as they increasingly acculturated both voluntarily and
forcibly into their new cultural milieux. Although both still
understood themselves as "Salonikan," one had become Americanized whereas the other, Hellenized. For example, an employee of
the Jewish community of Salonika, Saby Saltiel, lamented in a letter in 1938 to his brothers in New York, Isaac and Joseph (the proprietor of The Salonica Restaurant and Cafe), that he could not
send them the latest Greek magazines because they did not know
the language. 139 Indeed, members of distinct polities by the outbreak of World War II, Selaniklis served the Greek and American
militaries, respectively, and expressed patriotic sentiment for their
new countries. ' 4 °
In his recent reflections, Louis Menashe, born to Salonikan
immigrants in Brooklyn, further captured the divergence between
Salonikans established in America for several decades and those
arriving in the wake of the Holocaust, who had been raised in
Greek Thessaloniki:
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 75
After World War II, a younger generation—younger than
my parents—arrived in our community, survivors from
Thessaloniki and from other Greek communities once
populated by the Sephardim. Some had numbers tattooed
on their arms. Intermarriage with non-Jewish Greeks was
common among them. In addition to the usual Sephardic
Sumuel and Sarah and Perla, they had names that were
strange to me, and impressively exotic, I thoughtStavroula and Starnatiya and Panayiota and Dimitrios. . .
The everyday language of the new arrivals was Greek, not
Ladino, and they usually sought out only the Greek restaurants of New York. The songs they sang were Greek songs,
not the romanzas [Ladino ballads] of my parents' repertory. 141
Despite these divergences in given names, primary language,
choice of spouse, and social circles, the tales of Salonikan Jewry's
incorporation into "New Greece," as well as those of Selaniklis who
immigrated to America during the first decades of the twentieth
century, shared much in common. Both may be viewed as tales
about adapting as "immigrants" in a new country. In effect, the
Selaniklis who left "New Greece" in the first decades of the twentieth century and came to the United States did not travel from the
"old world" to the "new." Rather, their voyage was from one "new
world" to another, from a "Jerusalem" in the Balkans refashioned
as a Hellenic city to an even newer "Jerusalem," New York, the
center of the goldene medina, now on the rise. They recognized that
their "old world," in effect, ceased with the end of Ottoman rule
in their city, and they had to decide which "new world" they would
prefer. The choices, at least initially, were not mutually exclusive.
The links maintained between both "new worlds" throughout the
interwar period constituted their world, indeed a transnational
one. 142
An understanding of the experiences of Selaniklis—expressed
in their own terms—as well as further consideration of the "old
world" and "new world" in historical dialogue, rather than in
opposition, will not only create more dynamic and comprehensive
immigrant narratives. It will require a reconsideration of the
accepted parameters of both Jewish identity and Greek identity.
Such a task should be doubly important for the fields of Jewish76
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
American and Greek-American studies if we consider that an estimated fifty thousand Jews "of Greek heritage" live in the United
States today."'
Notes
'This article is a modified version of "From the 'Jerusalem of the Balkans'
to the Goldene Medina: Jewish Immigration from Salonika to the United States,"
first published in American Jewish History 93, no. 4 (Dec. 2007): 435-473. It is
republished here with the permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.
2 Samuel M. Auerbach, "The Levantine Jew," The Immigrants in America
Review 2 (Jul. 1916): 47-53, republished in Jewish Immigration Bulletin 7
(Aug./Sep. 1916): 10-13.
3 Auerbach came to the United States in 1907 from Istanbul. As his surname suggests, his family was probably of Ashkenazi origin. Once in the United
States, he apparently distanced himself. from "Levantine Jews," and clearly
wrote this piece from the perspective of an "Ashkenazi" outsider. His article
elicited a series of sharp responses in the Ladino press of New York. See Maurice S. Nessim, "The Oriental Sephardim vs. 'The Levantine Jew,' " La Bos del
Pueblo (New York), Aug. 15, 1916, 2; and the discussion in Aviva Ben Ur,
"Where Diasporas Met: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in the City of New
York-A Study in Intra-Ethnic Relations" (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University,
1998), 84-87. Also see the revised and published version of Ben-Ur's dissertation, Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (New York: New York University Press, 2009).
4 See Ben-Ur, "Where Diasporas Met," 313-23.
5 lrving Howe, for example, wrote in his classic work: "Among the Jews settling in America, the East Europeans were by far the largest component and the
most influential. To tell their story is, to a considerable extent, to tell the story
of twentieth-century American Jews. . . . The Sephardic Jews as a group hardly
figure at all." See Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976), xix. Similarly, Moses Rischin noted: "Levantine Jews maintained an existence independent of Yiddish New York," and thus justified his
mere paragraph on them, in The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870-1914
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 106-107. Furthermore, the
standard division of American Jewry into "German" and "Eastern European"
does not leave much room for discussions of Jews from the eastern Mediterranean.
° Charles C. Moskos, Jr., "Greek American Studies," in Reading Greek America: Studies in the Experience of Greeks in the United States, ed. Spyros D. Orfanos
(New York: Pella, 2002), 40; John. J. Grabowski, "Prospects and Challenges:
The Study of Early Turkish Immigration to the United States," Journal of American Ethnic History 25, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 85-100.
'See, for example, Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000
Between "New Greece" and the "New World"
77
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 13; and Jonathan D. Sarna,
American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 1. Both
authors rightly note that these "Sephardim" were not the first Jews to come to
colonial America, but rather the first to do so with the intention of establishing
a community. Diner also includes a paragraph on the Jews from the Balkans,
Turkey, and Greece (81).
See David de Sola Pool, "The Immigration of Levantine Jews into the
United States," Jewish Charities 4 (Jun. 1914): 12-13; Alice D. Menken, "Committee on Oriental Jews," Sisterhood Report 17 (1912-1913): 6-8; Menken, "Oriental Committee," Sisterhood Report 18 (1913-1914): 9-11; Menken, "Oriental
Work," Sisterhood Report 19 (1914-1915): 5-8, all in records of Shearith Israel,
the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, American Jewish Historical Society,
Center for Jewish History, New York, collection 1-4, box 5, folder 18; and box
6, folder 2. Scholars have suggested that initial attitudes of "Old Sephardim"
toward "New" might parallel the relationship between central and eastern
European Jewish immigrants in America. Eventually, scholars have argued, the
dynamic between the "Old" and "New Sephardim" transformed; each group
recognized the need of the other for the survival of a broader "Sephardi" community. See Joseph M. Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America (San Jose:
Pele Yoretz Books, 1987), 51-64; Ben-Ur, "Where Diasporas Met," 100-160
The vernacular of the Jews from Salonika and much of the Ottoman
Empire and successor states will be referred to as Ladino, following common
usage. Based primarily on sixteenth-century Castilian, with a significant
Hebrew-Aramaic component, Ladino had, by the turn of the twentieth century,
incorporated French, Italian, Turkish, and Greek elements as well as Americanisms in the United States and continued to be written in the Hebrew alphabet. Other terms utilized to describe this language include Judeo-Spanish,
Judezmo, and Spaniolit. See George K. Zucker, "Ladino, Judezmo, Spanyolit,
El Kasteyano Muestro," Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 19
(Summer 2001): 4-14. On American influence on Ladino, see Dena Lida, "Language of the Sephardim in Anglo America," American Jewish Archives 44
(Spring/Summer 1992): 309-29. On the Arabic-speaking community, see
Joseph A. D. Sutton, Magic Carpet: Aleppo-in-F latbush: The Story of a Unique Ethnic Jewish Community (New York: Thayer-Jacoby, 1979). On Greek-speaking
"Romaniote" Jews, see Marcia Hadad Ikonomopoulos, "The Romaniote Jewish
Community of New York," Journal of Modern Hellenism 23-24 (Winter 20062007): 141-168.
'See Marc D. Angel, La America: The Sephardic Experience in the United States
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1982); Papo, Sephardim
in Twentieth Century America; and Ben-Ur, "Where Diasporas Met."
"The city will be referred to throughout as Salonika, which, along with
Salonica, represents the standard English-language spelling used in the secondary literature. The Jews referred to the city as Saloniko in the local Ladino press.
The official name of the city today, in Greek, is Thessaloniki, the name under
which the city was founded during the time of Alexander the Great. The city is
called Selanik in Turkish; Solun in Bulgarian; Salonique in French; Salonicco in
Italian; and Saloniki in Hebrew.
uRebecca Kobrin, "Conflicting Diasporas, Shifting Centers: Migration
78
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
and Identity in a Transnational Polish Jewish Community, 1878-1952" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2002); Kobrin, "Transatlantic DetachmentsBialystok Jewish Emigres and Bialystok Jewry, 1918-1929," Simon Dubnow
Institute Yearbook 1 (2002): 107-31; Kobrin, "Rewriting the Diaspora: Images
of Eastern Europe in the Bialystok Landsmanshaft Press, 1921-1945," Jewish
Social Studies (New Series) 12 (Spring/Summer 2006): 1-38; Kobrin, "The Shtetl
by the Highway: The East European City in New York's Landsmanshaft Press,
1921-1939," Prooftexts 26 (Spring 2006): 107-37.
"Quoted in Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry: A History
of the J udeo-Spanish Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000),
8.
"Rena Molho, "The Jewish Presence in Macedonia," Los Muestros 6 (Mar.
1992): 5-9.
"Yitzchak Kerem, "The Influence of Anti-Semitism on the Jewish Immigration Pattern from Greece to the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century," in Decision Making and Change in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Cesar E. Farah
(Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1993), 305-14; Mark
Cohen, Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839-1943
(New York: Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture,
2003), 97; Sakis Gekas, "The Port Jews of Corfu and the 'Blood Libel' of 1891:
A Tale of Many Centuries and of One Event," inJews and Port Cities, 1590-1990:
Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism, ed. David Cesarani and Gemma
Romain (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006), 171-96.
'Aron Rodrigue, "From Millet to Minority: Turkish Jewry," in Paths of
Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship, ed. Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 238-61.
17 CO-lades). Allatini to President of the Alliance Israelite Universelle,
Salonika, May 6, 1895, Grece I C 39, Archive of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris (hereafter cited as AAIU). See the marriage declaration for
Shlomo Tsaflik and Sosia Vodovos, both born in Odessa; June 19, 1939, folder
5, act 378, Archive of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki (hereafter cited as
JMTh).
18
Kemal H. Karpat, "Jewish Population Movements in the Ottoman
Empire, 1862-1914," in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Avigdor Levy
(Princeton: The Darwin Press, Inc., 1994), 399-421; Karpat, "The Ottoman
Emigration to America, 1860-1914," International Journal of Middle East Studies 17 (May 1985): 175-209; Basil Gounaris, "Emigration from Macedonia in
the Early Twentieth Century," Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7 (May 1989):
133-53.
'°Register titled, "Defter nefus resansiman primo echo del 1300: defter
famiyas no. 1," collection GrISa, file 358, Central Archives for the History of
the Jewish People (hereafter cited as CAHJP), Jerusalem. On the Ottoman census, see Kemal H. Karpat, "Ottoman Population Records and the Census of
1881/82-1893," Internationaljournal of Middle East Studies 9 (Oct. 1978): 23774; Stanford J. Shaw, "The Ottoman Census System and Population, 18311914," International Journal of Middle East Studies 9 (Oct. 1978): 325-38.
20 "Defter nufus yabandji i bakli mekyan muvakat de shana {51665-1321,"
folder 1, JMTh. See Devin E. Naar, With Their Own Words: Glimpses of Jewish Life
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 79
in Thessaloniki Before the Holocaust (Thessaloniki: The Jewish Community of
Thessaloniki, 2006), 12-14.
21 Michael Molho, In Memoriam: Hommage aux Victimes Juives des Nazis en
Grece (Thessaloniki: Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, 1978), 17, indicates
that eighty thousand of the 173, 000 residents in Salonika were Jews. For more
detailed statistics, see Rena Molho, Oi Evraioi tis Thessalonikis, 1856-1919: Mia
Idiaiteri Koinotita (Athens: Themelio, 2001), 47. Other recent works that deal
with the Jewish community of Salonika during the period under discussion
include: Bernard Pierron, Juifs et Chritiens de la Grece Moderne: Histoire des relations intercommunautaires de 1821 a 1945 (Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 1996);
Bracha Rivlin, ed., Pinkas HaKehillot-Yavan (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1998);
Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 14301950 (London: Harper Collins, 2004); Minna Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century
and Beyond: The Jews in Turkey and the Balkans, 1808-1945, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Tel
Aviv University Press, 2005); Rena Molho, Salonica and Istanbul: Social, Political and Cultural Aspects ofJewish Life (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005); Bea Lewkowitz,
The Jewish Community of Salonika: History, Memory, Identity (London: ValletineMitchell, 2006); K. E. Fleming, Greece-A Jewish History (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2007).
'Richard Ayoun, "Les juifs sefarades a Salonique: Un second age d'or de
1850 a 1917," Neue Romania 24 (2001): 37-62.
23 Basil Gounaris, "Salonica," Review: Fernand Braudel Center 16 (Fall 1993):
499-518; Vassilis Colonas, "The Contribution of the Jewish Community to the
Modernization of Salonika at the End of the Nineteenth Century," in Rozen, The
Last Ottoman Century and Beyond, 2:165-172.
"Lucy Garnett, "A New Jerusalem," The Catholic World 71 (Aug. 1900):
612.
25 Paul Dumont, "The Social Structure of the Jewish Community of
Salonica at the End of the Nineteenth Century," Southeastern Europe 5 (1979):
33-72; Donald Quataert, "The Workers of Salonica, 1850-1912," in Workers and
the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, ed. Donald
Quataert and Erik Jan Ziircher (New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1995), 5974.
26 Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948 (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987), 78.
'Olga Borovaya, "Jews of Three Colors: The Path to Modernity in the
Ladino Press at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," Jewish Social Studies 15, no.
1 (Fall 2008): 110-30; Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance
Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
"Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 21-22; Angel, La America,
10-18.
"Ben-Ur, "Where Diasporas Met," 22.
30 Eugene Cooperman, "The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the Jewish Community of Salonica," in Studies on Turkish-Jewish History, ed. David E
Ahab& Erhan Atay, and Israel J. Katz (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1996),
168-80.
31 Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press
80
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2004), 243n 129.
32 De Sola Pool, "The Levantine Jews in the United States," 209; Michael
Molho, "Radicaci6n de los exilados de Espafia en Turquia y emigraciOn de los
Sefardis de Oriente a America," in Actas del Primer Simposio de Estudios Sefardies,
ed. Jacob M. Hassan (Madrid: Instituto Arias Montano, 1970), 65-72; Joseph
Nehama, "The Jews of Salonika and the Rest of Greece under Hellenic Rule;
the Death of a Great Community," in The Sephardi Heritage: Essays on the Historical and Cultural Contribution of theJews of Spain and Portugal, ed. Richard D. Barnett (Grendon: Gibralter Books, 1989), 240; Benbassa and Rodrigue, Sephardi
Jewry, 184-85; Rodrigue, "From Millet to Minority," 255; Yitzchak Kerem,
"Jews in the Ottoman Army," in X/// Turk Tarih Kongresi (Ankara: Turk Tarih
Kurumu Basimevi, 2002), 1797-1804.
33 Statistics were tabulated based on data from the Ellis Island Database at
www.ellisiland.org and the Jewish Gen Ellis Island One-Step Search Tool, Gold
Form, at www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellisgold.html . A first set of
searches was conducted for "Hebrews" whose "last place of residence" was listed
on ships' manifests as Salonika (and the various permutations of the city's name:
Salonica, Saloniki, Salonique, Salonicco, Salonicca, Salonico, Thessaloniki,
Thessalonique, Thessalonica, Thessalonika, Selanik, Solun). The results of these
searches are indicated in column A A separate set of searches was conducted
using the same permutations of "Salonika" although without specifying an ethnic category (column D). The results of these findings were sorted and collated
and those individuals who appear to have been Jewish based on their given and
family names but whose "race or people" was listed as "Greek," "Turkish," "Syrian," "Arab," "Italian," "Serb," or other, were tabulated separately (column B).
The total number of Jews listed in column C consists of:the sum of columns A
and B. The Ellis Island databases, while extremely useful, are far from flawless;
transcription errors abound. Although the resulting statistics presented in Table
I suggest some trends, they are far from comprehensive. They do not include
Jews from Salonika who came to the United States via other countries or whose
"last place of residence" was not Salonika. They also do not account for immigrants who entered the United States illegally or via other ports (Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, etc.). For a discussion of onomastics and further references
on the topic, see Devin E. Naar, "Bushkando Muestros Nonos i Nonas: Family
History Research on Sephardic Jewry through the Ladino Language Archives of
the Jewish Community of Salonika," Avotaynu 23 (Spring 2007): 40-49.
34 David Ashkenazi, "Gius Yehudim be-Istanbul le-tsava ha-Otomani
beshanim 1909-1910 be-re'i ha-iton 'El Tiempo,' " Pe'amim 105-106
(Autumn/Winter 2005-2006): 181-218.
35 Erik Jan Zurcher, "The Ottoman Conscription System, 1844-1914,"
International Review of Social History 43 (1998): 437-449.
36 Moise Soulam, "Nuestro Ahi," La America, Jul. 31, 1914, 3.
37 Un Selanikli {pseud.], "Un konsejo a los emigrados," La America, July 4,
1913.
38 La America, Nov. 11, 1910, 1.
39 For other accounts of Jewish immigration from Salonika that credit the
Ottoman draft as a prime motivation, see Michael Castro, "Grandfathers," in
Between "New Greece" and the "New World"
81
Sephardic American Voices, ed. Diane Matza (Hanover, NH: University Press of
New England / Brandeis University Press, 1997), 155; oral history interview
with Victor P. Levy by Suki Sandler, Jan. 22, 1992, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection: American Jews of Sephardic Origin, oral histories
box 125, no. 2, 2, New York Public Library.
40 Allatini to President of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, AAIU. Also see
the case of the Hobermann family from Russia, consisting of a mother (age 26)
and two small children who departed Salonika on the S.S. Potsdam and arrived
at Ellis Island via Rotterdam on Apr. 1, 1905, Ellis Island database, www.ellisisland.org , accessed July 18, 2005.
41 Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 21.
42 Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond, 1:168; Orly C. Meron, "Sub
Ethnicity and Elites: Jewish Italian Professionals and Entrepreneurs in Salonica
(1881-1912)," Zakhor: Rivista di Stories degli Ebrei d'Italia 8 (2005): 177-220.
43 Shemuel Saadi Halevy, "La Ora del Sefardizmo es menester krear un
komite de inisiativa," El Luzero Sefaradi 1 (Mar. 1927): 8-11. Halevy mentioned
Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, but his discussion focused in particular on Salonika.
44 Moise Soulam, "Nuestro Ahi," La America, Jul. 31, 1914, 3.
45 Statistics tabulated by the Jewish community for the German occupying
forces indicate that of the 75, 000 Jews living in Salonika in 1917, 35, 000 had
emigrated by 1941. See "Statistica sovre la population sepharadite djudia de
Thessaloniki," [c. 1941), in folder 16, JMTh. These statistics seem to underestimate the number of Jews in Salonika on the eve of World War II. Most sources
place this figure between fifty and sixty thousand. Irith Dublon-Knebel, German Foreign Office Documents on the Holocaust in Greece, 1937-1944 (Tel Aviv:
Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, 2007), 47.
'Nehama, "The Jews of Salonika," 247, 279. Nehama provided the figure
of forty thousand in Histoire des Israelites de Salonique (1940; repr. Thessalonique:
Communaute Israelite de Thessalonique, 1978), 7:775.
47 Benbassa and Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry, 185.
'' 8 Maria Vassilikou, "Post-Cosmopolitan Salonika-Jewish Politics in the
Interwar Period," Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 2 (2003), 99-118.
"El Progresso, Nov. 5, 1915, 2; Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 74, 75, 82, 272. On Jewish socialism in Salonika, see H. Sukru Ilicak, "Jewish Socialism in Ottoman Salonica," Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 2
(Sep. 2002): 115-46; Paul Dumont, "A Jewish, Socialist and Ottoman Organization: The Worker's Federation of Thessaloniki," in Socialism and Nationalism
in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1923, eds. M. Tuncay and E. J. Zurcher (London:
British Academic Press, 1994), 49-76; Joshua Starr, "The Socialist Federation
of Saloniki,"Jewish Social Studies 7 (Jan. 1945): 323-36.
50 Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 47; Renee Hirschon, "Identity and the Greek State: Some
Conceptual Issues," in The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard
Clogg (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 158-80.
51 Rena Molho, "Popular Antisemitism and State Policy in Salonika During the City's Annexation to Greece," Jewish Social Studies 50 (Summer-Fall
1988/1993): 253-64.
82
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
52 Katerina Lagos, "The Hellenization of Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki in
the Interwar Period, 1917-1941," in Themes in European History: Essays from the
2nd International Conference on European History, eds. Michael Aradas and
Nicholas C. J. Pappas (Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research,
2005), 401-406.
53 N. M. Gelber, "An Attempt to Internationalize Salonika," Jewish Social
Studies 17 (Oct. 1955): 105-120.
54 Quoted in Katherine Fleming, "Becoming Greek: The Jews of Salonica,
1912-1917," paper presented at the International Conference on Religion,
Identity, and Empire, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, Apr. 1617, 2005.
"Quoted in Gelber, "An Attempt to Internationalize Salonika," 119; Mark
Levene, " `Ni grec, ni bulgare, ni turc'-Salonika Jewry and the Balkan Wars,
1912-1913," Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 2 (2003), 85.
56Jewish Chronicle (London), Mar. 28, 1913, 14; Jewish Chronicle (London)
Apr. 4, 1913, 20; Apr. 25, 1913, 11; Moise Soulam, "Dolor! Dolor!" La America, Jun. 6, 1913, 3.
57 Quoted in Eyal Ginio, " 'Learning the Beautiful Language of Homer:'
Judeo-Spanish Speaking Jews and the Greek language and Culture Between the
Wars,"Jewish History 16 (2002): 241-42.
58 Esther Benbassa, "Questioning Historical Narratives-The Case of Balkan
Sephardi Jewry," Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 2 (2003): 15-22.
59 Molho, "Popular Antisemitism and State Policy," 254; Rodrigue, "From
Millet to Minority," 261; Stein, Making Jews Modern, 56.
6() Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica (1946; repr., Philadelphia: Paul Dry
Books, 2003), 158-159; Diane Matza, "Jewish Immigrant Autobiography: The
Anomaly of a Sephardic Example," MELUS: Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic
Literature of the United States 14 (Spring 1987): 33-41.
'Sarah Abrevaya Stein, "The Permeable Boundaries of Ottoman Jewry," in
Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and
Local Practices, ed. Joel S. Migdal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 49-70.
62 Quoted in Aron Rodrigue, Jews and Muslims: Images of Sephardi and EasternJewries in Modern Times (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 23638.
63 Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica, 261.
64 Quoted in Rodrigue, Jews and Muslims, 238; Jewish Chronicle, Jan. 3,
1913, 16.
65 Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond, 1:17 0 .
66 Soulam, "Dolor! Dolor!"
67 Isaac Azriel, "Esto solo mos mankava," La America, Aug. 30, 1915, 4;
Jewish Chronicle, Aug. 13, 1915, 9.
68 La America, Feb. 4, 1916, 3
69 /bid., Oct. 1, 1915, 2.
70La Bos del Pueblo, Oct. 13, 1916, 2.
71 Albert Levy, "Una pajina de istoria: Saloniko en el 1916," La Epoka de
New York, Dec. 5, 1919, 3.
72 La Bos del Pueblo, Oct. 6, 1916, 5.
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 83
73 For example, El Liberal (Salonika), Oct. 4, 1915, 1; Jun. 11 and 18, 1918,
1; Aug. 19, 1918, 1.
74John E. Kehl, American consul in Salonika, to Robert Lansing, Secretary
of State, Aug. 21, 1917, RG84, vol. 64, file 848, National Archives and Record
Administration at College Park, MD (hereafter cited as NARA II).
75 New York Times, Sep. 4, 1917, 3; Charles Upson Clark, "The Problem of
Saloniki," New York Times, Jan. 9, 1919, 34; Rena Molho, "Jewish WorkingClass Neighborhoods Established in Salonika Following the 1890 and 1917
Fires," in Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond, 2:173-94. Papo mistakenly refers to an earthquake rather than the fire in Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 22, 122.
76 0n Jews' perception of the scheme as anti-Jewish, see Richard Juda,
"Condensed Report on the Moral and Material Position of the Jewish Community of Salonica," Geneva, Sep. 1, 1927, Acc. 3121/E3/158/1, Archive of the
Board of Deputies of British Jews, London Metropolitan Archives.
77 Alexandra Yerolympos, Urban Transformations in the Balkans, 1820-1920:
Aspects of Balkan Town Planning and the Remaking of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki:
University Studio Press, 1996); Vassiliki G. Mangana, "Westernization and
Hellenicity: Form and Meaning in Thessaloniki, Greece, 1850-1930" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Michigan, 1995); Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos, "Monumental Urban Space and National Identity: The Early Twentieth Century New Plan
of Thessaloniki," Journal of Historical Geography 31 (Jan. 2005): 61-77.
78Juda, "Condensed Report."
79 Michel Graillet, French consul at Salonika, to Alexandre Millerand, Aug.
18, 1920, Grece, file 69, Archive of the Quai d'Orsay (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Paris. I would like to thank Maria Vassilikou for sharing this document with me.
80 For the source of the data, see Table I. For a history of Ellis Island, see
Thomas M. Pitkin, Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island (New York: New
York University Press, 1975).
81 La America, Oct. 17, 1924, 6; Report by Leland B. Morris, American consul in Salonika, "Greek Government Policy Towards Jewish Minority of
Saloniki," Aug. 16, 1924, RG84, Salonika, Greece, vol. 113, doc. 840.1/2509,
NARA II. On France, see Annie Benveniste, "Identite et Integration: Parcours
d'Immigration des Juifs des Grece," Pardes 12 (Autumn 1990): 211-18; Benveniste "The Judeo-Spanish Community in Paris," in From Iberia to Diaspora:
Studies in Sephardic History and Culture, ed. Yedida K. Stillman and Norman A.
Stillman (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 168-75; Ioannes Skourtes, "Metanastefse ton
Evraion tes Thessalonikes ste Gallia kata ton Mesopolemo," Thessalonike: Esistemonike epeterida ton Kentrou Historias Thessalonikes ton Demon Thessalonikes 3
(1992): 235-47; Esther Benbassa, The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to
the Present, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999), 134-36. On Italy, see Samuel Varsano, "Ebrei di Salonicco Immigrati a
Napoli (1917-1940): una Testimonianza," Storia Contemporanea 23 (Feb. 1992):
119-26. On Spain, see Samuel Mordoh, El Aba: de Salonica a Sefarad (Barcelona:
Tirocinio, 2003).
82 Ginio, " 'Learning the Beautiful Language of Homer,' " 245-47.
83 Maria Vassilikou, "The Anti-Semitic Riots in Thessaloniki (June 1931)
84
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
and the Greek Press: A Case-Study of 'Scapegoating' Theory" (M.A. thesis,
King's College, London, 1993); Aristotle A. Kallis, "The Jewish Community of
Salonica Under Siege: The Antisemitic Violence of the Summer of 1931," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20 (Spring 2006): 34-56.
84 Benbassa and Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry, 265n 177 ; El Ermanado 11
(1931): 28 29.
"La Bos del Pueblo, Oct. 6, 1916, 5; Albert Levy, "Una pajina de istoria.
Saloniko en el 1916," La Epoka de Nu York, Dec. 5, 1919, 3.
86 Peter W. Hutchinson, Clark-Hutchinson Company, to George Horton,
American consul in Salonika, Oct. 10, 1910; Morse & Rodgers to Horton, Oct.
17, 1910; Horton to Morse & Rodgers, Nov. 3, 1910, RG84, Records of
Salonika, Greece, vol. 26, does. 361, 371 and 375, NARA II.
87 Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica, 156.
"John L. Binda, American Vice and Deputy Consul in Charge, Saloniki, to
U.S. Department of State, Oct. 31, 1911, Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Thessaloniki, microfilm MMA4/b/17. I thank Paris Papamichos for pointing this document out to me.
89 Angel, La America, 12-13. Some from Salonika, however, were not as
impressed. See, for example, Albert Daniel Saporta, My Life in Retrospect (New
York: privately published, 1980), 156.
90 E1 Liberal, Aug. 22, 1915, 2.
"Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 269-300.
92 Ship manifest for the S.S. Konigin Luise, which arrived in New York from
Naples on July 18, 1907; ship manifest for the S.S. Duca degli Abruzzi, which
arrived in New York from Naples on July 15, 1916, www.ellisisland.org ,
accessed July 18, 2005.
93 Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond, 1:381-84.
94Judeo-Spanish population register of the Jewish community of Salonika,
1917-1941, register 13, RG-207, box 1, folder 1, 236, entry 74; 281, entry
197; 290, entry 235; 380, entry 588; 390, entry 363, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History, New York.
95 Greek (Christian) immigrants in American cities also often came to be
synonymous with bootblacks. See Charles C. Moskos, Jr., Greek Americans: Struggle and Success (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980), 24-25
96 Besalel Saadi Halevy, "La emigrasion," El Liberal, Aug. 24 and 25, 1915,
2.
97 New York Tribune, Sep. 22, 1912, 4, 7.
98 George Horton, American consul in Salonika, to Alexander W. Wendell,
American consul general in Athens, Nov. 20, 1917, RG84, vol. 64, sect. 855,
NARA II.
99 Saporta, My Life in Retrospect, 109. Recanati was immigrating to Marseilles.
106 George Horton, American consul in Salonika, to Alexander W. Wendell, American consul general in Athens, Nov. 8, 1917, RG84, vol. 64, sect.
855, NARA II.
"See, for example, Yishak Azriel, "Letra de Ellis Island," La America, Jun.
11, 1915, 8; La America, Feb. 4, 1916, 3; Feb. 4, 1921, 1, 4; Feb. 18, 1921, 1,
4; La Bos del Pueblo, Jul. 28, 1916, 5.
-
;
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 85
1 ° 2 Sarnuel A. B. Frommer to the Commissioner of Immigration, Oct. 13,
1916, T 458, file 54171/458, National Archives and Record Administration,
Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as NARA I). See Ellis Island database, ship
manifest for the S.S. San Guglielmo, which left from Naples and arrived in New
York on Sep. 23, 1916, and indicates that David Schaki had been discharged
from the hospital after being admitted for tuberculosis.
' 03 Leon Sanders, President of the Hebrew Sheltering and, Immigrant Aid
Society, to the Solicitor General of the Department of Labor, Oct. 6, 1916,
T458, file 54171/455, NARA I.
104 Sarnuel A. B. Frommer to the Commissioner of Immigration, Sep. 27,
1916, T458, file 54171/455, NARA I.
105
Report of Board of Special Inquiry at Ellis Island, Sep. 5, 1916, T458,
file 54171/455, NARA I.
'"Memorandum for the Acting Secretary, Sep. 29, 1916, T458, file
54171/455, NARA
1 ° 7 Report of Board of Special Inquiry at Ellis Island, Apra 7, 1920, T458,
file 54766/555, NARA I.
1 ° 8 Roger O'Donnell to the Secretary of Labor, Apr. 25, 1921, T458, file
54766/555, NARA I.
109 Leland B. Morris to J. Laurence Hills, Feb. 25, 1922; American consul
in Salonika to Will L. Lowrie, editor of the New York Herald, European edition, Feb. 25, 1922, RG 84, vol. 107, file 855, NARA II. Morris noted that
most of the emigrants were Albanians coming from other parts of Macedonia
and not necessarily Jews. On Sephardic Jews who immigrated to Cuba, see Margalit Bejarano, "Sephardic Jews in Cuba-From All Their Habitations,"Judaism
51 (Winter 2002): 96-108.
11 "Robert Fais-Biography," [n. d.], Archives of Congregation Etz
Ahaim, Highland Park, NJ. I am indebted to the congregation's past president,
Nathan Reiss, for allowing me to access these records.
"'Ruth Marcus Patt, The Sephardim of New Jersey (New Brunswick: The
Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey, 1992), 7.
_
12 Copy of petition of Sam Ayash to New York State, 1923, and letter from
S. Ruben Mordohai, vice president of the Union of the Jews of Greece in Israel,
to the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, Aug. 29, 1966, file 6, Archive
of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, American Sephardi Federation, Center for Jewish History, New York. For an interview with Ayash's
cousin, Esterina Ayash, who disembarked at Boston in 1918, see La Bos del
Pueblo, Feb. 8, 1918, 2. For a picture of the "Paris Grocery," see the cover of
Patricia M. Ard and Michael Aaron Rockland, The Jews of New Jersey: A Pictorial History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
113 "Buletin de Informasiones: Kuartier Numero 6/Karagach, 5694," file 7,
32, entry 118, JMTh. Individuals in entries 42, 80, and 88 left for Paris; entry
63 to Skopje; entry 96 to Algeria; entries 7, 25, 55, 109, 112, 123, 127, 147,
178, 224, 240, 290, 323, 336, 337, and 338 to Palestine.
114
The number of certificates issued for other destinations included: France:
42; Serbia: 30; Turkey: 8; Italy: 5; Austria: 4; Bulgaria: 2; Spain: 2; Albania: 1;
and Egypt: 1. Tabulated from statistics in monthly reports of "certificates of
departure" sent to the Chief Rabbi from the head of the department of civil sta.
86
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
tus, Aug. 1935-Feb. 1936, Records of Jiidische Gemeinde Saloniki, RG11.001M.51, Moscow fond 1428, reel 198, folder 116, 729-51, United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as USHMM).
On aliyah of Jews from Salonika, see Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and
Beyond, 1: 295-310.
115
Skourtes, "Metanastefse ton Evraion tes Thessalonikes ste Gallia kata
ton Mesopolemo," 245. I thank Marcia Hadad Ikonomopoulos for her assistance
in translating this article.
116 K. E. Fleming, "The Stereotyped 'Greek Jew' from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Israeli Popular Culture," Journal of Modern Greek. Studies 25 (May 2007):
17-40.
117 Angel, La America, 20-21.
'Quoted in David M. Bunis, Voices from Jewish Salonika (Jerusalem: The
National Authority for Ladino Culture, 1999), 258.
119Max A. Luria, "Judeo-Spanish Dialects in New York City," in Todd
Memorial Volumes, ed. John D. Fitz-Gerald and Pauline Taylor (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1930), 2:7-16.
120 David N. Barocas, ed., Albert Matarasso and his Ladino (New York: The
Foundation for Advancement of Sephardic Culture and Studies, 1969), 54.
121 "Finds 22 Dialects of Spanish Jews Here," The World, [1931?), clipping
in the archive of Henry V Besso, box 7, folder 19, American Sephardi Federation. Hometown associations did not always organize according to rigid geographical boundaries. Solomon Emmanuel, from Jerusalem, and Albert Levy,
from Salonika, presided over societies of Jews from Monastir, whereas those
from Kastoria joined an organization of Jews from Ioannina before establishing
their own. See Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 301-318.
' 22 Avraam A. Benaroya, "El Empessijo del Mouvimiento Socialista," in
Zikhron Saloniki: Grandeza i Destruyicion de Yeruchalayim del Balkan, ed. David
A. Recanati (Tel Aviv: El Commitato por la Edition del Livro sovre la Community de Salonique, 1971), 1:41-43. On coffeehouses in Salonika, see Gila Hadar,
"Salonika: Memoirs of a City in the Context of Diversity and Change: 19141943," paper presented at "Nationalism, Society and Culture in Post-Ottoman
South East Europe," conference at St. Peter's College, May 29-30, 2004.
123 La America, Mar. 12, 1915, 2.
124 Azriel, "Esto solo mos mankava.
125 Alberto Levy, "Istoria de la Ermandad Sefaradit de Amerika, 19151921," El Ermanado 1 [marked as volume 51 (1922): 1-3; Rafael Shelomo Hasson, "Ayer i oy: la istoria dela Ermandad Sefaradit de Amerika, Ink., mientres
los 20 anyos de su egzistensia," El Ermanado 16 (1935):2. On the earlier establishment in 1912 of the society Ets Ahaim Salonika, which changed its named
to Ets Ahaim Oriental, see Angel, La America, 29; Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth
Century America, 305.
126 Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Jewish Identity.
1880-1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1. The listing,
"Kongregasiones i hevrot de los djudios Sefaradim en Amerika," in the calendar (Halila) published by La America for 5679, included over forty organizations
of "Sephardic Jews" in New York and over twenty in other cities in the United
States. The calendar published by La Vara (New York) for 5691 lists over 75
"
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 87
such organizations and for 5701 lists 78 in New York and 48 in other cities in
the United States. These calendars can be found in the library of Yad Ben Zvi
in Jerusalem. I thank Dov Cohen for pointing these out to me.
127 See Soyer,Jewish Immigrant Associations, 2.
128 Ibid., 74.
129
Quataert, "The Workers of Salonica," 60-61.
13 "Rafael Hasan, "Kualo es la Ermandad Sefaradit de Amerika," El
Ermanado 1 (1922): 7-9.
131 La America, Jun. 9, 1916, 2.
132see Jonathan D. Sarna, "From Immigrants to Ethnics: Toward a New
Theory of Ethnicization," Ethnicity 5 (1978): 370-76.
133 Yeuda Saady, "20 anyos despues: progreso i estagnasion," El Ermanado
10 (1930): 23-24.
134 See the annual El Amigo, published irregularly in New York from 1923
to 1942 for the benefit of the Azilo de Lokos, in particular: Isaac Saltiel, "Nuestro Venten Aniversario, 1915-1935," El Amigo (1935): 1-3. The first issue of
El Amigo, heretofore thought to have been forever lost, is located in file 73,
JMTh. See Aviva Ben-Ur, "In Search of the American Ladino Press: A Bibliographic Survey, 1910-1948," Studies Bibliography and Booklore 21 (Fall
2001): 32-33. See also La Bos del Pueblo, Aug. 23, 1917, 1; Aug. 31, 1917, 4;
Sep. 7, 1917, 3; La America, Oct. 19, 1917, 1; Jul. 25, 1924, 2; Aug. 15, 1924,
5; Salomon Sciaky, "Apelo a nuestros korelijionarios de Amerika," La Luz (New
York), Oct. 9, 1921, 4; La Vara, Jul. 25, 1924, 1; El Ermanado 11 (1931): 2829. On the "Salonica Jewish War Relief Committee," see the Annual Report of
the Sephardic Brotherhood of America (1943): 10-11 and (1944): 2; Albert
Matarasso and Isaac Saltiel of Salonica Jewish War Relief Committee to members of the Sephardic Brotherhood, Apr. 5, 1944, Archives of the Sephardic
Brotherhood of America; Papo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 121127 .
135 Isaac D. Florentin, "A los djudios de los Balkanes estabelidos en
Amerika," La America, Jan. 21, 1921, 5. For visits, see correspondence from
1927 in file of Edward Besso (no. 590) in the Archive of the Sephardic Brotherhood of America. For marriage, see "deklarasion reposnavle por demanda de
permisio de kazamiento" (akto 41) for Jack Mallah and Sarina Ezratty, Aug. 9,
1938, file 5, JMTh. For divorce, see letters from Jacob Farhi to Rabbi Haim
Habib of Salonika, Oct. 25, 1932, and from the Sephardic Brotherhood of
America to the Chief Rabbi of Salonika, Sep. 20, 1936, reel 199, folder 143,
619-620, and reel 197, folder 106, 835-36, Records of Jiidische Gemeinde
Saloniki. For a comparison to eastern European Jewish immigrants, who sometimes also returned home, see Jonathan D. Sarna, "The Myth of No Return: Jewish Return Migration to Eastern Europe, 1881-1914," American Jewish History
71 (Dec. 1981): 256-68.
136 Ben-Ur, "In Search of the American Ladino Press." Tony Michels argues
that there was a significant and sustained transatlantic dialogue between Jews
in the United States and in eastern Europe, especially in the sphere of socialist
politics and culture, in A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).
' 37 Ginio, "'Learning the Beautiful Language of Homer,'" 247; "Processo
88
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
verbal del jury del concorso por el engajamiento de oun secretario de lingua
grega," Feb. 14, 1934, JMTh, files 30-31.
138 Ben-Ur, "In Search of the American Ladino Press," 34-35; La Vara, Aug.
24 and 31, 1934, 8.
139 Letter from Saby Saltiel to Joseph and Isaac Saltiel, Feb. 14, 1938, in the
Henry V. Besso Archive, box 36, folder 24, at the American Sephardi Federation, New York.
14opapo, Sephardim in Twentieth Century America, 182-86; Rozen, The Last
Ottoman Century and Beyond, 1:339. Jews from Salonika also participated in the
Greek resistance during the German occupation. See Steven Bowman, Jewish
Resistance in Wartime Greece (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006).
14 ILouis Menashe, "Return to Salonique,"Journal of Modern Hellenism 2324 (Winter 2006-7): 97-111; quote from 102-3. Also see Louis Menashe,
"Sephardic in Williamsburg," in Jews of Brooklyn, ed. liana Abramovitch and
Sean Galvin (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2002).
142 The case of Jews of Rhodes, who developed a widespread network of
"diaspora" communities in the United States, Africa, and Europe, also suggests
the perpetuation of a strong local identity and offers a fruitful comparison. See
Renêe Hirschon, "The Jews of Rhodes: The Decline and Extinction of an
Ancient Community," in Rozen, The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond, 2:291307; Marc D. Angel, The Jews of Rhodes: The History of a Sephardic Community
(New York: Sepher Hermon Press, 1978), 145-49; Yitzchak Kerem, "The
Migration of Rhodian Jews to Africa and the Americas from 1900-1914: The
Beginning of New Sephardic Diasporic Communities," in Patterns of Migration,
1850-1914, ed. Aubrey Newman and Stephen W. Massil (London: Jewish Historical Society of England), 321-34; Kerem, "The Settlement of Rhodian and
other Sephardic Jews in Montgomery and Atlanta in the Twentieth Century,"
CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly 85 (Dec. 1997): 373-91.
143 Spyros D. Orfanos, Reading Greek America: Studies in the Experience of
Greeks in the United States (New York: Pella, 2002), 21.
Between "New Greece" and the "New World" 89
The Basil John Vlavianos Papers
(1890-1994)
by AARON RICHARDSON
Introduction
In May 2007, the author began what would become a one and
half year internship in the Department of Special Collections and
University Archives at California State University Sacramento,
University Library.' The graduate-level, professional internship
met the curricular requirements of the CSUS Public History program and provided a program concentration in archives and manuscripts. The work also resulted in the author's MA Thesis Project,
The Basil J. Vlavianos Papers: hidden collections and archival representation. The thesis described the author's effort to understand contemporary archival practice, address the "hidden collections"
problem for one large twentieth-century manuscript collection,
and explore the uses of new digital media for archival representation. The project resulted in a preliminary descriptive inventory
for the Papers, a collection arrangement plan, a grant proposal to
the Council on Library and Information Resourcesl Mellon Foundation,
and a website for a burgeoning SCUA digital history project.
Drawing on this body of research, the more modest aim here
is to provide background information on the collection for
researchers. This brief paper thus describes the Vlavianos Project,
the provenance of the manuscript collection, its content and
potential value for research.
AARON RICHARDSON is a consultant and Project Archivist at California
State University, Sacramento. He works with the archival holdings of the
Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection housed in the University Library's Special Collections and University Archives.
91
SC U A and the Vlavianos Project
The University Library's Special Collections unit serves as the
repository for historical research collections at California State
University, Sacramento. Its holdings include rare books, manuscripts, political posters, audio-visual materials, theses, and the
Sacramento State University Archives. The department supports
the educational work of the university by providing access to
unique primary source materials, assisting the university community with research, and by providing practica for students interested in archival studies. Students pursuing training in archival
work normally come from either the CSUS Public History program, which offers a joint Doctorate in Public Historical Studies
with University of California, Santa Barbara 2 or from the School of
Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.'
Sheila O'Neill has been SCUA Department Head since 1999. 4
Housed in SCUA, the Basil J. Vlavianos Papers are the largest
and most significant historical research collection within the prestigious Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection. 5 The personal papers of an
eminent Greek-American émigré and New York intellectual, the
Vlavianos manuscripts represent the extraordinary life of a twentieth-century lawyer, diplomat, editor, professor, businessman, and
community leader. Recognizing the stature of the collection and its
potential for scholarly research, the Tsakopoulos Curators and SCUA
Department Head saw the desirability of making the Vlavianos
Papers accessible for research and teaching. However, due to the
enormous size of the collection, its age and physical condition, lack
of organization, the multiplicity of languages represented, security
and confidentiality issues, as well as budget, the papers remained
inaccessible. Thus, since his death in 1994, the Vlavianos Papers had
rested quietly in the stacks of various libraries, unprocessed, a quintessential hidden collection. SCUA has recently begun the task of processing the collection and, as series are arranged, this exceptional
information resource will finally see the light of day.
Concurrent with this processing work, in August 2008, SCUA
created the Basil J. Vlavianos Papers project website (http:11www.
library.csus.edulvlavianoslindex.html). The site functions as a platform for constructing a digital history project and will contain
digitized replica of newspapers, correspondence, photographs,
moving images, audio recordings, as well as the EAD finding aid.'
92
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
The burgeoning field of digital history (and/or digital humanities),
which seeks to use new media technology to promote both preservation and research, is filled with promise for humanities scholars
and interested archivists. 8 It is the author's view that archivists and
historians ought to embrace the opportunity to collaborate on creative projects made possible by new communications media.
The Vlavianos project has the potential to become a remarkably valuable educational resource for the CSUS community and
other interested researchers. We envision it eventually functioning
as an open-access historical research portal to primary source documents, virtual exhibits, research guides, new forms of scholarly
publication, podcasts of lectures and symposia. 9 SCUA has also
begun working with CSUS History Professor, Katerina Lagos, to
identify primary source materials for integration into course curricula. The Vlavianos papers contain significant World War II-era
documentation. Once arranged, described and digitized, these
materials will form the basis of a valuable electronic archive that
may be put to any number of creative uses.
SCUA's also plans to link its Vlavianos site to thematicallyrelated collections in other institutions.w Our grant proposal discussed a number of possible collaborative projects involving other
manuscript repositories. The goal would be to promote broad
access to the resource by making thematic (and hyper-textual
links) to other relevant holdings. By wisely planning future projects with interested scholars, SCUA hopes to make an interesting
contribution to the growing field of digital history, and to whatever specific scholarly disciplines may profit from the collection's
enhanced web representation.
The Vlavianos Donation(s) 11
In spring 1993 the Speros Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism
announced that Basil John Vlavianos (1903-1994) had donated
6,000 books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines to its
Tsakopoulos Hellenic Library 12 The gift included most of his personal library and a portion of his private papers. The Vryonis
Newsletter went on to detail the rich book collection which reflected
Vlavianos' varied intellectual, social and political interests.
His library featured antiquarian and modern books on Greece,
The Basil John Vlavianos Papers
93
Cyprus, Greek-America, as well as a voluminous pamphlet collection.
Newspaper holdings from the Vlavianos donation were extensive and
included a series of bound volumes of the National Herald. 13 The
library included an assortment of European newspapers, scholarly
journals, and magazines It also contained a large number of works in
French dealing with various aspects of culture, law, and history, as well
as works in German on criminal law, philosophy, and psychology.
In 2000 the Vryonis Center closed its doors. Two years later,
Sacramento businessman, philanthropist, and CSUS alum Angelo
Tsakopoulos, donated the Vryonis Center's library to the University Library at CSU, Sacramento. The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection which opened at CSUS in 2002 brought the Vlavianos
papers to the CSUS campus. As received by the University Library,
the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection contained some 70,000 volumes and arguably remains the premier Hellenic research collection in the western United States. In the summer of 2005, the
Curator of the Collection secured a further donation of archival
material (ca. 75 shipping boxes) from Vlavianos' daughter, Zita
Hosmer. This gift completed the Basil John Vlavianos papers and
gave the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection exceptionally complete
documentation for the life of Vlavianos, one of the most important
figures in 20th-century Greek-American life.
It should be noted that the Vlavianos donation also included
personal possessions apart from his library and papers. It included
a 131tithner grand piano once owned by renowned Greek pianist,
composer and conductor, Dimitri Mitropoulos. Vlavianos originally purchased the piano for his daughter, Zita's, piano lessons.
He also donated a portion of his large art collection to the Center.
Notable Greek and Greek-American artists represented include
Celeste Polychroniadou-Karavia, George Constant, and Theo
Hios. Most recently, his daughter, Zita Vlavianos Hosmer donated
a trio of terracotta sculptures by the renowned Greek sculptress
Froso Eftimiadi-Menegaki. 14
By 2005, then, the CSUS Library possessed the entirety of the
Basil J. Vlavianos Papers. Once fully cataloged and represented to
the public this extraordinarily rich historical research collection
will provide both the University and visiting scholars with an
extremely valuable information resource for years to come. A full
appreciation of the collection's value entails knowing something
of its provenance in the life of Vlavianos.
94
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Biography
Basil John Vlavianos (1903-1994) was a Greek Émigré, international lawyer, professor, publisher, editor, businessman, human
rights activist, journalist, and community leader. For the sake of narrative organization his life may be divided into European (19031938) and American periods (1939-1994). While the bulk of his
personal papers reflect the American period, there are most certainly
are valuable research materials from the earlier European period.°
Europe (1903-1938)
Born January 16, 1903 in Athens Greece, Basil John Vlavianos
was the oldest son of Helen (Fandrides) and John G. Vlavianos, VI.
His father was a prominent Athenian lawyer and President of the
Athens City Council. Basil began his studies in philosophy, political science, economics and law at the University of Athens in 1918.
Graduating in 1920, he received the Certificate of Studies in Law
before departing for advanced legal studies in Europe. While in
Germany he studied jurisprudence at Universities of Leipzig and
Munich. From the latter he was awarded the J uris Doctor in 1924.
Later in France he continued his studies at the University of Paris,
where he received a Certificate of Studies in Law and Forensic Medicine
and Psychology (1925). He also studied at the prestigious Ecole des
Sciences et Politiques, a private institute devoted to training of the
political class in international relations, law, and comparative government. As the fruit of his studies Vlavianos produced significant
works in the field of comparative penology including his doctoral
dissertation Zur Lehre von der Bliitrache (On the Theory of Vendetta)
in 1924, The Reform of Penal Law in 1925 and The Systematic Classification of Penal Sciences in 1927. 16 Vlavianos studied jurisprudence
between the creation of the League of Nations (1920) and the
United Nations (1945). His papers thus document a very interesting period in the evolution of public international law.
Passing bar examinations in both Greece and France, Vlavianos
formally entered the international legal profession in 1926. During
the latter part of the 1920s he served Greece as official representative at international law congresses throughout Europe including:
International Prison Congress (London, 1925), International Con-
The Basil John Vlavianos Papers
95
gress of Penal Law (Brussels, 1927), Congress of the International
Society for Penal Law (Bucharest, 1928), International Prison Congress (Prague, 1930), and International Prison Congress (Berlin,
1935). From 1927 to 1937 he operated his own firm in Athens
while keeping an office and serving as a legal advisor in London.
During this period Vlavianos defended cases in Greece, France, Belgium, England, Germany and Egypt, specializing in patents, and
maritime law. He also served as Consul of the Republic of Panama
in Piraeus, Greece from 1936-1939. In 1932 Vlavianos married
Ekaterina George Nikolaou, member of a well-known Athenian
shipping family, and in 1936 they had one daughter, Zita.' 7
In 1935, amid considerable social and political strife, a Royalist coup brought King George II back to power in Greece. The
King appointed General Ioannis Metaxas to the office of Prime
Minster in 1936 and, with the King's full approval, Metaxas dissolved Greece's parliamentary government. Political parties were
suppressed, as were civil liberties and freedom of the press. Modeling his regime after other authoritarian governments in Europe,
the Metaxas dictatorship (also known as the 4th of August
Regime) banned political parties, arrested communists, criminalized strikes, and sponsored media-censorship." By 1937 Vlavianos had relocated to Paris.
United States (1939-1993)
Vlavianos arrived in New York on September 3, 1939 in order
to attend the World's Fair.]- 9 He stayed for the next fifty-four years.
In 1940, the same year the Italians invaded Greece, he acquired 0
Ethnikos Keryx (The National Herald). Founded by Petros Tatanis
in 1915, the newspaper was one of two major Greek-language
dailies in the United States (the other being the Atlantis, a royalist
paper supporting the Metaxas dictatorship). Through the paper
Vlavianos played a prominent role in keeping the Greek community and American public informed about the political situation in
Greece before, during, and just after WWII. Given the wide-spread
censorship by the regime in Greece, the National Herald functioned as an important source of free communication. With Vlavianos the newspaper took an anti-Metaxas stance and functioned
as a source of coordination and communication for liberal, republi96
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
can circles of the anti-dictatorship movement (oppositionist) party.
During World War II and during the ensuing Greek Civil War,
the paper, under the editorship of Vlavianos, continued to be a primary means of information for the Greek-American community and
the broader American public. The newspaper made a significant
contribution to the allied war-effort. Through his editorship Vlavianos both supported and thoroughly documented Greek resistance
to occupation. During the war year Vlavianos also supported the
communist-led EAM (National Liberation Front) the main opposition party widely-supported by the Greek center and left.
Vlavianos and the Herald were especially influential in the
relief of Greek citizens during the war. 20 In April of 1941, Italian,
Bulgarian and German military forces entered Athens and had
occupied Greece, with each power occupying a different portion of
the country. Because of the occupation, a harsh winter in 1942, and
British shipping blockade designed to prevent Axis supplies
entering the country, many Greeks suffered starvation. Thousands
died in Athens alone. In response to a call by Greek Orthodox
Archbishop Athenagoras, and under the leadership of TwentiethCentury Fox Chairman, Spyros Skouras, the Greek War Relief
Association came into being. The GWRA was a major transnational humanitarian campaign involving the international Red
Cross, the Greek Diaspora communities, and other sympathetic
American participants. As editor of the National Herald, Vlavianos called for an end to the British blockade and lobbied hard
for a change in British policy. He exerted significant influence
through public appearances and editorials, and made an important
contribution to the larger GWRA efforts. 21
After the war Vlavianos continued to be active in law, international politics, business, culture, and education. In 1945, representatives of fifty countries met in San Francisco at the United
Nations Conference on International Organization to create the
United Nations Charter. Vlavianos served as legal consultant to
Foreign Minister John Sofianopoulos and the Greek U.N. Delegation. Resigning the editorship of the National Herald in 1947,
Vlavianos became adjunct Professor of Political Affairs and
Regional Studies at New York University where he taught until
1961. While at NYU he helped found the Institute for Intercontinental Studies, an early example of an- international educational
exchange program. 22 His interest in human rights and internaThe Basil John Vlavianos Papers
97
tional law also led him to serve as treasurer for the International
League for the Rights of Man, an organization that sought to further the values enshrined in international human rights treaties
and conventions.
Vlavianos also continued to engage in publishing. He founded
Arts Inc. Publishers a publishing house specializing in European
scholarly and artistic works. In the late 1940s the firm expanded
to create, first, the Golden Griffin Bookstore, and then the Griffin
Gallery which bought and sold the work of contemporary American and European artists. The business was located in midtown
Manhattan during a fascinating period of increasing post-war
internationalism. 23 Golden Griffin was known as the "Continental
Bookstore" because of its stock of European titles, objet d' art and
imported high-end stationary. The publishing house produced the
critically-acclaimed "American Cities" series which featured the
work of Swiss water-colorist, Fritz Busse, and texts by popular contemporary American writers. In addition to these culture industry
ventures, Vlavianos served on the editorial board of Free World
magazine and (later) the Greek-language newspaper, Proini. During roughly this same period, Vlavianos held interests in multiple
businesses including transportation and construction companies
involved in post-war reconstruction in Greece. He also served on
the board of the several businesses and banks, while holding extensive real estate interests.
Throughout the latter half of his life Vlavianos followed international relations, human rights, and nuclear disarmament closely.
He thus accumulated numerous subject files documenting contemporary affairs. Throughout his long life he continued to be active in
a variety of social, political, and cultural causes. He belonged to Hellenic fraternal organizations like the American Hellenic Progressive
Association (AHEPA), participated in a wide range of academic and
professional associations, as well as accumulating a large collection
of historic stamps. Naturalized as an American citizen in 1958, Vlavianos died in Alexandria, VA on June 27, 1994.
Research Value
As a writer, academic, lawyer, editor, businessman, and prominent member of the Greek-American community Vlavianos con98
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
scientiously documented his activities and preserved the documentation thus created. His personal correspondence, journals,
lectures, photographs, subject files and ephemera all provide
detailed documentation about his relationships with others and
his "place" in the world. As the record of a prominent public intellectual the papers possess the two-fold virtue of documenting both
a rich inner life and an influential civic career.
After surveying the collection we found that the Basil John Vlavianos Papers (1890-1994) consisted of 341.25 linear feet of correspondence, literary manuscripts, drawings, legal documents,
academic papers, business records, telegrams, clippings/articles,
subject files, maps, programs, radio transcripts, exhibit plans, blueprints, phonographs, newspapers, bound volumes, photographs and
moving images. This material is roughly organized in eight series:
Correspondence, Academic/Legal, Politics, Organizations, Businesses, Subject Files, Personal and Photographs. As noted above, the
arrangement and description of the collection is ongoing.
This documentation is obviously capable of supporting a
diverse array of interesting research projects. Indeed, the diversity
of both format and subject matter is perhaps the collection's main
strength. The materials most certainly provide unique documentation for what has been a marginal narrative within American historiography — the Greek American experience 24 —and social
historians will certainly profit from the papers. Yet the documentation will also have a wider interest to historians of both southern Europe and the north Atlantic.
Produced by an influential figure of 20th century GreekAmerican life, the materials offer scholars a unique resource for the
pursuit of contemporary research agenda. For example, the papers
may prove useful to those interested in the subjects of modern Hellenism, transnational migration, bi-national identity, cultural
internationalism, comparative law, north Atlantic Diaspora communities, human rights activism, Greek-American relations, and
post-war New York cosmopolitanism. On each of these topics
scholars will discover a wealth of information. The papers' interdisciplinary breadth and international scope have the potential to
enrich many research fields including political, social and intellectual history, art history, legal history, international relations,
ethnic studies and women's studies.
Although the papers contain family documents dating to the
The Basil John Vlavianos Papers
99
late 19th century, the primary period of significance for the Vlavianos' papers is 1940-1947. During this time he served as publisher
and editor-in-chief of the National Herald. Opposite in political orientation to the royalist-learning Atlantis, Vlavianos edited the main
liberal opposition paper for seven years. Scholars researching the
American and Greek-American political experience during the War
will find tremendously valuable information in Vlavianos' editorial
correspondence, publishing records, photographs, phonographs,
reel-to-reel film, clippings and ephemera from this period.
The audio-visual materials are perhaps especially intriguing.
Just consider that the collection contains substantial journalistic
photography of war-time activities (in both America and Greece),
phonograph records containing transcriptions of war-time radiobroadcasts, as well as 8, 16, and 32 millimeter film. Once
processed and fully available for research, the National Herald
records will yield extremely interesting information about ethnic
journalism in New York City during the war and illumine the
lager socio-political situation of the Greek-American Diaspora. 25
The Vlavianos Papers will also provide information about the
diverse cultural world of post-War New York City. As noted
above, during the period from 1945-1960 New York City displaced Paris and emerged as the "cultural capital" of the world. 26
As a southern European emigre, editor and publisher of European
art books, owner of an art gallery, patron of the arts and university
professor at New York University, Vlavianos stood at the center of
an extremely cosmopolitan New York City cultural life. Scholars
seeking primary source material on the avant-garde art scene in
1950-1960s New York will find rich documentation in the manuscripts. Of special interest are the records of Arts Inc. publishing
house, the Golden Griffin bookstore and Griffin Gallery founded
and run by Vlavianos in Midtown Manhattan. These files contain
correspondence, drawings, art-book production files and proofs,
blueprints, gallery exhibit plans, publicity files, photographs, and
guest books. The correspondence files contain exchanges with
artists like George Constant, George Grosz, E.L. Kirchner, and
Fritz Busse, Czech graphic designer Ladislav Sutnar, as well as
with Czech architects Antonin Raymond and Ladislav Rado—all
significant figures associated in some way with the larger "International Style" movement. 27 In addition, the Papers contain production files for the Arts Inc. "Contemporary Artists Series" which
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
will benefit scholars of modern art—especially those interested in
abstract expressionism.
Researchers interested in human rights and the United Nations
will also find rare and unique materials. His legal files document
important developments in jurisprudence between the League of
Nations and the U.N. Of special note are Vlavianos' professional
papers created in his capacity as legal consultant to the Greek Delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in 1945. The records contain official correspondence with
the Greek Foreign Minister, John Sofianopoulos, private correspondence with his wife, original U.N. handbooks, photographs of
the proceedings, clippings and ephemera reflecting his involvement as both lawyer and journalist. Also of interest are the records
of the International League for the Rights of Man (now the International League for Human Rights) for which Vlavianos served as
treasurer and legal counsel. Given a long-standing interest in Greek
national affairs—especially the question of Cyprus, after the invasion of Turkey in 1974— the papers contain useful subject files on
international affairs from the entire Cold War period.
Researchers in Women's Studies will be interested in the extensive documentation of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and Holy
Trinity Cathedral's Philoptochos Society accumulated by Vlavianos' wife Kati. Photographs, scrapbooks, ledgers, and correspondence will provide useful information about the philanthropic
activities of Greek-American women during the war. Mrs. Vlavianos' files also contain valuable documentation about the presence and activities of the larger Greek Orthodox Church in America
during World War II. Scholars of Greek-American ecclesiastical
history should also be interested in the papers' small theological
pamphlet collection and correspondence with Church dignitaries.
Finally, the collection contains extensive correspondence. Vlavianos corresponded extensively with a diverse array of important
individuals, including academics, politicians, artists, journalists,
publishers, businessmen, religious figures, friends and family. Significant correspondents include: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt,
Henry Wallace, Nelson A. Rockefeller, George Sofianopoulos (Foreign Minister of Greece), Emmanuel J. Tsouderos (Prime Minister
of Greece), General Nicholas Plastiras (Prime Minister of Greece),
Andreas Papandreou (Prime Minister of Greece), Emmanuel
Tsouderos (Prime Minister of Greece), Sophocles Venizelos (Prime
The Basil John Vlavianos Papers
101
Minster of Greece), George Mavros (Greek Center Union Party),
Sen. Gary Hart, Fiorello La Guardia, Benjamin D. Merritt (Office
of Strategic Services), Antonin Raymond and Ladislav Rado
(Czech architects), Fritz Busse (Swiss painter/water colorist),
George Grosz (German Dadaist painter), Dimitris Mitropoulos
(Greek composer and pianist), Spyros Skouras (Chairman of Twentieth-Century Fox), Theodore Kritas (Director of the Greek
National Theater), Archbishop Athenagoras (Archbishop of the
Greek Orthodox Church in North & South America and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople).
It is evident that Vlavianos engaged with some of the more
notable figures of his time and the correspondence files shall provide researchers ample resources to explore Vlavianos' complex
socio-political relationships. The exchanges should offer a unique
vantage point from which to view twentieth-century American life.
Conclusion
The Basil J. Vlavianos papers represent a major scholarly
resource for the CSUS community. A significant historical research
collection, the Vlavianos papers interdisciplinary breadth and
international scope possess the potential to support an assortment
of interesting research projects in multiple scholarly fields. The collection will become available for research as series are arranged and
described. A preliminary inventory is presently available, and some
materials may be available for use. Interested researchers should
contact the Department of Special Collections to discuss access.
Notes
'Hereafter SCUA.
'California State University, Sacramento Public History Program.
http://www.csus.edu/pubhist/; University of California, Santa Barbara Department of History webpage. http://www.history.ucsb.edu/fields/field.php?
field_id = 1.
3 The author was concurrently enrolled in both programs during the period
of the SCUA internship. Likewise, David Lushbaugh, one of the processing
archivists on the Vlavianos Project, is a recent graduate of the SJSU SLIS program. San Jose State University, School of Library and Information Science.
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/.
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
4 With subject competence in anthropology and a background as a research
university-level manuscripts librarianship, her guidance' in the Vlavianos project proved invaluable.
3 See G.I. Paganelis. "The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection at California
State University, Sacramento: A Beacon of Hellenism in the Western United
States." Journal of Modern Greek Studies. 26, no. 1 (2008); 19-28.
°The Curator of the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection is George Paganelis.
See: http://library.csus.edu/tsakopoulos/
7 There is now a larger scholarly literature on the significance of new digital media for public history and cultural heritage studies. The following are representative. Lev Manovich. The Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 2002); Kalay, Yehuda E., Thomas Kvan, and Janice Affleck. New heritage:
new media and cultural heritage (London: Routledge, 2008); Cameron, Fiona, and
Sarah Kenderdine, Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: a critical discourse (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press., 2007). Especially interesting, insofar as it supports
the thesis of archivists being engaged in cultural production/re-production is
the work of Bolter and Grusin. Bolter, J. David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: understanding new media. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999)
8 See specifically: Cohen, Daniel J., and Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History: a
guide to gathering, preserving, and presenting the past on the Web (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Schreibman, Susan, Raymond George
Siemens, and John Unsworth, A Companion to Digital Humanities. Blackwell
companions to literature and culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004)
9 For examples of recent work in the field of digital history see the University of Virginia's Center for Digital History. http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/
index.php?page=VCDH. For examples of multimedia scholarly production
beyond the traditional printed monograph see the University of Southern California's Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology, http://www.vectorsjournal.org/.
'°For an example of a thematic research collection see the Walt Whitman
Archives at University of Lincoln, Nebraska, Center for Digital Research in the
Humanities. http://cdrh.unl.edu/ . The Whitman Archives is an electronic
research and teaching tool that sets out to make Whitman's work (specifically
photographs, facsimiles and encoded e-texts of manuscripts) easily accessible to
scholars, students, and general readers. The goal of the project directors is to
"create a dynamic site that will grow and change over the years."
http://w ww.whitmanarchive.org/about/over.html.
"For a description of the Tsakopoulos donation and collection see G.I.
Paganelis, "The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection at California State University,
Sacramento: A Beacon of Hellenism in the Western United States." Journal of
Modern Greek Studies. 26, no.1 (2008): 19-28.
12 Spyros Basil Vlavianos Center for the Study of Hellenism Newsletter, 3,
no. 1 (1993): 1.
13 See biographical sketch below for information about Vlavianos' editorial
activity.
"G.I. Paganelis. "The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection at California State
University, Sacramento: A Beacon of Hellenism in the Western United States."
Journal of Modern Greek Studies. 26, no.1 (2008): 19-28.
"For biographical information on Vlavianos see the New York Times obitu-
The Basil John Vlavianos Papers
103
ary for July 6, 1994, and the biography file at CSUS University Library, Special
Collections and University Archives.
18 For a complete list of publications see Vlavianos Biography file CSUS
Library Special Collections and University Archives.
"Vlavianos Biography file, CSUS Library Special Collections and University Archives.
18 For historical background on the Metaxas regime see: Mark. 1993. Inside
Hitler's Greece: the experience of occupation, 1941-44. New Haven: Yale University
Press. M. Pelt, "The Establishment and Development of the Metaxas Dictatorship in the Context of Fascism and Nazism, 1936-41." Totalitarian Movements
and Political Religions. 2 (2002): 143-172; A A Kallis, "Fascism and Religion:
The Metaxas Regime in Greece and the 'Third Hellenic Civilization'. Some
Theoretical Observations on 'Fascism', 'Political Religion' and 'Clerical Fascism'." Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 8, no.2 (2007): 229-246.
Jon V. Kofas, Authoritarianism in Greece: the Metaxas regime. (Boulder: East
European Monographs 1983).
19 For historical background on the war-time immigration of intellectuals
to New York City see Fleming, Donald, and Bernard Bailyn. The Intellectual
Migration; Europe and America, 1930-1960 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969); Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants; the Intellectual
migration from Europe, 1930-41. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Jay, Martin. 1985. Permanent Exiles: essays on the intellectual migration from Germany to
America. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968); and Jeffrey Mehlman, Emigre New York: French intellectuals in wartime Manhattan, 1940-1944 (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
20 0n Greek relief see the new collection of essays in Richard Clogg, Bearing Gifts to Greeks: Humanitarian Aid to Greece in the 1940s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Violetta Hionidou, Famine and Death in Occupied
Greece, 1941-1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
21 Vlavianos Biography file, CSUS University Library, Special Collections
and University Archives.
22 For an interesting history of cultural internationalism including international education programs see Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World
Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
23 Wallock, Leonard, and Dore Ashton, New York, 1940-1965: culture capital of the world (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1988).
24 Theodore Salutos, The Greeks in the United States. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1964); Spyros D. Orfanos, Reading Greek America: studies in the
experience of Greeks in the United States. (New York: Pella, 2002); also, the entire
issue of the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora. 14, nos.1-2 (1987).
25 Saloutos, Theodore. 1964. The Greeks in the United States. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, pp. 16-25.
26
Wallock, Leonard, and Dore Ashton. New York, Culture Capital of the
World, 1940-1965. (New York: Rizzoli, 1988).
27 Hasan-Uddin Kahn, International Style: Modernist Architecture from 1925 to
1965 (Köln: Taschen, 1998). 0. W. Fischer, "Ladislav Sutnar: Design in
Action." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 64 no.1 (2005): 102-104.
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
So the Clerks Will Not Be
Able to Fool You
by SPYROS D. ORFANOS
Greece in the summer months is drenched with sun and
tourists. Agriculture is her first industry, but tourism is her modern fate. For Greek immigrants and their offspring the summer is
often an opportunity to return to the patrida, the motherland, and
bathe in the mythical light and the "wine dark sea." They do so in
droves. This is a relatively new phenomenon and is probably an
indicator of their economic successes. Recently, I tried to make a
reservation at a Greek restaurant in New York City and to my
shock found out that .they were closed for the last three weeks of
August. I imagined a sign on the door -"Gone to Greece." When
I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, it was rare for Greeks
to travel back across the Atlantic Ocean. Like many uprooted people, the Greek immigrants of the twentieth century longed to
return to their homeland. The expense for most, however, was prohibitive. It took my father eleven years to make the return and he
took me with him—his first-born. I was eight years old, and I
spoke fluent Greek. My relatives were astonished at my familiarity with the island's terrain and my seeming recognition of all our
three hundred close relatives. As with my mother's breast milk, I
had taken in the descriptions of my parents' birthplace and the
islanders and incorporated them into my psyche. For me, Manhattan Island was just an extension of Ereikousa Island.
SPYROS D. ORFANOS, Ph.D., ABPP is Clinic Director at the New York
University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.
He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College, City University of New York. He is
editor of Reading Greek America.
105
My 91-year-old father, Demetrios, took his last breath in early
April of 2008 in a hospital in White Plains, New York, quite far
from his beloved Ereikousa. If you look at where the Ionian Sea
meets the Adriatic Sea, right at 39 degrees latitude North and 19
degrees longitude East, you will find Ereikousa. Up until recently
it could be located only on military maps. Ereikousa is about four
miles in perimeter and sits fifteen miles west of the bare mountainous coast of Albania and seven miles north of the large, lush
Greek island of Kerkyra ("Corfu" is its Italian and tourist name).
In modern times, Corfu was made famous in the elegant and
humorous travel writings of the Durrell brothers, Gerald and
Lawrence. Traveling by boat from Italy to Corfu, Lawrence Durrell claimed that he could tell when looking at the sea "where the
blue really begins."
I have had the breathtaking visual experience of fishing on
Ereikousa in the summer and witnessing a huge, orange sun
ascending and a bright, red moon descending as both hung on a
dark sky. Ereikousa has no broken statues or discos and its ferry
service is so subject to wild Poseidon that tourists and holiday
packages hardly exist. The island had no electricity or running
water or roads until 1970. The dreaded military junta of that time
did what all cunning dictatorships do; it built roads and installed
electricity in the provinces. The islanders liked the improvements.
Nevertheless, they were psychologically more comfortable in their
simple nineteenth-century existence than in the twentieth century. The twenty-first century for the older generation on Ereikousa is a study in quantum confusion.
For islanders of my father's generation, the defining experience
before the trauma of emigrating to the United States was the Nazi
occupation during World War II. The occupation was brutal and
sometimes deadly. My father rescued his wounded brother and
four other islanders at sea after their fishing boat had been attacked
mistakenly by American patrol planes during a lull in the German
occupation. "The sea became red with blood," he would recall and
sounded numb from the experience as if sharply splitting emotion
and memory. "Were you not scared yourself of being bombed?" I
wanted to know. His answer: "Who thinks and feels in such circumstances?"
My father jumped ship in Baltimore in 1948 and was an illegal immigrant until his Ereikousa bride, Angelina, with her
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American naturalization papers came to the United States in 1950.
He came for economic reasons; she came to conceive children. For
uneducated, unskilled people they were remarkably successful in
their adopted land; America has a history of allowing that. My
father went from being a sailor roaming the seven seas on merchant
ships to laboring in hot, flour-drenched basements in Upper West
Side union bakeries. My mother went from toiling in olive groves
to raising children in a country she never understood. They paid
the usual, expensive price all immigrants pay for a better life.
"America is so dark," my father would say. "You can't see the sun
because the buildings block it out." A major part of my father's
idea for a better life was educated children. "Why get educated?
Why not go back to Ereikousa and live a wonderful life surrounded
by family and fishing?" I would ask in all seriousness. He would
look at me and with resignation respond only to the first question,
"So the clerks will not be able to fool you." "There are no clerks on
Ereikousa," I reasoned. "Ereikousa is too poor. You have to be on
Kerkyra or somewhere else to make your bread," he would
instruct. "And there are always clerks outside of Ereikousa."
In the Greece of my father's day, the clerks in state bureaucracies possessed remarkable power. The clerks were notorious for
their contemptuous attitudes and for controlling uneducated people by having them wait countless hours and often forcing them
to come back on other days and in the end might never wind up
serving them. My parents never really learned to speak much English; such were their psychological ties to Greece. I remember
often accompanying them to government offices, translating and
interpreting for them. As a little boy of ten it was not easy dealing with Manhattan agencies and official documents, but I did the
best I could My father expected such. After all, I was getting educated. Trapped between two worlds, I could not argue about the
difficulty in straddling the space between Manhattan and Ereikousa.
My siblings and I decided to bury my father's remains in the
United States. This was against his wishes, but we reasoned that if
we buried him on Ereikousa, his gravesite would rarely be visited
by his immediate family. This was a painful decision for all of us,
and as the first-born I felt a certain disappointment in myself. I
allowed my head to rule my heart. Before leaving for a trip to
Greece this summer, I planned to hold a memorial service for him
So the Clerks Will Not Be Able to Fool You 107
on Ereikousa. We still have many relatives there. I thought he
would have liked to be remembered by the islanders. Ereikousa
was where he really wanted to be remembered. The arrangements
were made with the island's church committee and the priest: I
was looking forward to the service, despite my personal views on
theism.
On the first day of my arrival in Athens this past summer, I
did what I always do, I visited the Acropolis. As I approached the
entryway from the southern slope I had a curious feeling and a
peculiar thought. "Hold me," I whispered to the Parthenon as I
gazed up at it. What was this "disturbance" as Freud might put
it? Was it an assertion of a deep need? Who was I addressing? With
some swift reflection I came to the belief that it was a mourning
wish directed to the goddess Athena—my mythical muse. Later, I
remembered that on my first visit to Greece I had urged my father
to take me to the Acropolis which he eagerly did. It was his first
visit too. I associated my feelings with the emotional holding functions of mourning rituals about which an insightful friend has
written.
On my second day in Athens, I was devastated by news that
the memorial service planned for my father on the upcoming Sunday could not take place. "Impossible to do," said my cousin
Giorgi. He is always used to doing the impossible so I knew it to
be true. During my father's last days when he was in a hospital
intensive care unit, Giorgi who lives on Ereikousa would call daily.
The nurses allowed us to use the cell phone despite the administration's prohibition. Nurses have a way of understanding matters
human. On one such day, I asked Giorgi to describe the night sky
to my father. My father said that he felt as he had as a young boy.
He said he could see the stars and smell a gentle spring wind. "I
feel I can touch the stars," he said expressively and with calm as
his pupils widened.
I was told that the church committee of St. Nicholas had been
informed by the visiting priest (Ereikousa is too insignificant to
have its own priest) that on the Sunday in question, the Bishop of
the Ionian Islands was making his annual trip to Ereikousa. "The
Bishop does not hold memorial services. We had this sort of thing
happen before," explained my cousin apologetically. I almost
dropped my cell phone. I knew all the people on the church committee. In fact, I had grown up with some of the members in Greek
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
coffee shops on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I knew that
they loved my father and that they would want to memorialize
him in the presence of at least one of his children.
Clerk mentality was emerging once again to block my father's
wishes even after his death. Bewilderment and melancholy
gripped me and then enveloped me with some gauze-like substance. It took me a few hours before I could recover and realize
that I had some choices I could make. I was a man in mourning,
but I was also educated. Surely, the Greek Orthodox Church would
respond if I used the right argument and I spoke to the right clerks
with the right tone of voice. Tone of voice is most important to
Greek dialogue. From my Athens hotel, I dialed the Archdiocese
of Greece and spoke to a delightful theologian who explained
church mourning rituals and then gave me clues on how to lean on
the church officials of the Ionian Islands. I then called the head of
the church office on Kerkyra and after some intricate maneuvering
got to speak to the personal assistant to the Bishop. I explained the
situation and added that I had traveled all the way from the United
States for this and that the Athens church powers had told me that
there really was no theological reason for the Bishop's visit to
trump the memorial service. I gave him my best smile even though
it was over the phone—the kind of smile the Greeks learned centuries ago when dealing with Turkish, Venetian, and British occupiers. "Call me in five minutes." said the priest. After following
his instructions and adding five minutes for good measure, I dialed
again. The priest told me, "The Bishop has decided with enthusiasm and no obligation to hold the service." I was relieved and cried
on the phone. "The leaders of this Church," I thought with surprise, "do respond to the problems of the living." I also understood
that euros were not to exchange hands. Still, my cynicism about
the power of clerks kept me from feeling confident that the service would in fact take place.
It came to pass that on Ereikousa on a hot Sunday morning in
July a memorial service was held for my father. The tiny, picturesque church of St. Nicholas with its whitewashed walls and austere Byzantine icons is over a century old and no one really knows
when it was built. St. Nicholas is the protector saint of Greek
sailors. The church sits in a valley on the southern coast of Ereikousa a few yards from the sea. It is surrounded by olive trees that
bear the wrinkles of my ancestors. That day it was bursting with
So the Clerks Will Not Be Able to Fool You 109
over a hundred and fifty people—almost the entire current population. It felt like the whole island was honoring my father. I
moved towards a pew with my wife and daughter but soon realized that all the men were on the other side of the church so I
crossed the center aisle. I stood next to Giorgi and next to another
man I remembered who in the 1950s had a grocery store on Twentieth Street and Ninth Avenue, exactly where an upscale Chelsea
cafe now stands. I felt held by the men.
Wearing a large, jeweled crown and majestic, flowing blue and
white robes, the bearded Bishop was accompanied by three
bearded priests and two clean shaven cantors. The Byzantine
hymns were sublime and the morning's heat, sweat, incense, history, culture, and religion interpenetrated to create a feeling of
transcendence. My father's life was being celebrated in a manner
he would have recognized and appreciated. His beloved, suffering
Ereikousa was weeping for him. I was not surprised by my sobbing, but I was taken aback by the power of the spontaneous emotional embrace by the islanders. I was so glad I had not let the
clerks fool me. In fact, the awesomeness of the experience filled me
with a deep, visceral understanding of the power of attachments.
Little had I appreciated how my father's longing taught me so
much about the power of human connectedness. I had always
thought it was my mother.
Long ago in the days of ancient tragedy, Antigone had to defy
ruling authorities in order to bury her brother. Her noble duty was
to her family and not the state. I left Ereikousa feeling sorrow for
the loss of my father but content at having honored his memory
with his beloved islanders. I had brought him back home. As the
summer came to a close I realize that, "Death," as the poet
Odysseus Elytis says, "does not have the final word."
110
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
CONFERENCE REVIEW
Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories,
Identities ® Liverpool, May 23-24,
2008
by JOSEPH SMITH
The study of Greek cinema has been neglected until recent
decades like much academic investigation of modern Greece.'
Thankfully, the situation is changing as indicated by the variety
and innovation of papers given at the conference Greek Cinema:
Texts, Histories, Identities held by the University of Liverpool and
Liverpool John Moores University on 23-24 May 2008. Ending a
ten year gap since the last UK conference 2 it added a small but welcome Hellenic dimension to Liverpool's Capital of European Culture celebrations.
The main conference themes of textuality, history and identities were addressed in keynote talks by Dimitris Eleftheriotis,
Maria Stassinopoulou and Lizianna Delveroudi. Eleftheriotis skilfully analysed frame mobility (or lack of it) in Theodore
Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze/To V lemma tou Odyssea (1995) and Tassos Boulmetis' Greek-Turkish co-production Politiki Kouzinal A
Touch of Spice (2003), which more familiarly fuses aspects of art
house with CGI Orientalism to elegiacally present Istanbul as a
location of relative Turkish-Greek harmony before intercommunal
violence. Christos Dermentzopoulos later revisited the "political
pressure-cooker" of multi-ethnic Istanbul in Politiki Kouzina to
discuss its attempted contestation of personal and official histories,
memories and identities. That film made an unusually strong
impression on Greek audiences, and exemplified an increased
growth and acceptance of Greek films as hybrid forms of blockJOSEPH W. SMITH is an independent scholar specializing in the culture
and social history of Anglo/Greek relations.
113
busters after almost catastrophic falls in audiences and productions, a point noted in Michalis Kokonis' exploration of post1980s New Greek Cinema.
The conference mapped out potential research areas and reenergised key themes or debates. Stassinopoulou's exploration of
the often-daunting options available to historians of Greek cinema
detailed the formidable archival and other difficulties. It reached
back to Katerina Yanniki's earlier paper on historiography, which
noted the "sporadic, spasmodic and fragmentary manner" of many
kiistories of Greek cinema, often written journalistically by individuals with no apparent awareness of methodology. Delveroudi
surveyed the even more intimidating task of researching silent
films, building on an earlier presentation by Vassiliki Tsitsopoulou
on the benefits of adopting a "geo-cultural" approach to comedy,
hybridity and mimicry in early Greek cinema.
Sessions were grouped into eight inter-woven strands. A chronological thread alternated examinations of cinema in the 1950s, the
1960s and the "transitionary" post-junta metapolitefsi through to a
"Postmodern Era," although some papers seemed unclear or hidebound in their periodization, especially with products of Old and
New Greek Cinema. Welcome notes of controversy would perhaps
have emerged more strongly over a longer conference.
History, historiography and cultural geography were well
served by a session on Angelopoulos and Greek history. The complaint by some attendees that Greek cinema needs to get "beyond"
Angelopoulos, who personifies its acceptable face to many outsiders despite wilful obliqueness or obscurantism in the eyes of
others, remains debatable. The many who did not attend Linda
Myrsiades' paper, "Heroic Identity: Listes, Andartes, and Theo
Angelopoulos Megalexandros (1980)," missed a challenging analysis rich in intertextual revelation which was a model for interdisciplinary analysis. She explored how legends and rituals
surrounding icons of male power, resistance, legitimacy or criminality in ancient and modern Greek history often uneasily shape
each other leading to destructive consequences. Such figures interact with more traditional heroes such as those depicted in rural
foustanella films like Golfo (first directed by Kostas Vahatoris in
1914).
Myrsiades' paper was ably complemented by classicist Pantelis
Michelakis's examination of 'The Tragedy of History in Theo
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Angelopoulos' The Travelling Players (1974)," set between 193952 whilst also referencing Aeschylus' classical Qresteia. Michelakis
showed how events can often be reset as classical tragedies or subversive fables as was earlier discussed by Myrsiades in relation to
the plethora of clashing accounts of the death and beheading of
leftist resistance leader Aris Velouchiotis. 3 Violence and power,
national vigour and punishment were also surveyed in Ioulia Mermigka's "schizoanalytical" exploration of Tonia Marketaki's John
the Violent (1973) produced during the final year of the colonels'
junta. While numerous papers examined female stardom, Mermigka's paper was one of the few to discuss women directors.
A highlight was Nikos Leros' talk on constructions of Greekness in the neglected but often controversial works of
director/writer Stavros Tsiolis from the 1980s and '90s. Tsiolis'
provocative, carnivalesque texts celebrate contemporary life in
provincial rural locations and are dominated by the socially marginalised. These comic works are anything but bucolic, sentimental or submissive. Whilst this "other" Greece also acts as an
antipode to Athens' "formed image of Greek life" in Angelopoulos' films, 4 in Tsiolis' more dynamic work otherness is subverted
to show how Greeks often feel strangers at home. What exactly
"Greek" represents otherwise was largely unaddressed in sessions
until late in the conference.
Cinematic Athens of the 1950s and '60s provided the focus for
papers by Theodora Hadjiandreou and Anna Poupou on modernity, iconic space, and nostalgia, and Nick Potamitis successfully
married the supposedly disparate genres of "rnelo{dramal" and
farce from this era, via the films of Giorgos Tzavellas and Alekos
Sakellarios. Nostalgia and estrangement, transnational and familial, were key to Marianna Volioti's reading of the ideas haunting
Angelopoulos' Eternity and a Day (1998): Xenitis; Korfoula mou;
Argadini. While Xenitis denotes the pain of exile, Korfoula mou signifies memories of maternal comfort, while Argadini warns against
leaving reconciliation too late.
The presentation by Gary Needham, one of the few nonGreeks attending the conference, discussed how academics can
take the study of Greek cinema " 'beyond" Greece or even knowledge of Greek itself, to avoid essentialism, parochialism or elitism.
As Needham showed, co-productions like Ilias Milonakos' soft
core Queen of Sados (I mavri Emmanouella, 1979) are amongst the
Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories, Identities 115
most widely exhibited and distributed films concerning Greece
shown outside Greece, and hint at complicity in exoticization,
eroticisation and abjection between external and domestic actors.
A comparative approach to film can help to circumvent the "hermetic, official and mono-cultural" flavour caused by Greek exceptionalism, still the dominant model for Greek history and culture.
Though exceptionalism is being increasingly questioned, little of
this was echoed at the conference. Greece is often seen as an anomalous case, although, as with Spain, it can act as a prime focus for
analysis of cinematic projection of crisis. Konstandinos Kornetis'
paper on counter-cultural cinema in post-junta Greece and posttransicion Spain showed another way forward.
Olga Kourelou's look at the commonplace imagery of Greece as
a land of "sea, sun, and sexuality" revitalised debates on how questions of gender underpin canonical films such as Jules Dassin's Never
on Sunday (1960) or Michael Cacoyannis' Zorba the Greek (1964),
both commercial and critical successes and amongst the relatively
few Greek films to capture worldwide interest. The critical importance of gender was reflected throughout the conference. Masculinities received less attention than might have been hoped for,
particularly given the patriarchal, military-dominated nature of
Greek society for much of the last century. Yvonne Alexia Kosma's
feminist Foucauldian reading of Alekos Sakellarios' comedy Yellow
Gloves (1960) extended to the symbolism of moustaches as an indicator of class and male tensions, though her brave approach perhaps
suffered from over-theorisation. Similarly, whilst nostalgia also has
a critical role in representation of Greece, its gendered, compliant
undertones did not receive much attention.
At times, some papers provided more description than analysis, although many applied interdisciplinary techniques to interweave contextual and textual scrutiny and opened up unfamiliar
films. As with exceptionalism, the question of what exactly
"Greekness" means and how this affects the construction of
Greece's cinematic others, addressed increasingly in recent films,
was only briefly addressed. Also somewhat overlooked was the
extent to which films can be as much insider as outsider products,
as with those of the famously "philhellenic" Dassin or Anglophile
Greek-Cypriot Cacoyannis.
In conclusion, the conference challenged researchers to map
out and re-think Greek film studies and demonstrated that
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
research into Greek cinema is on the edge of a boom. It provided
a major networking opportunity for academics and postgraduates
working in a wide variety of specialisms and locations, similar to
the Greek cinema strands at the Modern Greek Studies Association conference at Yale in 2007. 5 A further strength would have
been more opportunities to view films during the conference to
promote discussion, especially given the rarity of Greek films on
British cinema and television screens. Such small but significant
factors would contribute much to the study and promotion of this
much neglected cinema.
Notes
'Some critical hostility in Britain is shown via Ronald Bergan's 'A Feast of
Greek cheese,' The Guardian, Nov. 27 2006, which surveys 25 Greek films premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Only Eduart (dir. Angeliki Antoniou) passed scrutiny.
2 T heatres of War: Fifty Years of Greek Cinema, University of Cambridge, Sept.
17-18, 1998.
3 See also L. Myrsiades, 'Theatrical Metaphors in Theodoros Angelopoulos's
The Travelling Players,' Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (May
2000), pp.135-49.
4 Angelopoulos in conversation with Andrew Horton and Michael Wilmington, as quoted in Myrsiades, "Theatrical Metaphors," p.146.
5 MGSA Symposium, Yale University, Hellenic Studies Program, October
18-21, 2007.
Greek Cinema: Texts, Histories, Identities 117
BOOK REVIEWS
Book Reviews
Adrianne Kalfopoulou, Broken Greek: a language to belong. Austin, TX: Plain
View Press, 2006.
Hundreds of memoirs have been written by Greek immigrants about their
adaptation to life in America. Hundreds more and numerous articles have been
written by their children on that same theme. Almost as many accounts have
been written by Greek Americans about their first encounter with Greece. Rare
in these rich autobiographical genres, however, is the kind of book Andrianne
Kalfopoulou has written, the experience of a Greek born in the United States
who has chosen to make "the old country" her home. Her narrative sets a new
standard for the genre.
Broken Greek is not postcard Greece or a naive hymn to idealized villagers.
Instead, Kalfopoulou is extremely candid about the various cultural negatives
in contemporary Greek life. That frankness, however, is largely expressed as feelings of frustration and bewilderment. Her narrative never turns into a vindictive tirade against contemporary Greeks or a repudiation of Greek culture.
Language is genuinely important to the bilingual Kalfopoulou, who is also
a poet. She often quotes from various Greek sources that range from poets to
newspapers to the people she meets in everyday life. More broadly, her introduction is a thoughtful reflection on the Greek language. She notes that the
Greeks have a word for nearly everything of consequence, but they lack a word
for efficiency. She later observes that contemporary Greeks are not good at using
either commas or stoplights, structures designed to break what otherwise might
become linguistic and physical chaos.
Although she has settled in Greece, Kalfopoulou travels to the United
States often. Some of her most interesting comments are on the differences she
senses between the two cultures, particularly the rhythms of everyday life and
the values they reflect. Kalfopoulou has other transnational interests. One of her
poetry collections, Fig, has been translated into Polish and she regularly teaches
in the summer schools program of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The first chapters of Broken Greek introduce us to her Greek relatives, particularly her yiayia, and acclimate us to her personality. They are interesting
and compelling as all such narratives are when well written, but they do not
break new thematic ground. That begins to happen about a fourth of the way
into the book as Kalfopoulou uses her own life to probe the intricacies of modern Greek culture as she is personally experiencing them. Her operating a car
in Athens, her encounter with the university bureaucracy, and her decision to
buy a house reveal much about everyday life in Greece.
The chapter about automobiles is humorous for the reader, but these experiences obviously were exasperating for the author. The tales of fighting another
121
person to squeeze into a parking space or to navigate a narrow road will be familiar to anyone who has tried to operate a car in Athens. Her biggest trauma occurs
when she attempts to pay a parking ticket. Getting the right stamp in the right
office at the right time would be farcical if it weren't actuality. Beneath that
farce, however, is the bitter reality that the Greek bureaucracy pretty much
doesn't work or at least not very effectively.
Kalfopoulou's travails with the Greek university system bare another major
and chronic cultural problem. In the spring of 2000, Kalfopoulou applied for a
post in the English department of the prestigious University of Athens. The
post was officially listed as a "Lectureship in American Literature and Culture."
She found the application process tedious and arcane. Among many other
absurdities, the process ultimately required that she provide thirty copies of her
dissertation. Kalfopoulou complied, but the copies were rejected initially
because they were galleys from the book that had evolved from her dissertation.
The committee would only accept copies of the dissertation in exactly the form
in which the dissertation had been approved. They were not much concerned
about whether the published work demonstrated command of the field and
might even be accessible reading for students.
The real problem, of course, had nothing to do with dissertations, but the
old Greek habit of pre-selecting someone for a supposedly competitive post,
that someone obviously enjoying some insider's connection to the committee.
In this case that person had no training or expertise in American culture.
Instead, she was a specialist in British literature, Spanish playwrights, and
Greek poets. Her dissertation had been a comparative study of the work of Frederico Garcia Lorca, T.S. Eliot and Odysseus Elytis. Eliot was the only connection to American literature. Although an influential poet, Eliot left the United
States in 1914 at age twenty-six and became a British citizen in 1939.
Most friends advised Kalfopoulou that this was just the way hiring in the
Greek system works. One person, however, noted that the committee did not
have the legal right to hire an unqualified person in a position that was so clearly
defined. Rather than simply appealing to the committee, which was unlikely to
acknowledge its own partisanship, Kalfopoulou decided she would she would
take her case to the Minister of Education. Getting a hearing was hard enough,
but the main reaction was amazement that anyone would dare to mount such a
protest, however valid. The case eventually went to the Greek Supreme Court.
Among the comments of her attorney at her first hearing was that he was pleased
that the judge did not seem too irritated by the case. Eight years later, having
gone through several legal delays and postponements, the case remains unresolved. In would seem that at least in matters of education, the Greek legal systems grinds at the pace of a paralyzed turtle. Kalfopoulou discusses others who
have had similar experiences.
Despite these many problems Kalfopoulou remained very much taken by
the more charming aspects of Greek life. She decided to buy a house on Patmos
and immediately got contradictory advice regarding real estate. Her lawyer
insisted that she must pay attention to every detail in the law, as buying property in Greece was technically complex. He did not want her to be caught in
any legal battles, which could be endless. Greek friends on the island, however,
told her what was critical were her local allies. As a Greek American who spoke
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Greek fluently, she was far more desirable as a neighbor than the many French
and Italian vacationers who had purchased summer homes on the island.
The story of finding the right house and getting the ensuing negotiations
is another tale of Greek calamities and joys. Her local friends did much of the
haggling over price and managed the needed repairs. Kalfopoulou had been
aware from the start that there was only a short distance separating her new
home from the one directly above her. Only when she moved in did she fully
realize that her neighbor's house was so positioned that she had virtually no privacy. Her neighbor, in fact, had a direct view of the patio where she intended to
spend considerable time and an outdoor lavatory. This reality initiated the battle of the wall.
Kalfopoulou built a wall high enough to insure her privacy. Her Italian
neighbor, a rich lawyer from Venice, physically tore it down and got court orders
against further construction. During the course of the battle that followed, the
Italian asserted he was willing to spend as much time and money as necessary
to have his own.way. The fears her attorney had raised from the onset had materialized. Even if the law were on her side, the wealthy Italian attorney could keep
her in turmoil almost indefinitely
Just when things looked hopeless, Greek culture came to her rescue. Her
friends, knowing the two houses had once been joined, arranged to have the wall
area designated as an archeological site, an action the Italian thought would
surely aid him He soon discovered that in the matter of building or not building on an archeological site, the last word in Greece falls to the village archeological committee. Its members happened to include Kalfopoulou's closest
friends on Patmos. They decided in her favor much as the educational committee had decided against her.
In discussing each of these and other problems she faced, Kalfopoulou
quotes frequently from literary figures, mass media, and individuals with whom
she is personally involved. These often take the story well beyond the particulars of her life. In the matter of the wall, considerable resentment is voiced by
Greek islanders against the foreigners who have bought much of the best land
on Patmos. The locals assert these foreigners often behave as if they were colonial masters of the island rather than guests.
For all her problems in Greece, when Kalfopoulou returned to the United
States for a sabbatical, much about her native land distressed her. The endless
malls and urban sprawl were vexing. And the people, well, somehow, they were
not as cordial or interesting as Greeks. It was not simply a matter of liking
Greece now that she was distant from its daily woes. She sensed a profound culture gap between Greece and America, and, she much preferred Greece, despite
its warts.
Broken Greek is very personal in terms of its emotional fervor, but it remains
vague about the details of Kalfopoulou's previous life. We learn little about the
young daughter who lives with her or the how and why of forces that made
Kalfopoulou decide to take permanent residence in Greece. In that sense Broken
Greek is less a formal autobiography than a fascinating account of the interactions between two cultures. These often find expression in the poems she wrote
at this time or previous poems she chooses to include. These are not added as an
afterthought or as an appendix; they are integrated directly into the text. We
Book Reviews
123
can observe how particular experiences we have seen her live through are rendered as poetry. We need no explanatory footnotes to recognize the personal references at hand for we have been through the experience with her. The poems
often sum up what she has been thinking and writing about in her prose.
Toward the conclusion of Broken Greek, her assessment of life in Greece gives
way to an assessment of American culture. Speaking of a trip to the United
States, she expresses herself by referring to a section of her long poem American
Vignettes.
I need an address on checks.
My passport is not enough.
The name I have is longer than it's supposed to be.
My father chopped it
in fear he would be sent back
to the old country where he could not
save money. Here the fat of the land
is in our pockets, our Life's Savings, a diet
of all the fat we want, but no fruits
and few vegetables. That is what
I carry, oil of the fruit from the old country,
olive, virgin. The chopped name, no longer virgin
comes from the long one—
land of the oil I cook with.
I crave your taste.
—Dan Georgakas
Dean Kostos, Editor. Pomegranate Seeds. Somerset Hall Press: Boston, 2008.
A defining element of the literature of contemporary American ethnicity
is evidence of a re-envisioning of the writer's ethnic past within its newly
acquired American context. As such Dean Kostos' anthology of 164 GreekAmerican poems Pomegranate Seeds, An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry is a
rich addition to the voices of hybrid and hyphenated American identity. In his
preface Kostos makes the point that he has "assiduously avoided embracing any
style over another" but finds "surreality" to be a recurring quality in the poems,
and suggests an explanation in the possible role Mythology might play in the
collective imaginary of a Greek American psyche; on an "unconscious level
myth's metaphorical archetypes and dark, irrational focus still inform our writing" (21). Indeed myth and its many-peopled presences surface and resurface in
this collection, from John Bradley's modern-voiced Icarus "always warning
me/about something or other" and Yiorgos Chouliaras' "Theseus' Mythology of
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
Consciousness" to Lili Bita's "Iphigenia", Ioanna Carlsen's "When Hermes
Whispers" or Emily Fragos' arresting "Spindlers" (to name some of the poems
and poets); the variety of ways mythology and history are used to locate the
speakers in their relation to pasts reinvented in modern idioms is striking, and
indicative of the resilience of these ancient tropes in their new world settings.
Chouliaras' Theseus notes:
And somewhere in its cold shiver
Anxiety's small caterpillar is stirring
Able at any moment to change itself
Into the huge dark butterfly
Overshadowing with its wings
The childhood hiding places of my life
It is impossible for me to remember
how this ball of yarn found itself in my hands
endlessly unraveling.
Veronica Golos' twined poems "Persephone of Demeter" and "Demeter to
Persephone" likewise expands on the ancient archetypes in describing alternating views of Demeter's grief and Persephone's openness to leaving behind the
grief-stricken mother whose "words were nothing but salt./" for "the dream/ of
this desert place/".
Another recurring trope in the poems collected here is the yearning for
something or someone associated with the poet's ancestral land; nostos, in Greek
a yearning after homeland, defines much of the Greek poetry of the Diaspora
which here takes on the added characteristic of weaving in received narratives
of war, migration, and experiences of acculturation by previous generations.
Poems like Neil Carpathios' "Coins", a homage to his grandfather "who arrived
in America/ with twenty bucks/ and a battered valise;" or Constantine Contogenis' "Those Moments" that describes the experiences that made his father's
new world life possible as he remembers his telling of: "Those drachmas you
stole from the bowl of running apricots to buy ice cream for friends, were dollars your father had sent./ Blood money, your mother said, right?/ This is your
father's blood." There is Stephanos Papadopoulos' "An Inherited Memory of War"
and Cleopatra Mathis' "Cleopatra Theodos" or Eleni Fourtouni's "Killing Time"
and Thea Halo's "Night" all of which speak to the significance of lineage, of
passing on history, and the various ways it is lost.
If one could attempt to identify what constitutes a Greek-American inheritance? What kinds of images, themes, repeat themselves, if there is any particular Greek-American context? One might begin with what the
Greek-American text shares with other American immigrant ethnicities, the
renewed immediacy the past takes on in becoming 'American', or in this case
`Greek American', the unique, often uncanny ways it becomes significant and
feeds into the poet's ongoing definitions of self. While there are several poems
in the anthology that explore juxtapositions and conflicts of old world traditions
or assumptions in new world settings like Dan Georgakas' "Greek Widows of
Book Reviews
125
America" and Nicholas Johnson's "Point of Honor", I would like to focus on two
poems that specifically make connections between language and identity,
George Economou's "An Evening in Kingfisher" and George Kalamaras' "Looking for My Grandfather with Odysseas Elytis".
Economou's "An Evening in Kingfisher" dramatizes the consequence of a
name, how lineage is self-consciously presented when encountered as other, in
this case by a man from the Elks Club in Kingfisher, Oklahoma whom the
speaker-poet is in conversation with. When Huck Rice asks the speaker where
he's from and he answers "the university" Huck says:—" 'Well, I kin see that. I
mean with a name/ like that where are yuh from?"' pointing out that the name
on his tag is "not an American name." The speaker's answer is telling when he
says, 'Sure it is, from Greece." The dialogue continues, foregrounding the shifting terms of identity, but particularly the assumptions of what constitutes
`Americanness':
When did your people come here from
Germany, Huck?"
Easing up on the squeeze,
"Oh hell we bin here forever."
"You mean you're Native American?"
"No, no Indian. What d'yuh do at OU?"
"I teach English."
"With a name like that, yuh teach English?"
"I run the whole show in English, Huck.
I'm chairman of the department, brought in
from New York."
Despite the speaker's insistence on his being American, Huck cannot get
beyond the foreign-sounding name: "Well, George, how d'yuh like workin/
here among all these Americans?" he continues, when George answers "I told
you Huck, I was born here./" The wry humor in this exchange that goes on for
another 23 lines has the poet-speaker giving Huck a short history lesson of origins that includes Greek going "right back to the/language of the New Testament" though Huck continues to be interested in how a Greek can teach
English. The many ironies in the poem regarding identity and language, who
in fact has an accent, and who is most able to privilege knowledge highlights a
larger insight into how ancestry and narratives of origin are used to express the
complexities of multiple belongings.
George Kalamaras' "Looking for My Grandfather with Odysseas Elytis" is
another example of this, adding a dream dimension to how lineage and language
coincide in surreal ways and inform each other in the speaker's first discovery of
the Greek Nobel laureate, Odysseas Elytis' poetry; the speaker imagines himself walking through the streets of Athens with Elytis whose arm is looped
through his, and who is helping him look for his grandfather George Avgerinos
"though he has been dead twenty-six years". They then find themselves on the
island of Zakynthos, "the island of my grandfather's birth" as Elytis keeps
repeating "Not here, not here", while the speaker relives memories, real or
invented, of the taste of lamb's tongue, "the retsina scent of a tavern" all to lead
.
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JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
to the poem's central memory of the speaker's discovery of Elytis "That solstice
night in Colorado nineteen years ago when I kissed the back cover photo of
Elytis from Maria Nephele before writing poetry, before logging the first vowel
. . . Drops of light, drops of light, I had silently chanted, echoing Elytis's core ..
" the experience engenders the speaker's poetic voice as Elytis joins with him in
chanting "Drops of light, Giorgos. Vowel without end, Giorgos. Tongue in the chest."
The search for the grandfather the speaker is named after becomes a search for
the speaker's identity as a poet, and the expression of that self in the English
language after having been initiated into it by a Greek poet's work.
Examples of such marriages of old world narratives and experiences, either
passed down or experienced first-hand, with new world contexts are intriguing
and speak for the fascinating ways one of the world's oldest literary inheritances
has found its way into new world voices. Pomegranate Seeds is a wonderfully
inclusive collection that attests to the geographic, linguistic and cultural landscapes the Greek American poet has traveled to voice the challenges and rewards
of so many legacies. Or in the Nicholas Samaras' words: "Displaced by the
world's history, we inhabited the world."
—Andrianne Kalfopoulou
Book
Reviews
127