Greece’s Jewish community on Thursday welcomed “with immense emotion” a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to hand over the Jewish Holocaust archives that were taken to Moscow after the end of World War II, ekathimerini.com reports.
The biggest part of the archives relates to the once-thriving Jewish community in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city.
Thessaloniki’s pre-War archives were looted on July 11, 1942, by the Nazis who plundered archives, books, and religious artifacts from 30 Synagogues, libraries, and communal institutions in the city.
After the Soviet army took over Berlin in May 1945, those archives were transferred to Moscow where they were kept for eight decades in secret files.
“Our history returns home at last!,” the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) said in a press release on Thursday. “It is an achievement of vital significance to our country’s history. We express our thankfulness to the Greek Prime Minister and all those who have worked and continue working for the realization of the return of the pre-War Jewish archives to our country.”
The news coincides with the 200th anniversary of Greece’s war of independence, KIS remarked.
“For the Greek Jewry, these archives bring light to its historic course, sacred heirlooms of the light of life and the darkness of the looting and the Holocaust. Their restitution would mean Justice and would transmit knowledge about a part of the Greek people that contributed to the progress of the country and no longer exists, that of the 60,000 Greek Jews who were deported to and exterminated in the Nazi death camps,” it added.
The news was announced during a press briefing by Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Wednesday.
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