Product Description

As expected, the experiences of Elias Petropoulos in Thessaloniki, and his passion to deal with what national historiography had rejected for decades, led him to address the issue of the Jews in Thessaloniki. However, what urged him to dive into the painful memory was the revival of anti-Semitism after the 1974 political changeover in Greece. This is the historical context of Petropoulos’ writings presented in this book.

His articles presented the sincere agony of an active writer –perhaps the only one at the time– protesting against the voluntary oblivion and state abuses of History. Through his writings, he revealed aspects of the silenced Jewish past and the everyday life of the multinational city of Thessaloniki. It is by no means secondary the fact that Petropoulos wrote as a witness of the events, as a non-Jew, and as a member of the majority in Thessaloniki’s community. In that sense, Petropoulos offers his readers a way to read history and place themselves, individually and collectively, in the historical flow.