Toward a Greek History of the Jews of Salonica?

Avdela, Efi

doi:10.1007/s10835-014-9220-3

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Greek-Jewish historiography shares a number of elements of Greek historiography, be that in its thematic and methodological ethnocentrism that yields homogenisation and a top-down approach with an absence of an intersectional social history (Avdela 2014). This would be an attempt to dismantle the rigid boundaries of a community and to accept that it is a fiction to believe that Greek Jews were and are one unified entity without layering of ethnic, gender, regional and class identities, at the very least, with crossing and interactions amongst generations and other groups.…”

Section: Timespaces As Contestations: 'Re-membering' Holocaust Memori...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Curatorial Dissonance and Conflictual Aesthetics: Holocaust Memory and Public Humanities in Greek Historiography

Christou

2024

Histories

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Despite the increasingly diverse societal landscape in Greece for more than three decades within a context of migration, understandings of its fragile histories are still limited in shaping a sense of belonging that is open to ‘otherness’. While Greek communities have utilised history as a pathway to maintain identity, other parallel histories and understandings do not resonate with ‘Greekness’ for most, such as the case of Greek Jewry. Critical historical perspectives can benefit from tracing ‘re-membering’ as a feminist practice in the reassessment of societal values of inclusivity. Histories of violence and injustice can also include elements of ‘difficult histories’ and must be embraced to seek acknowledgement of these in promoting social change and cultural analysis for public humanities informing curation and curricula. Between eduscapes, art heritage spaces, an entry into contested and conflictual histories can expand a sense of belonging and the way we imagine our own connected histories with communities, place and nation. Greek Jews do not constitute a strong part of historical memory for Greeks in their past and present; in contrast to what is perceived as ‘official’ history, theirs is quite marginal. As a result, contemporary Greeks, from everyday life to academia, do not have a holistic understanding in relation to the identities of Jews in Greece, their culture or the Holocaust. Given the emergence of a new wave of artistic activism in recent years in response to the ever-increasing dominance of authoritarian neoliberalism, along with activist practices in the art field as undercurrents of resistance, in this intervention I bring together bodies of works to create a dialogic reflection with historical, artistic and feminist sources. In turn, the discussion then explores the spatiotemporal contestations of the historical geographies of Holocaust monuments in Greece. While interrogating historical amnesia, I endeavour to provide a space to engage with ‘difficult histories’ in their aesthetic context as a heritage of healing and social justice.

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Section: Timespaces As Contestations: 'Re-membering' Holocaust Memori...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Curatorial Dissonance and Conflictual Aesthetics: Holocaust Memory and Public Humanities in Greek Historiography

Christou

2024

Histories

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“…Not for nothing did the early Byzantines call themselves Romanaioi (Romans) before later referring to themselves as Hellenes (Greeks) (Haldon, 2005: 11, 252). Greek historiography has thus, until relatively recently, elided the fact that Salonica had been a Jewish city in 1912 and failed to produce a history of its Jewish past (Avdela, 2014; Theologou and Michaelides, 2010). As Edhem Eldem (2014) concludes, ‘while the Greeks had conquered the city and were redesigning its future, the Turks had lost it and had only its past left to reinvent’ (p. 432).…”

Section: Photographic Forgetting: Boissonnas’ Selective Representatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnationalistic memories: Frédéric Boissonnas’ photographic construction of a Greek-Christian European Thessaloniki in Salonique et ses basiliques (1919)

Wilson

2019

Memory Studies

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Frédéric Boissonnas’ album, Salonique et ses basiliques, captures the city at a very precise moment in its history. The album’s photographs were taken between 1912 and 1913, that is, just at the end of the Ottoman and the beginning of Greek rule, but before the great fire of 1917 that destroyed the city centre, removing virtually all traces of the Turkish and Jewish quarters. The album also predates the forced exchange of Muslim and Christian populations in 1923 that finally brought the transculturalism of the city to an abrupt end. Through a close reading of Boissonnas’ photographs, within the theoretical framework of past transnationalistic and present-day transcultural memories, this article argues that political and ideological allegiances directed the creation, dissemination and consumption of an artistic product. The article concludes with a reflection on the city’s return to its transcultural roots.

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The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey

Chandrinos¹,

Droumpouki²

The Holocaust in Greece

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Toward a Greek History of the Jews of Salonica?

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Curatorial Dissonance and Conflictual Aesthetics: Holocaust Memory and Public Humanities in Greek Historiography

Curatorial Dissonance and Conflictual Aesthetics: Holocaust Memory and Public Humanities in Greek Historiography

Transnationalistic memories: Frédéric Boissonnas’ photographic construction of a Greek-Christian European Thessaloniki in Salonique et ses basiliques (1919)

The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey

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