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Italia Yashan, Thessaloniki, Greece
Description
Italia Yashan was founded in 1423, and was thought to have been founded by Venetian Jews who came to Salonika when it was under Venetian rule from 1423-1430. Originally known as Italia, the synagogue was nicknamed raton, or “rat” in Spanish.1
While the Republic of Venice ruled Salonika, Jews were heavily taxed, causing many to migrate away.2 Moreover, Ottoman Sultan Murad II (r. 1421-1444 and 1446-1451) had besieged Salonika from 1421 until 1430, causing famine and further emigration.3 Thus, it is likely that Italia Yashan was a very small congregation until 1510, when Jews from Southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia immigrated to Salonika.
In 1492, King Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479-1516) not only ruled over Spain, but also over Sicily and Sardinia. Thus, following King Ferdinand II’s issuance of the Edict of Expulsion (Alhambra Decree) in 1492, which called for the expulsion of Jews from Spain, Jews in Sicily and Sardinia were also forced to leave their homes.4 Many Jews from Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia immigrated to other parts of Italy, specifically to Venice, Rome, and Livorno, where Jews were generally tolerated under Pope Sixtus IV’s rule (r. 1471-1484).5 By 1510, Spain had conquered Naples and enacted the Alhambra Decree there too, effectively expelling most Jews south of Rome. By 1515, the expulsion was extended to “New Christians,” in Italy, Jews who had converted to Christianity to avoid the Spanish Inquisition. In 1516, Venice created a Jewish ghetto to control Jewish contact with the Christian population while enforcing heavy taxation. These events caused the emigration of Sephardic Jews who escaped to Italy in 1492 and of Ashkenazi Italian Jews to Salonika.6
The Italia Synagogue’s congregation grew following these events, and during the sixteenth century, the synagogue split into three different congregations. The original synagogue, Italia, became Italia Yashan, which translates to “Old Italia.” The two new synagogues were Italia Hadash, or “New Italia,” established in 1582, and Italia Shalom, established in 1606. It is not clear whether these three congregations still shared the same building following their split.7 However, it is likely they did, as many other synagogues in Salonika that also split continued to share the same spaces. In 1890, a fire burned down the building the congregations likely shared. Following the fire, the congregations were granted edicts to rebuild the synagogues in separate quarters.8
Many of the Ashkenazi Italian Jews who immigrated to Salonika were from influential, wealthy, and educated families. At the end of the eighteenth century, Jews from Livorno joined the Italian community of Salonika, including the notable Modiano family, who came from a line of Rabbis, bankers, and landowners.9
According to research done by Greek architect Elias V. Messinas, a postcard from the early twentieth century may be representative of Italia Yashan’s architecture. According to the postcard, the building was a basilica: a long hall with colonnades supporting a domed roof. The semi-circle colonnades of the synagogue separated three aisles. The floor was made of decorative terrazzo tiles.10 According to a photo of the bimah and arc from the Anu Museum - Museum of the Jewish People, the bimah, the platform from where the Torah is read, was made of carved marble and was located in the center of the room. An arc was elevated by three small marble steps from the floor and was decorated with double corinthian columns and topped with a semi-circle pediment.11
Site History
The original location of Italia Yashan is unknown; however, the fire of 1890 destroyed the synagogue, forcing it to relocate. Six years later, a new building for the synagogue was inaugurated on old Kapanaca Street, current day Tsimiski Street, in the Baru Quarter. The Italia Hadash Synagogue also relocated to the Baru Quarter at the end of the nineteenth century, which may suggest that both congregations shared the same building until the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917.12
Before the fire, Italia Yashan was located in the Talmud Torah complex, a four-acre plot of land in the Baru Quarter, composed of buildings, many connected by inner courtyards, that belonged to the Jewish community. These buildings ranged from synagogues, schools, to charity foundations. The fire of 1917 destroyed the Talmud Torah complex, and the subsequent city reorganization by Ernest Hébrard forced the synagogues of the complex to find new locations.13
Following the fire, Italia Yashan was rebuilt and functioning again by 1919. By 1930, it relocated to 38 Spartis Street. By the mid 1930s, Italia Yashan was located inside the Joseph Nissim Rabbinical school on 43 Velissariou Street.14 There is no information available on what happened to the synagogue during and after WWII.
Description
Italian Jews of Thessaloniki
Modern Italy consists of various city-states that were not unified until 1871. For the purposes of this entry, Italian Jews are being defined as Jews from those city-states: Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, Calabria, the Papal States, and the general peninsular land mass below the Alps. The name Thessaloniki refers to the city during Byzantine rule, which lasted until 1421, and Greek rule, which began in 1912. The name Salonika refers to the city during Ottoman rule (1430-1912).
In 1423, Byzantine Prince Despot Andronikos Palaeologus (r. 1408-1423), the last Byzantine governor of Thessaloniki, sold the city to Venice, as they were unable to protect the city from the Ottomans two years into a siege.15 Italian Jews first arrived in Salonika in 1423, during the Venetian rule of the city that lasted until 1430. Ottoman Sultan Murad II (r. 1421-1444 and 1446-1451) successfully captured Thessaloniki,16 and the devastating nine-year siege likely left the Jewish population diminished.
The population of Italian and Spanish Jews in Salonika likely began to grow after 1492, when King Ferdinand II of Aragon expelled Jews from his lands, which included Spain and his territories of Sicily and Sardinia.17 This brought a gradual stream of Sephardic and Italian Jews to Salonika. The population of Italian Jews in Salonika further increased in 1510, when Spain conquered Naples and established it as a principality.18 Southern Italy had Spanish influence since the mid-fifteenth century, so when Spain conquered Naples, most Jews in southern Italy below Rome were also expelled.
The Italian community in Salonika maintained a multitude of synagogues, including Italia Yashan, Italia Hadash, Italia Shalom, Sicilia Yashan, Sicilia Hadash, Beit Aaron Synagogue, Ortona Synagogue, Pulia Synagogue, Otranto Synagogue, and four Calabrian synagogues.19 These congregations, based on the ancestral towns of their congregants, were known as “historic congregations.” Jews from Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe, France, Greece, and North Africa also had their own synagogues named after the regions they hailed from, for example the Catalan Synagogue which was composed of Jews from Catalonia, Spain.20
The Italian Jewish community in Thessaloniki remained active up until World War II (WWII), which can be seen through the reconstruction of synagogues destroyed in the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 through the 1930s.21 By the early twentieth century, the Italian Jews of Thessaloniki were part of the estimated eighty thousand Jews living in the city. However, the Jewish population drastically declined throughout the twentieth century following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Greece’s annexation of the city in 1912, and the Great Fire of Thessaloniki in 1917. By the beginning of WWII the Jewish population had dropped to around 50,000, as many Jews had migrated to France, Mandatory Palestine, and the United States.22/23
German forces entered Thessaloniki on April 9, 1941. They terrorized the Jewish community, forcing Jews into labor, into wearing a yellow Star of David, and into ghettos, among other things.24 Beginning on March 16, 1943 to August 7, 1943, Jews were taken to the Baron Hirsch camp, named for the Jewish philanthropist who funded the buildings next to the railway that the Germans seized for a Jewish ghetto. From the Baron Hirsch camp, 48,974 were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where many perished.25 A remaining 4,000 Jews were deported by Bulgarian authorities to Bulgarian occupied parts of Greece and Treblinka.26
The small group of Jews who returned to Thessaloniki following the Holocaust found their homes and property seized despite Greek laws passed on October 27, 1944 demanding the return of all property originally belonging to Jews.27/28 A Holocaust memorial that was unveiled on November 23, 1997 currently sits in the Eleftherias Square, in honor of more than fifty thousand of Salonika’s Jews who perished during the war.29
Thessaloniki, Greece
© Mapbox, © OpenStreetMap
Sources
Footnotes
[1] Ēlias V. Messinas and Samuel Gruber, Synagogues of Greece : a Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace (New York: Published for American Sephardi Federation (ASF)/ by Bloch Publishing Company in association with Bowman & Cody Academic Publishing, 2011), 68.
[2] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, "Οι Εβραίοι της Θεσσαλονίκης" [The Jews of Thessaloniki], Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, accessed June 28, 2024, http://www.jmth.gr/article-20032014-oi-evraioi-tis-thessalonikis.
[3] Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).
[4] W. D. Davies et al., The Cambridge History of Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984),
[5] Kamen, "The Mediterranean," 47.
[6] "Timeline of Jewish History in Italy," Jewish Virtual Library, accessed August 2, 2024, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/timeline-of-jewish-history-in-italy.
[7] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[8] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, Topography of Synagogues in Salonika (1500-1940), ed. Evangelos Chekimoglou, 44.
[9] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[10] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[11] ANU Database, Interior of the "Italia Yashan" Synagogue, Salonika, Greece, c.1910, photograph, ANU Database, accessed August 2, 2024,
[12] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[13] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, Topography of Synagogues, 44.
[14] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece.
[15] Mazower, Salonica, City.
[16] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[17] "Timeline of Jewish," Jewish Virtual Library.
[18] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[19] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, Topography of Synagogues, 44.
[20] Devin E. Naar, "The “Mother of Israel” Or the “Sephardi Metropolis”? Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and Romaniotes in Salonica," Jewish Social Studies 22, no. 1 (2016): 86, https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.22.1.03.
[21] Messinas and Gruber, Synagogues of Greece, 68.
[22] Devin E. Naar, "The “Mother of Israel” Or the “Sephardi Metropolis”? Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and Romaniotes in Salonica," Jewish Social Studies 22, no. 1 (2016): https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.22.1.03.
[23] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, "Οι Εβραίοι," Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.
[24] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, "Οι Εβραίοι," Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.
[25] Dr. Evangelos Hekimoglou, The exact location of the Ghettos in Thessaloniki, 1943, accessed June 30, 2013, https://www.academia.edu/10614219/The_exact_location_of_the_Ghettos_in_Thessaloniki_1943.
[26] Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act Report: Greece, Rep., at 80 (Mar. 2020). Accessed June 28, 2024. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.state.gov/reports/just-act-report-to-congress/greece/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1719595934160991&usg=AOvVaw2HjUPk3T20gQSwmCjQTSWT.
[27] Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act Report: Greece, Rep., at 80 (Mar. 2020). Accessed June 28, 2024.
[28] Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, "Οι Εβραίοι," Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.
[29] Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, "Μνημείο Ολοκαυτώματος" [Holocaust Memorial], Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, accessed June 28, 2024, https://www.jct.gr/HolocMemorial.php.
Sources Cited
ANU Database. Interior of the "Italia Yashan" Synagogue, Salonika, Greece, c.1910. Photograph. ANU Database. Accessed August 2, 2024. https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e217720/Photos/Interior_of_the_Italia_Yashan_Synagogue_Salonika_G.
Davies, W. D., Louis Finkelstein, William Horbury, John Sturdy, Steven T. Katz, Phillip I.
Lieberman, Mitchell B. Hart, Tony Michels, Jonathan Karp, Adam Sutcliffe, and Robert Chazan. The Cambridge History of Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Devin E. Naar. "The Mother of Israel; Or the Sephardi Metropolis? Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and Romaniotes in Salonica." Jewish Social Studies 22, no. 1 (2016): 81-129. https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.22.1.03.
Hekimoglou, Dr. Evangelos. The exact location of the Ghettos in Thessaloniki, 1943. Accessed June 30, 2013. https://www.academia.edu/10614219/The_exact_location_of_the_Ghettos_in_Thessaloniki_1943.
Kamen, Henry. "The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492." Past and
Present, no. 119 (1988): 30-55. JSTOR.
Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. "Η Ιστορία της Κοινότητας" [The History of the Community]. Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. Accessed June 28, 2024. https://www.jct.gr/history.php.
Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. Topography of Synagogues in Salonika (1500-1940). Edited by Evangelos Chekimoglou.
Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. "Οι Εβραίοι της Θεσσαλονίκης" [The Jews of Thessaloniki]. Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. Accessed June 28, 2024. http://www.jmth.gr/article-20032014-oi-evraioi-tis-thessalonikis.
Koelner, Yosef. "The History of Jewish Thessaloniki From Its Inception Through The New Testament Period." Academia. Accessed June 28, 2024. https://www.academia.edu/103955894/The_History_of_Jewish_Thessaloniki_From_Its_Inception_Through_The_New_Testament_Period.
Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts : Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Messinas, Ēlias V., and Samuel Gruber. Synagogues of Greece : a Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace. New York: Published for American Sephardi Federation (ASF)/ by Bloch Publishing Company in association with Bowman & Cody Academic Publishing, 2011.
Naar, Devin E. Jewish Salonica : between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act Report: Greece, Rep., at 80 (Mar. 2020). Accessed June 28, 2024. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.state.gov/reports/just-act-report-to-congress/greece/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1719595934160991&usg=AOvVaw2HjUPk3T20gQSwmCjQTSWT.
Introduced in Executive
"Timeline of Jewish History in Italy." Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed August 2, 2024. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/timeline-of-jewish-history-in-italy.