“Where butts need to be kicked, we shall kick them,” writes poignantly Steven Pressfield in his Do the Work book from 2011. I keep his book by my side to remind myself to write my biweekly blog spot for my newly established fromjerusalemwithlove.com blog.
So much happened over these two weeks to me and am sure to you too. The highlight was the 25th of March. To Greek Jews like me this is the day that fellow Jews were rounded up at Mavilli square in Ioannina Greece from where they were forced into trucks to Larissa and from there to their deportation by train to Auschwitz, Poland. It was not by coincidence that the Nazis picked the date, which marks for Greeks our Independence Day and it is a day we usually gather together in celebration.
But to Greek Jews, the National Independence Day of March 25 speaks of their personal and communal tragedy, and is reason for lament and not celebration. Almost two thousand Jews were deported that day from Ioannina from whom very few returned. My father’s extended family, his grandparents, aunts and uncles and their kids were all on these wagons, which took them to their death. Their names were preserved in Yad Vashem’s Unto Every Person There is a Name project and a memoir written by my aunt Eftihia Nachmias Nachman, Yannena: a Journey to the Past, recounts their lives as they were intertwined with her parents’.
Eftihia Nachmias Nachman dedicated her book to those lost, and in gratitude to the Righteous Among the Nations, and asks that it becomes a message to the children of our children.
And I believe it is with the deep awareness and respect of Greek Jews’ tragedy that the Greek Consul in Jerusalem Mr. Christos Sofianopoulos and his team chose to celebrate Greece’s Independence Day in Jerusalem on March 26th. Greeks, Jews, Muslims and Christians who live, work and study in Jerusalem gathered together at the Greek Club for a festive event in the presence of the Patriarch Theophilus the third, and Anastas Damianos the current Head of the Greek Community of Jerusalem in the warm atmosphere of the Greek Club located at the Greek Colony. We Jews felt that there is a new epoch in Greek-Jewish relations through this act.
New Epoch is also the name of a party running for the upcoming Municipal elections In Yannina, Greece on May 26. An excellent team of citizens headed by Prof. Moses Elisaf, has been formed, aspiring to lead Yannina to a new epoch of progress and growth in all fields. An accomplished professor of Pathology at the Medical School of The Ioannina University Elisaf has served for many years as the Head of the local Jewish community.
All Yannena descending Jews feel a boost of pride with Elisaf’s running for Mayor. It feels like we have gone a long way since our fellow Romaniote Jews’ deportation on the cold winter of March 1944 and that a new epoch may be heralding, with more acceptance of the “other” the Jew in Greek society.
For Elisaf to get to this point he has had to enroll, enlist and engage fellow Greeks who run with him, and will need to motivate, inspire and persuade fellow Greeks to vote for him. Getting elected, heading the city, with his Yannena – New Epoch party, making it to this position will for sure need hard work from him and his team. “Where butts need to be kicked, we shall kick them,” writes Steven Pressfield and it seems that Elisaf and his team are good and experienced in Doing the Work. We Romaniote Jews in Israel wish Moses and his team much success in ushering the new epoch in Yannena and beyond.
From Jerusalem with love,