President attends memorial march for Thessaloniki Jews murdered in the Holocaust

President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou on Sunday attended the silent memorial march held in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki each year to commemorate the Jews that fell victim to the Nazis in WWII. This year’s march marked the 80th anniversary since the departure of the first train carrying Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, on March 15, 1943.

“With this memorial march we honour the victims of nazism, fascism, antisemitism and share in the grief of their descendants, listen to the revealing words of the few survivors and unite our voice with the thousands of citizens that walk the same route, from the ghetto to the train station, putting into action the universal human message ‘Never Again’,” Sakellaropoulou said.

In the aftermath of the Tempi tragedy that devastated all of Greek society, “we are here to keep alive the memory of one of the most horrific and painful events of the 20th century,” she added, stressing the necessity of memorial events to highlight the true facts regarding the arrest, displacement and extermination of thousands of Greek Jews.

“Particularly important is the fact that, especially in recent years, Thessaloniki has acknowledged its own share of responsibility and explicitly condemned the mistakes of the past, in an effort to heal the historic wound,” she added.

The Nazi ‘death trains’ would carrying some 46,000 Jews in the city’s once thriving Jewish community to be exterminated in the camps, of which fewer than 2,000 would ever return.