“Greek Jews after World War II,” April 2025

Following international trends in museum practices in the USA, France and Israel, among others, the Jewish Museum of Greece’s new exhibition focuses on Greek Jews in the post-World War II period.This is the first time that an exhibition on this topic will be staged in Greece. It will shed light on recent Greek-Jewish history and, more broadly, on the history of postwar Greek society.

The exhibition will cover the initial years after World War II up to the late 1970s, a period that includes the reconstruction of the Greek Jewish communities, the harsh civil war (1946-1949) and the post-civil war era, as well as the restoration of democracy (1974). This period also encompasses the establishment of the Jewish Museum of Greece (1977), a milestone in the emergence of Greek-Jewish memory in the public sphere.

The following indicative themes will form the core of the exhibition, which will be presented using unknown photographic, film, visual and archival material as well as personal objects: the efforts to reconstruct the Greek-Jewish communities and the assistance from international bodies; the experiences of camp survivors and Jewish resistance fighters during the civil war and in the post-civil war era; the different ideological paths of Greek Jews during the postwar period; the emotional state of survivors, as well as the dilemmas they faced, such as life in the diaspora or emigration to Israel; new forms of internment, such as in camps in Cyprus and British Mandatory Palestine.

The exhibition includes photographs, documents, books, personal items, press reports, recorded and video interviews with survivors as well as songs composed by survivors themselves. It is addressed to the general Greek and international public, schoolchildren and students. In addition to reading short texts, exhibition visitors will have the opportunity to see excerpts from interviews with survivors and videos from their daily life after the war, to listen to songs they sang at their postwar meetings and to watch newsreels from the postwar era that depict the emigration and internment of Greek Jews in refugee camps.

For the first time, the postwar story of Greek Jews will be the subject of public discourse and history. Therefore, the Jewish Museum of Greece’s initiative will significantly enrich the public debate and will also reflect the sense of hope and continuity after the destruction of the Holocaust. Overall, the project aims to offer the public a glimpse into the multidimensional character of Greek Jews and thus challenge stereotypical perceptions of it.