Karya 1943. Forced Labour and the Holocaust

The exhibition “Karya 1943. Forced Labour and the Holocaust” is the first exhibition in Germany and Greece dedicated to the issue of forced labour of Greek Jews during the German occupation. It is organized by the Jewish Museum of Greece, the Benaki Museum and the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center in Berlin.

The central theme of the exhibition is the forced labour site in Karya, Fthiotida. There, in the spring of 1943, the Germans transported hundreds of Jewish men from Thessaloniki to build a bypass on the main Athens-Thessaloniki railway line in order to better serve the Wehrmacht trains.

Living and working conditions were inhumane, dozens died from hardship or were murdered in cold blood by foremen and guards. Few managed to escape. The survivors were deported in August 1943 to Auschwitz, where most were murdered.

The starting point of the exhibition is the photographic collection of a German civil engineer who had served in Greece during the Occupation as an officer of the paramilitary organization Todd and was responsible for several construction projects, including in Karya. The collection includes, among other things, about 80 photographs of the Karya construction site. It was discovered in 2002 in a flea market in Munich by the collector Andreas Assael, the son of a Jewish survivor from Thessaloniki, who bought it and for years researched the story behind these unique photographic documents.

The innovative and participatory exhibition, which is presented simultaneously in Germany and Greece, offers the historical context of the Occupation, the Holocaust and the difficult post-war period, focusing on the history of the Karya construction site. Eight biographies of victims and survivors are central to the exhibition. The old construction site and the Karya station, which is now decommissioned and abandoned, are made accessible through 3D topographical models that will be projected through a multimedia station. At the same station, visitors will be able to digitally browse through the photo album. A smaller exhibition presented at the Jewish Museum of Greece contains exhibition material, information about the project, multimedia content, authentic finds from the Karya construction site and is accompanied by educational programs for schools and visitor groups.

The exhibition is addressed to the public in Greece and Germany, and especially to young people. It aims to inform and to reflect on the heavy legacy of the War and the Occupation in Greece and Germany and the issue of preserving the memory of the Jewish genocide.