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Article by Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Miltiadis Varvitsiotis in ‘TO VIMA tis Kyriakis’ newspaper (12.12.2021)

The Jewish archives are “free” to return home

Spring of 1943, Thessaloniki. The German occupation forces, together with the 60,000 Jews of Thessaloniki destined for the crematoria, loaded on the trains everything their Jewish ancestors had created in the Sephardic metropolis, as well as archives of Jewish communities from all over Greece. Two years later, men from the Soviet army found thousands of files and boxes full of documents in the wagons of an abandoned train in Berlin, which they transported to Moscow for safekeeping.

The years went tortuously by, but the memories were not forgotten.

In 1997, the Greek side made a request to Moscow for the return of the archives stolen by the Nazi occupation forces, with the Russian side initially responding positively, having already returned other archives related to the Jewry of Belgium and the Netherlands. In February 1999, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Th. Pangalos addressed a letter on the subject to his Russian counterpart I. Ivanov. In August 2000, the Greek-Russian Joint Interministerial Committee met with a Greek scientific team, authorized by the Central Jewish Council of Greece, which travelled to Moscow to compile a record of the archival material.

In 2014 the Greek and Russian governments came very close to an agreement on the handing over of the archive. The Russians, however, kept setting new conditions just before the signing of the final agreement; conditions that our country was willing to fulfill, by agreeing to the return of the archive of the Imperial Russian Consulate in Chania and even to pay compensation for the safekeeping of the archives in Moscow.

Since I took office, I have consistently and repeatedly made the request to my Russian interlocutors for the repatriation of the Jewish archives. We put the issue high on the agenda of Greek-Russian talks and in my meetings with both the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Al. Grushko in Athens and Moscow and the Minister of Transport V. Saveliev, my Co-Chair of the Joint Interministerial Committee, but also at every other opportunity. The request was also made by the Prime Minister to his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Mishustin, when he recently visited Greece.

The last obstacle presented by the Russians – which was overcome, by not being accepted – was to hand over to the Tretyakov Gallery the painting by Russian painter L. Popova (painting of the Russian avant-garde movement ), which is part of the Kostakis Collection kept in the State Museum Of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki.

Today, nearing the end of 2021, our efforts were justified through the historic agreement between Mitsotakis and Putin in Sochi for the repatriation of the “star-crossed” archives, confirming the common will of our countries and peoples to further strengthen our centuries-old bilateral relations.

This is a decision that fills me with a particular emotion and moral satisfaction regarding the historical “debt” owed and the personal commitment I had undertaken towards the Greek Jewish Community, which after decades, was relieved to hear the relevant announcement by the Greek Prime Minister.

The Greek Jewish archives are now “free” to return home and the Greek Jews will be able to “rediscover” their roots.

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