Metadata: Records of the Jewish Community of Volos
Collection
- Country:
- Greece
- Holding institution:
- Jewish Community of Volos
- Holding institution (official language):
- Ισραηλιτική Κοινότητα Βόλου
- Postal address:
- Chatziargyri 51, 383 33 Volos
- Phone number:
- 24210 25 302
- Title:
- Records of the Jewish Community of Volos
- Title (official language):
- Αρχείο Ισραηλιτικής Κοινότητας Βόλου
- Creator/accumulator:
- Jewish Community of Volos
- Date(s):
- 1907/2014
- Language:
- Greek, Modern (1453-)
- English
- Hebrew
- Ladino
- Extent:
- 18 linear metres (190 boxes and books)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The collection contains the records of the Jewish Community of Volos, a legal entity established by law 2456/20 in 1920 and one of three Jewish Communities in the Thessaly region of central Greece. The collection documents community activities from 1907-2014 and largely contains records of Jewish institutions and Zionist associations, the correspondence of the community council and rehabilitation and restitution efforts after the Holocaust. The collection contains much information about other Greek Jewish communities and community organisations, their destruction during the Holocaust and subsequent rehabilitation and reconstruction. The collection includes minutes of community council meetings; notes, memorandums, reports, minutes and correspondence with other Greek Jewish communities, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece and institutions inside and outside the country including the municipality of Volos, the bishop of Demetrias and health institutions; financial documents: lists of expenses, invoices, acknowledgements of receipts of various costs covered by the community; the community’s petitions to and correspondence with the Greek authorities; correspondence with various Jewish and gentile individuals; correspondence of the community with various Jewish organisations and other Jewish communities in Greece; decrees, memorandums and orders issued by the community council; various lists of names, including community employees, patients treated in sanatoriums or hospitals, beneficiaries and Holocaust victims and survivors; members’ registries, including number of members, occupation, family members and economic status; various certificates issued by the community for its members; and registry books recording the incoming and outgoing mail for the years 1946-2014. The most prominent people in the collection are the presidents of the community and members of the council.
- Archival history:
- The collection has remained in the possession of the Jewish community of Volos and held in its premises since its creation in 1920. The archive is held at the community offices on Chatziargyri Street. Most of the prewar archival material was confiscated by the Germans and transferred to the Reich in 1944, after which no record of it exists. Members of the community and some gentile friends managed to save some prewar material by hiding it.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Jews have inhabited the area around Volos since before the time of Christ and have lived in Demetrias since the 2nd century BC. The community’s 2200 years of existence have been documented by historians, travellers and archaeologists. Volos, the major port city of central Greece, was built outside the walls of the Ottoman castle in the 19th century and the first buildings – the so-called Palia – were occupied by Christians and Jews. The first synagogue was built between 1865 and 1870 in the centre of the Jewish quarter and was demolished by the Germans in March 1944. A new synagogue funded by the JDC was built in 1948 but destroyed by earthquake in 1957. The Alliance israélite universelle opened a school in Volos in 1865. Some of the wealthiest citizens of Volos were Jews: the Mourtzoukou family ran a textile factory, the Varouch family a bank and the Levi brothers a mill. There were also tobacco stores owned by Iosif Levi, Zak Saporta and Herman Spierer. Not all Volos’s Jews were rich, however: most of the Jewish community were humble workers or small merchants. 71 Jews fought the Italians in the Greek-Italian war in 1940-41. During the Italian occupation the Jews were safe, but after the Italian capitulation the Germans took over the city. There were around 872 Jews In Volos at that time, mostly Greek-speaking Romaniots, under the spiritual leadership of chief rabbi Moses Pessah. The Volos Jewish community is a rare example of survival: although the persecution of Jews was carried out by the local German military and police authorities (mainly SiPO/SD) and their Greek collaborators (mainly EASAD and EEE armed anti-communist and anti-Jewish groups) with the same intensity as elsewhere in Greece, the bulk of the community, around 645 members, escaped, mostly by fleeing to Mount Pelion with the help of the EAM-ELAS resistance organisation. The Jewish population before deportations was 872 and the postwar population was 645; 155 local Jews were victims of the Holocaust. Today the Jewish community of Volos has 80 members.
- System of arrangement:
- The archival material is divided between books and papers. The books and papers are arranged thematically.
- Finding aids:
- There are no inventories or finding aids.
- Yerusha Network member:
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Author of the description:
- Nikolaos Tzafleris
