Greece on Sunday marked the 80th anniversary of the first deportations of Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in a ceremony held in Thessaloniki, a city that lost almost all of its Jewish community. White balloons in hand with "Never Again" written on them, about a thousand people of all ages marched to Thessaloniki's old train station, where deportations began on March 15, 1943.

Many bouquets of flowers were placed on the railway tracks. The deportations took place in cattle cars, with about 80 people forcibly crammed into each wagon, officials at the ceremony said. Some 46,000 Jews from Thessaloniki were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between March and August 1943, said the president of the city's Jewish community, David Saltiel. Only 1,950 returned. "The community lost 97 percent of its members," he added, noting that Jews at the time accounted for one in five residents of Thessaloniki.

Soon a dedicated museum

Work on a future Holocaust museum, to honor the memory of the victims of the camps, has begun, Mayor Konstantinos Zervas said at a ceremony attended by President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, US Ambassador George Tsunis and Israeli Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis made the trip.



Greece gradually began honoring its Jewish community after formalizing its relations with Israel in 1990. In Thessaloniki, steps were taken a decade ago by then-reformist mayor Yiannis Boutaris to shine a light on the city's rich Jewish past. But anti-Semitism persists, with Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials regularly vandalized. "Anti-Semitism and racism remain a threat," Saltiel said. Of the estimated 77,000 Jews living in Greece before World War II, more than 86 percent perished during the four years of occupation by Nazi Germany. Today, the country has about 5,000 Jews, according to the Jewish Museum of Athens.

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