Tuesday, 18. October 2016, 18:00 - 19:30

Postgasse 7/1/3, 1010 Wien

VWI goes to the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Vienna

In the months and years following the end of the Axis Occupation of Greece, those Greek Jews who survived the war faced, like their coreligionists in the rest of Europe, a host of pressing issues as they attempted to rebuild their lives. These issues included matters such as securing shelter and work, reclaiming property held by Christians, and dealing with the sorrow and disbelief associated with the loss of family and the destruction of communities. In confronting these obstacles, many Jews also faced the indifference, if not the outright hostility and antisemitism, of the general population. This presentation focusses on this antisemitism and specifically examines the numerous antisemitic incidents as they were reported and discussed in the contemporaneous Greek-Jewish press.

Although antisemitism in Greece has in recent years begun to be studied in great detail, scholars have until now mostly focussed on two specific pogroms, namely the 1891 Corfu blood libel and the 1931 Campbell riots in Salonica. The research upon which this presentation is based aims at rectifying this imbalance by focussing on this relatively understudied period. 

As this research is in its early stages, the presentation concentrates on those incidents of antisemitism that were published in the two principle Jewish newspapers of the period, namely the Evraiki Estia (Athens) and Israelitikon Vema (Salonica). The presentation not only outlines the pertinent details and context of these incidents but it also examines how these cases were perceived and discussed by the Greek-Jewish press. Furthermore, it attempts to assess how these cases relate to previous and analogous examples in Greece and, finally, to what extent factors such as locality and national politics played a role, if at all, in their manifestation.

Commented by Maria A. Stassinopoulou

Dimitrios Varvaritis is a Research Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. He specialises in the history of antisemitism in Greece and has contributed to the edited volume Sephardi Lives. A documentary history 1700-1950, Stanford University Press, 2014.

Maria A. Stassinopoulou is a Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research and publications focus on cultural history, migration history and film studies. Her most recent book is a volume co-edited with Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Across the Danube. Southeastern Europeans and Their Travelling Identities (17th-19th C.), Brill 2016 (in print).

Click here to download the invitation as a PDF file.

In cooperation with:

Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Vienna
Austrian Society for Modern Greek Studies