The Baron Hirsch settlement was a Jewish neighbourhood on the western edge of the city, near the old railway station of Thessaloniki. The settlement was created after the fire of 1890 by the German-Jewish philanthropist and activist Maurice Baron de Hirsch (1831-1896) with the aim of housing Jewish refugees from Kichinev and Megilev who had left Russia after continuous pogroms. It consisted of 250 small houses with courtyards on what is now Stavrou Voutira Street. It had a school, a synagogue, a polyclinic and a Jewish psychiatric hospital on the corner of Giannitson and Voutira Streets. During the Occupation, it covered an area of 30,000 square metres and had 2,315 inhabitants.[1]
In February 1943, as part of the Nazi orders for the forced relocation of all Jews in Thessaloniki to a ghetto. On 5 March, the neighbourhood was sealed off with a wooden fence and barbed wire, trilingual signs (greek-german-italian) were placed at the three entrances and residents were forbidden to leave. Guard posts were set up, while the Jewish psychiatric hospital was converted into a detention centre and the school building into kitchens. An ad hoc formed Jewish ghetto police, headed by the collaborator Vital Chason, was put in charge of running the camp. Due to its proximity to the railway station, Baron Hirsch became a transit camp for those who were to be deported to the camps. The first to be locked up in Baron Hirsch were the Jews of Lagkada. On Sunday, 14 March, the Germans forced Rabbi Zvi Koretz to gather the detainees in the synagogue and announce that the first train to Poland would depart the following day (15 March). A total of 2,800 people departed. On 16 March, the residents of the Agia Paraskevi neighbourhood gathered in Hirsch, followed later by the residents of Rezi Vardar. In April and May, the ghettos of Settlement 151 and the southeastern neighbourhoods of Thessaloniki followed. By 10 August 1943, a total of 46,091 Jews from Thessaloniki had been deported via Hirsch to the Auschwitz camp.[2]
The settlement was a scene violent acts, as well as public executions of Jews who had been arrested while trying to flee Thessaloniki. On 15 April, while the deportations continued, a selection was made of men who would be sent to forced labour camps run by the Organisation Todt in southern Greece. Samuel Ardittis was one of them: “In April 1943, as soon as we had gone to the Hirsch ghetto, the Germans caught two merchants. One was called Mallach, I don’t remember the name of the other. I remember Mallach because he was young and our neighbour. He was arrested in Platamonas while trying to escape to the Italian zone. They were executed in the Hirsch ghetto, near the synagogue, in front of everyone. At that time, there were about 4,000 Jews in the ghetto. Twelve Germans came and executed them against the wall of the synagogue. Chason was present at the execution. By 4 p.m., we had not dispersed, and an order came for all young men between the ages of 16 and 24 who were present to remain in their ranks. We stayed with my two brothers, Jacob and Benjamin. They took us to a fenced-in area near Arditti’s coffee house. We stayed there all night. There were about 470 of us and we stood in the café all night. At 10 o’clock in the morning they put us on a train without telling us where we were going. The journey lasted two and a half days”. [3]
At the same time, the settlement was turned into a gathering place and a site of violent looting by the Germans and their collaborators, who took personal belongings and property that the Jews were forced to hand over before being displaced. The area was deserted and despite the establishment of some Jewish families after the war, today no trace of the Jewish presence or the events of the Holocaust of the Jews of Thessaloniki exists.
[1] Molcho, Michael (ed.), In Memoriam. Afieroma is tin mnimin ton Israiliton Thymaton tou Nazismou en Elladi [In dedication to the memory of the Israelite victims of Nazism in Thessaloniki], Thessaloniki 1974. p. 96.
[2] Danuta Czech, Deportation und Vernichtung der griechischen Juden im KL Auschwitz, Hefte von Auschwitz, issue 11 (1970), pp. 5-37.
[3] Schmuel Arditti Testimony, Yad Vashem, Item ID 3556222.
