{"id":6015,"date":"2013-03-19T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T06:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=6015"},"modified":"2013-03-19T00:01:16","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T06:01:16","slug":"greek-prime-minister-in-visit-to-shul-vows-crackdown-on-neo-nazis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/greek-prime-minister-in-visit-to-shul-vows-crackdown-on-neo-nazis\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek prime minister in visit to shul vows crackdown on neo-Nazis"},"content":{"rendered":"

THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) — Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras vowed to crack down on neo-Nazi groups. Samaras was speaking Sunday at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the first deportations of Thessaloniki’s Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.<\/p>\n

The Greek government will enact legislation that will be “completely intolerant to violence and racism,” Samaras said at the city’s Monastiriotes Synagogue in what was said to be the first-ever visit by a sitting prime minister to a synagogue in Greece.<\/p>\n

Noting that with neo-Nazi parties on the rise again in Europe, he said governments have to “be very careful not to let them gain ground as they did in the 1930s.”<\/p>\n

“We have to be very careful to remember the message of ‘Never again.’ The fight against neo-Nazis is more important than ever,” Samaras said.<\/p>\n

In recent months, Greece has seen a dramatic rise in the power of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which swept into parliament with 18 seats in last year’s election. Greek and international Jewish groups have condemned Golden Dawn as racist and anti-Semitic.<\/p>\n

Also speaking at the ceremony, Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, called on the Greek government to “completely eradicate the ultra-right and the neo-Nazi parties from the political horizon of Greece.”<\/p>\n

The ceremony commemorated the deportations that sent 49,000 of the city’s 55,000 Jews to Nazi death camps. The events also were marked Saturday with a silent march from the city\u2019s Liberty Square to the Old Railway Station.<\/p>\n

The Jewish community of Thessaloniki was a vital center of Sephardic Jewry for 450 years following the expulsion from Spain. Known as the “Flower of the Balkans,” it was the center of Ladino culture in the region.<\/p>\n

Following the deportations, Jewish property was looted, synagogues were destroyed, priceless Ladino libraries were shipped to Germany and the cemetery headstones were used as construction material.<\/p>\n

Also Sunday, as part of the commemorations, the World Jewish Congress is set to hold a special meeting in Thessaloniki in an effort to support vulnerable Jewish communities.<\/p>\n

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