Greece to institute national Holocaust Day
Jean Cohen

AJN
28 November 2003

ATHENS — Greece announced this week that it would establish a national day of remembrance for Greek Jews who died in the Holocaust.

The country’s Interior Ministry said it would submit legislation to parliament making January 27 — the day prisoners were liberated from Auschwitz — a “day of remembrance of Greek Jewish Holocaust victims”.

More than 90 per cent of Greece’s 80,000 Jews perished in Nazi death camps or during the German occupation of Greece in World War II.

Last Friday’s announcement came a day after the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre issued a travel advisory urging Jews to avoid visiting Greece for the 2004 Olympics because of the alleged antisemitic climate.

“Failing a dramatic change in attitude and policy, the current atmosphere of hate and vilification can only escalate and could also poison the environment leading up to the 2004 Olympic Games,” the centre’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said in the statement.