Archives of the Jewish Community of Rhodes

The settlement of Jews in Rhodes is mentioned for the first time in the Book of Maccabees and it dates back to the 2nd century B.C. The population of the Jewish community of Rhodes averaged between 500 people in the 17th and 18th century to over 2,000 people when the community was at its peak in the later 19th and early 20th century. In 1941 there were about 1,800 Jews living in Rhodes. They had four synagogues. From September 1943 until July 1944, while the Germans were arresting and displacing Jews all over Greece, no measures were taken against the Jews living in Rhodes, which prior to the war had been under Italian administration. This eased their initial fears and gave the members of the Jewish Community there the false impression of peace, and the hope that nothing serious was going to happen to them. During this time, however, the Nazis were already preparing a plan for the deportation and the elimination of the Jews. In mid-July 1944, the German Command ordered the Jews living in Rhodes to reside solely within the confines of the city of Rhodes or in the villages of Trianta, Kremasti and Villanova (now known as Paradisi). On 20 July,1944 almost all the Jews of Rhodes were captured and held in an improvised concentration camp, and the Germans began plundering the abandoned houses and seizing the property of those who were interned. At the end of July 1944, the Germans sent all remaining Jews on Rhodes to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Although their period of imprisonment at Auschwitz was relatively brief, most of those deported there from Rhodes died, with only 150 of the community surviving. [Source: "The Holocaust of Greek Jews: Monuments and Memories", Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece, Athens, January 2006.