Beware of Bearing Greeks

The major Jewish ghettos in Europe were considerably east of Athens, Greece, but nonetheless, between 1943 and 1944, 60,000 Jews were rounded up in Greece (pictured above) to be sent to Nazi death camps. Greece is famous as the cradle of modern philosophy and humanism, teachings that endured into Judaism, Christianity and Islam as time passed. Democracy and social responsibility were heavily discoursed and articulated by the ancient Greeks, from essays to plays, from ribald tales to heavenly poetry. But today, that free-wheeling and open sociological feeling seems to be falling in economically perilous times in search of a scapegoat. Bring on the money-lenders; bring on the stereotypes; bring on the Jews. Austerity and fiscal pain never seem to produce tolerance and understanding. And so it is with Greece, among the most dire of Europe’s economies.

As Athens has finally built a Holocaust memorial, it seems to have opened at an opportune time… for anti-Semitism. The February 20^th Los Angeles Times explains: “But since [the memorial’s] dedication in May, synagogues have been targeted, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, Holocaust monuments elsewhere in Greece vandalized and the Jewish Museum of Greece, in the capital, defaced with swastikas. What's more, an alarming chunk of Athenians in November supported the election of a neo-Nazi candidate to the capital' s city council.”

There are a lot fewer Jews living in modern Greece, perhaps for horrifically obvious reasons, but that fact does not seem to have deterred those who need to pin blame for economically difficult times: “‘We've always been under siege by fanatics and far-right political movements here,’ said David Saltiel, president of the Central Jewish Board of Greece, which represents the country's 6,000 Jews. ‘The fear now is that anti-Semitism will get worse with the financial crisis.’ Well into the nation's worst recession in 17 years, the government in Athens was thrown a bailout lifeline of $146 billion by the European Union andInternational Monetary Fund last year in exchange for draconian reforms and cost-cutting measures designed to slash the country's yawning budget deficit, equal to 15.4% of gross domestic product.” LA Times.

The more the populace is forced to sacrifice, the stronger the ultra-conservative movements, a trend which is sociologically consistent all over the earth. And Jews have been the “go to” scapegoats for millennia, even though it would seem to be painfully obvious that 6,000 Jews in a nation of over 11 million people couldn’t… even if they wanted to… have much of an impact doing anything. Better to pick on the helpless and statistically irrelevant… oh and invoke Jews overseas, since Greece no longer has many of its own anymore. Jews have been a part of the Greek landscape for over 2,000 years, and they have endured much during history’s transitions.

The Times churns up plenty of sickening data in support not only of active anti-Semitism in Greece, but of the overwhelming acceptance and tolerance of the practice by just about everybody: “[As American Jewish leaders converged on Athens, the reaction was swift and negative]: ‘We're in danger!’ warned renowned composer Mikis Theodorakis, who in the course of a television interview openly conceded that he was an anti-Semite. ‘Zionism and it leaders are here, meeting in our country!’… ‘This is no laughing matter,’ he railed, berating Zionism and its ‘control over America and the banking system that Greece is now a victim of.’…

“Take the case of Konstantinos Plevris… A self-avowed anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, the 70-year-old lawyer was sentenced to 14 months in prison in 2007 for inciting racial hatred with his book ‘Jews: The Whole Truth.’ In 2009, the decision was overturned, and a year later, the Supreme Court upheld Plevris' acquittal, arguing that his ‘scientific work’ did not target the Jews as a race or religion but, rather, their ‘conspiratorial pursuit of global domination,’ according to a copy of the 2010 decision… ‘There is zip, zilch, zero reaction to any semblance of anti-Semitism,’ said human rights activist Panayotes Dimitras, ‘leaving the door wide-open for extremists to come in and exploit this phobic society, more so now, in this time of crisis.’”

Anytime misplaced blame is thrown onto minorities that are “different from the rest of us,” we all lose a bit of our humanity, more if we sit silently in de facto confirmation that “that’s just the way it is.” We Americans, as purveyors of “all men are created equal,” are particularly called upon to decry intolerance wherever it may arise. And when such intolerance exists within our own borders, it is a shame that demeans each one of us even more.

I’m Peter Dekom, and being an American is more than what kind of passport you carry.