We all look forward to being able to travel and take vacations again. Sometimes a little distraction from today’s challenges can give us the strength to deal with them in a positive state of mind.
In these trying times, the concern and support of good friends all over the world are especially heartening and appreciated. On a personal level, not only family members who live overseas have reached out to me, but also friends from all over the globe, many of whom are not Jewish, have contacted me to let me know that Israel is in their thoughts and prayers.
It is also good to know that there are fine people who value the Jewish people and want to safeguard the story of our past in their own countries. One such person is Evi Meska, a Greek woman who is committed to preserving Jewish sites and memories in her hometown of Veria.
On our trip to Macedonia in northern Greece last November, we stopped in Veria to visit the town’s restored synagogue. Located 70 km. southwest of Thessaloniki, Veria has about 60,000 residents. There is no longer a Jewish community there, but the stories we heard from Meska touched our hearts and brought tears to our eyes.
Meska has worked for the local municipality since 2002, guiding visitors around the synagogue. Among the visitors were Holocaust survivors, some of them former residents of the town. Encountering them was life-changing for Meska – and meeting her there made a tremendous impression on us as well.
All about Veria
Macedonia is the fabled home of Alexander the Great, who was born in Pella. His father, Phillip III, is buried in Vergina. Both these sites are well worth a visit. We took a private tour with guide Giorgios Adamidis (adamtouristguide@gmail.com), born in Veria. Engaging, tremendously knowledgeable, and friendly, Adamidis provided excellent background information and explanations regarding the antiquities that he showed us.
The archaeological site and museum of Pella are both amazing, and the royal tombs and surrounding museum are fascinating. The funerary art, especially the gold-covered caskets (called larnakes) and pure gold funerary crowns were magnificent. Between the two ancient cities of Pella and Vergina lies Veria, home to a Jewish community from antiquity until it was extinguished by the Holocaust.
Veria (known then as Berea) is mentioned in the Gospels, Acts 12:10. “As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue.” Apparently, Paul and his message were not well received in Thessaloniki, so he moved on to Berea, where the residents showed greater interest. This dates the origins of the Jewish community to at least the 1st century CE.
The Expulsion from Spain in 1492 brought a renewed Jewish community to Veria, this time Ladino speakers, in addition to the Greek-speaking Jews, often referred to as Romaniote Jews. That Greek-speaking community largely disappeared over the centuries. A rabbinic responsa, D’var Moshe, written by Rabbi Chaim Moshe ben Shlomo in Salonika (the name Jews used for Thessaloniki) in 1742, speaks of Jewish men who converted to Islam in the wake of the false messiah Shabbtai Zvi’s conversion to that religion; they were subsequently obliged to divorce their wives who clung to Judaism.
In the 19th century, with the arrival of the railway line, Veria was linked to other Greek cities and became a popular vacation spot for Thessaloniki Jews escaping the heat and crowding of their hometown. After their city was ravaged by a fire in 1917, many Jews found refuge in Veria. Although Veria had rabbis and teachers of its own, the chief rabbi of Salonika and other scholars were accustomed to visiting the city. Veria has been described as a distant suburb of Salonika, once known as Ir Va’Em B’Yisrael – a Jewish metropolis. All this came to an end in 1943.
We heard the horrifying story of the destruction of the Jewish community of Veria, which numbered some 600 members before the German invasion. Some managed to flee to the hills and join the partisans or hide, but the Germans locked some 300 Jews in the synagogue for three days in late April 1943.
Denied food and water, a number died there. Those who remained alive were sent to Thessaloniki, and from there to Auschwitz. Very few survived. After the war, 123 Jews who had fled to the mountains returned to Veria. They found that their homes had been taken over by others and that their possessions had disappeared. The majority left for Thessaloniki, Israel, or other destinations. A single Jewish family lived there in recent years. Now only one son remains, married to a Christian woman. He is the last Jew in Veria.
There are still homes once owned by Jews in Veria’s Barbouta Quarter that bear the legend “If I forget you Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten…” over the front door. It is not difficult to imagine Jews walking on the picturesque cobbled streets dressed in their finest festival clothes on their way to the synagogue, built near the Tripotamos River.
The present synagogue
It is not inconceivable that the present synagogue, constructed in 1860, was built on the site of a former Jewish place of worship. A riverbank is a suitable place for a synagogue, providing fresh water and a sense of purity. The prophet Ezekiel’s visions in Babylon (actually near a site called Tel Aviv) took place near water: the Kebar Canal. Even though he was far from the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, a source of water provided the requisite purity for prophecy.
Right next to the synagogue, Meska showed us a ramshackle structure by the riverbank which was once the community mikveh. Her next project, she told us, is to restore it. She is also trying to persuade the municipality to buy a derelict building near the synagogue to be made into a visitors’ center or perhaps a museum.
The fact that the synagogue was constructed in 1860 may not be happenstance. As mentioned, the community is much older, and a previous structure may have stood in the vicinity.
There is also a mosque not far away, one of several Muslim houses of worship in Veria. Both of these religious buildings were constructed in 1860 when the area was under Ottoman rule, but Veria was predominately Christian; Muslims made up approximately one-third of the local population. There were many fewer Jews. Yet both a synagogue and a mosque were built in the same year – perhaps as a gesture toward a certain level of multiculturalism and tolerance.
Today Veria is a predominately Greek-speaking Christian town, and the Jewish community was declared defunct in 1970. The Jewish cemetery was destroyed, and the site was subsequently developed as a sports field. There are plans to incorporate some of the remaining tombstones in a future Holocaust memorial. The former Jewish neighborhood, Barbouta, is a protected heritage area.
In the neighborhood near the synagogue, we came across a number of Stolpersteine (stumbling stones). They are memorial markers consisting of small brass plaques set in the sidewalk bearing the names of local Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Gunter Demnig, the German artist who founded this project, traveled to Veria to install them.
The synagogue’s exterior was restored by the city in 1996. Its interior was refurbished by the Greek Jewish community a few years later with the help of the Getty Foundation. The interior walls of the synagogue and its ceiling are painted in vivid hues – azure, orange, yellow, brown, and green – with depictions of the holy places of the Land of Israel. These colors and scenes are far from historically accurate. The current decorating scheme is arguably too bright, perhaps even jarring. Nevertheless, the synagogue retains its modest dimensions and an air of gentle simplicity and sanctity.
According to Elias Messinas, author of The Synagogues of Greece (2011), the plaster walls were originally painted to look like marble. Generations of Jews prayed and studied Torah there, and a number were martyred within its walls. Services are not held there on a regular basis; and the aron kodesh (holy ark) is empty, bereft of its Torah scrolls. But the synagogue and its legacy endure and bear silent testimony to both joy and tragedy.
Meska showed me a booklet published by the Thessaloniki Jewish community in 2002, based on an intriguing article that appeared in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini in 1951.
It told the fantastical story of a lost Torah scroll from nearly 2,000 years ago with a notation in its margins that spoke of the visit to Veria of an “emissary” named Saul (later known by his Greek name, Paul). The Torah scroll was examined by scholars in 1941 at the behest of chief rabbi Koretz of Thessaloniki; but when the Germans arrived, it was seized. Having reached Auschwitz, where it was meant to be exhibited in a museum of Jewish artifacts, it was turned over to Hungarian Jewish survivors by the Russians who liberated the camp. The scroll has not been seen since.
Writing in the margins of a Sefer Torah is not Jewish practice, as this would disqualify the Torah from ritual use. The visit of Saul to Veria was not particularly significant to Jews at the time, although later Christian history would see it as an important step in spreading the “good news.”
The likelihood of the Torah scroll’s physical survival for millennia in Veria is highly doubtful, given the disappearance of the original Greek-speaking Jewish community that had existed from antiquity and their replacement by Sephardi Jews after 1492, and there is no independent record of its being examined by scholars in 1941 as the article claims.
Moreover, no museum of Jewish artifacts ever existed in Auschwitz, although there was a plan to establish one in Prague. In short, this story of a missing Sefer Torah seems to be a legend, albeit a captivating one, but there is no solid evidence of its historical basis.
Evi Meska’s journey
I found Meska’s personal story much more compelling. It is the story of faith, hope, love, suffering, endurance, and bonds between people of different backgrounds and religions.
Why is this articulate, well-dressed Greek Christian woman in her early 50s so eager to restore the synagogue and bring visitors to Veria to see it? Granted, the place is charming and of historical interest, but what brought her to volunteer there for six years until the local municipality provided a modest salary for her work? Why is she so passionate about this place? I asked her these questions and was deeply moved by her response.
“I love this beit knesset, this synagogue, very, very much. For me, it’s a holy place – a place in northern Greece so old, the only one that survived the Nazis. I believe that this is a very important place because even if we don’t have Jewish people here in Veria, this place is still alive... the energy of this place is still alive.”
As for her personal story, “My personal reasons that I stayed here... these six years were not easy for my life. Not at all – I was a new mother in a bad marriage; I didn’t know what to do, and nobody helped me. So I asked God: ‘Please, God, I want to find a way to raise my daughter and myself to live in a different way.’ And God sent me here, to meet your survivors [of the Holocaust]. I cannot tell you with words what I have learned here these six years of my life. Especially from the survivors, but also from the second generation.”
She said that the survivors she met “taught me – ‘Evi, no matter how hard your life is, no matter what happened to you in the past, you can stand on your feet, you can be a strong woman, and you can raise your daughter like we did our children, with love and respect.’ And this is what I learned here, and the blessing that I have here – wow! Wow! I see survivors kiss my hand, my hand, a crazy woman with a crazy dream to open a synagogue, and say: ‘Evi, you’re doing a mitzvah.’ Some of them promise to come back to this holy place to celebrate their 100th birthday with me. This is a huge honor.”
Meska added: “Also the love I received from you, especially the Jewish people – I love you so, so much. You saved my life because you gave me love, respect, and honor here. And a blessing that will follow me after I leave this Earth. Even rabbis touched me on my forehead... and they prayed for me and they prayed for this place to be open. There are so many moments that I cannot even describe. But it’s a holy place for my life – I gave life to the synagogue I know, and that is exactly what the synagogue gave to me: a life with honor, love, and respect.”
Meska’s story is not only a moving personal story of how one fine woman endured and brought up her daughter “with love and respect” against all odds. It also teaches us a valuable lesson about how our national story of suffering, endurance, and redemption can inspire others; how historical memory can inspire people to transcend personal tragedy and do good in the world – and of the importance of making friends along the way during the journeys we take.
You can contact Evi Meska to schedule a visit to the Veria Synagogue at +30-6983-88-03-29 (cellphone and WhatsApp).