Registers of the Jewish Community of Salonika - Presentation

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Table of contents of this page

• History of the Jewish Community of Salonika
• Salonika in the 20th century
• The registers of the Community
• From the registers to the REGIE database
• Consulting the registers online

History of the Jewish Community of Salonika

The history of the Jewish Community of Salonika goes back some 2,300 years, to the 3rd century before the common era. The best-known source attesting its presence is the Epistles of Saint Paul, who preached at the synagogue of Salonika in the year 50. For 1,800 years, it was a small community, mostly Greek-speaking.

At the end of the 15th century, after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, and at the invitation of Sultan Bayezid II, a large part of the Sephardim settled in Salonika. There they organized themselves into 32 regional synagogues, most of them bearing the name of their members' region of origin — "Kastilia", "Italia Yashan", "Lishbon Yashan" — alongside the Romaniote synagogue "Etz Ahaim". By the middle of the 16th century, these communities had established a central administration to meet their collective needs. Each group initially spoke the language of its region of origin, but over time they merged into a common language, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). From the 16th century to the 1920s, the Jewish Community formed the majority of the population of Salonika.

Salonika in the 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, Salonika is a great port of the Ottoman Empire serving the entire Balkans and home to the largest Jewish community on the Mediterranean shores: activity stops on Saturdays and the whole population speaks, or understands, Judeo-Spanish. According to the Ottoman census of 1905, the city counts 98,000 inhabitants, including 48,000 Jews, 32,000 Muslims and 15,000 Greeks.

The city is incorporated into Greece in October 1912. Then disasters follow one another: the Balkan Wars (1912-1914), the First World War, and the great fire of August 18, 1917 ↗, which destroys the entire city center — the houses, the institutions, the 32 synagogues, the schools and the libraries — leaving 52,000 Jews homeless and starting a strong emigration. Follow the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922), the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) imposing the exchange of populations, and the Campbell pogrom (1931).

In April 1941, the German army occupies Salonika; 54,000 Jews still live there. On March 15, 1943, the first convoy of 2,800 people leaves for Auschwitz; in total, 48,000 Jews are deported. Five months later, there are no more Jews in Salonika. After the war, 2,000 survivors return. Today, the community counts fewer than 1,000 members in a city of 350,000 inhabitants.

The registers of the Community

Under the Ottoman "millet" system, each religious community was a "nation" of its own, with its own schools, hospitals and courts, and kept the civil records of its members. The registers of the Jewish Community were written in Judeo-Spanish, hand-scripted in solitreo, the Sephardic cursive script of the Hebrew alphabet. After 1912, the Greek state maintained the requirement of community civil registers (until 1982 for marriages).

The great fire of 1917 destroys almost all the archives. The only register predating the fire that survived is the Register of immigrants of 1905 (Defter nefus yabandji), which records 1,458 persons born outside Salonika. After the fire, the Community launched a general census, enrolling all its members, grouped by families, in 24 large books, subsequently used as family registers, updated at every birth, marriage or death until 1941. To these were added the registers of births, marriages and deaths kept on a day-to-day basis from 1917 onwards.

In 1941, the German army confiscates all the archives and ships them to Frankfurt, to the Institute for Research into the Jewish Question. At the end of the war, a large part is recovered by the Russian army and sent to Moscow, where it is discovered 50 years later by Prof. Minna Rozen. The American army recovers other archives, sent in turn to the YIVO in New York. In 1970, documents found in Salonika join the CAHJP in Jerusalem. Other documents and one register left on the spot were catalogued in 2006 by Devin Naar, then a doctoral researcher.

From the registers to the REGIE database

Of the 24 books of the 1917-1918 census, only 7 volumes have survived: volumes 9, 10, 13A and 14, kept in Moscow, and volumes 13B, 16 and 17B, kept at the YIVO in New York. Professor Devin Naar, of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington, where he holds the chair of Sephardic studies, and himself a descendant of a Salonika family, transmitted the digitized files of all the registers to Izo Abram, born in Salonika and an expert in solitreo.

These handwritten solitreo registers have therefore been transliterated into Latin characters after more than 15 years of work, volume by volume. All this data — 40,149 persons recorded in the family registers, 10,011 marriages, 10,265 births and 9,902 deaths — is now available on the website of the Cercle de Généalogie Juive. Discover how these registers were found, transliterated and put online.

The entirety of the data relating to the Jewish Community of Salonika represents a collection of 71,785 records.

Consulting the registers online

→ See the complete list of the registers of Salonika online: births, marriages, deaths, families (1917-1941) and the register of immigrants of 1905.

→ Consult the Research Guide — Salonika — how to use the registers of the Jewish Community of Salonika (1917-1941) in REGIE: letters, columns, cross-references, pitfalls:  a French first draft is on line.

Access to the REGIE database is reserved for members with up-to-date membership dues: become a member to explore these unique archives of Jewish genealogy in Salonika.

⚖ Terms of Use — to know the conditions of use of REGIE, consult our Terms of Use.

⌕ Access to the REGIE database search form — reserved for members with up-to-date membership dues.

⌕ Direct access to the search form for the registers of the Jewish Community of Salonika — reserved for members with up-to-date membership dues.

© Text excerpted from the presentation by Mr. Izo ABRAM · Harvest·Edition · Version française