Rick Steves' Greece: Athens & the Peloponnese amazon.com
Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis - By Matthew Lynn amazon.com
Greece's 'Odious' Debt: The Looting of the Hellenic Republic by the Euro, the Political Elite and the Investment Community - By Jason Manolopoulos amazon.com
Understanding the Crisis in Greece: From Boom to Bust - By Theodore Pelagidis amazon.com
The Imminent Crisis: Greek Debt and the Collapse of the European Monetary Union amazon.com
Eyewitness Greece - Athens and the Mainland - 352 Pages
Financial markets and economic growth in Greece, 1986-1999 [An article from: Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money]
Athens Demographics:
The population count for Athens was 10,964,020 in 2001. According to eurostat, in 2008 Greece had a total estimated population of 11,262,000. Of this, some 695,979 are estimated to be non-Greek.
February 21, 2011
Anti-Semitism gets growth spurt amid economic troubles of Greece
Los Angeles Times article by Anthee Carassava on 'Greece continuing to wrestle with strong anti-Jewish feeling.'
"What's different in Greece is the level of tolerance for anti-Semitism.
"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."
Some critics fault the country's Jewish organizations for shunning quick public reaction to attacks; others point to the attitude of some church prelates and to Greece's failure to come to terms with its once-multicultural identity and harrowing past.
"Whatever the cause," said Anna Stai of the Anti-Nazi Initiative, "Greece can no longer sit in denial about its anti-Jewish feelings. It's dangerous."
Related: Vigilante attacks on non-Greeks increasing - Dec 2010
Related: Jewish Museum in Athens vandalized - July 2010
Additional reading Anti-Semitism in Greece
From the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (though dated, this article contains an interesting overview):
- Anti-Semitism in Greece occurs not only among extreme rightists and leftists. It is embedded in Greek mainstream society and manifests itself in religious contexts, education, politics and the media. Jews are often not perceived as true Greeks, although many families have lived there since the 15th century.
- A Eurobarometer survey in the year 2000 showed Greece to have the highest degree of xenophobia in the European Union.
- Greek mainstream media regularly uses the terms "genocide," "Holocaust" and the names of concentration camps drawing a parallel between Nazi Germany and Israel today. In this, Greece is more similar to Syria and Iran than to the Western world.
- As the Greek Jewish community is small and not very vocal, the international condemnations of Greek anti-Semitism by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Anti-Defamation League and others are especially important.
Wall Street Journal artiocle by Andrew Apostolou, who is writing a history of collaboration in Greece during the Holocaust.
"...The genuine heroism of Greek Christians who saved Greek Jews from the Nazis in such places as Zakynthos and Athens is used to obscure the collaboration and indifference that helped condemn tens of thousands of Greek Jews to death in Salonika and northern Greece.
This ignorance has been reinforced by historians, Greek and foreign alike, who have largely skated over collaboration during the Holocaust. Like the Greek government, historians prefer to emphasize the rescue of Jews rather than prompt an examination of the often shameful and ambiguous stance that too many Greeks took during the Second World War. The leaders of Greece's barely 5,000 strong Jewish community take a similar historical approach for obvious political reasons. Over sixty years after the Holocaust, myths prevail over scholarship."
"The Full-Blown Return of Anti-Semitism in Europe"
Article by Guy Millière dated May 16, 2011, in the Hudson Institute online article archive:
"On April 19, the Corfu synagogue, in Greece, was burned. How many Jews live in Corfu today? One hundred and fifty. How many Jews live in Greece? Eight thousand, or about 0.8% of the population. For some, it seems these figures are still far too high. Two other synagogues were burned in Greece during the past year. Anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls are spreading all over the country.
What happened in Greece is happening everywhere across the European continent.
During the last decade, synagogues were vandalized or set on fire in Poland, Sweden, Hungary, France. Anti-Semitic inscriptions are being drawn on building walls in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Berlin and Rome. Jewish cemeteries are being ransacked. Jews are being attacked on the streets of most major cities on the continent. In the Netherlands, the police use « decoy Jews » in order to try arrest the perpetrators red-handed.
Jewish schools are being placed under police protection everywhere, and are usually equipped with security gates. Jewish children in public high schools are bullied; when parents complain, they are encouraged to choose another place of learning for their children.
In some cities such as Malmo, Sweden, or Roubaix, France, the persecution suffered by the Jewish community has reached such a degree that people are selling their homes at any price and leaving. Those who stay have the constant feeling that they are risking their lives: they must be extremely streetwise and carry no sign showing who they are. In 1990, approximately 2000 Jewish people lived in Malmo; now there are fewer than 700, and the number is decreasing every year."
ARCHIVE PAGE - MAY 19 TO MAY 31 2010
ARCHIVE PAGE - MAY 1 TO MAY 18 2010
ARCHIVE PAGE - DEC 2009 - MARCH 2010
