07/20/2026
Today is the commemoration for the Jews of Rhodes, who were arrested en mass on July 20, 1944 by the N**is. The majority would be sent to Auschwitz, on what became the destruction of a longtime center of Sephardic Jewish life in Europe.
Jews have lived in Rhodes for 2,300 years, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Sephardic Jews then came to Rhodes in the 16th century, after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal after 1492. In the 1930s, Rhodes was under Italian fascist control. The anti-Jewish laws passed by Mussolini in 1938 also applied to the Jews of Rhodes. 3,700 Jews were living in Rhodes at the time. Hundreds left after the antisemitic laws were passed.
Then came WWII, and in September 1943, the German military occupied Rhodes. By July 1944, as part of the Final Solution, the N**is began deporting Jews from the Greek islands to death camps in occupied Poland.
On July 20, 1944, the Germans ordered all the Jewish men of Rhodes to report Gestapo headquarters, to be recruited for the German war effort. The next day, they ordered the women and children to join the men, to bring food supplies for ten days and their valuables. Thus by July 21, all the Jews had been arrested and their property confiscated.
The Turkish General-Counsel of Rhodes, Selahattin Ulkumen, saved 42 Jews from being deported, by claiming them as Turkish citizens under his protection.
After several days, the Jews of Rhodes were shipped to Athens, with no food or water on board. From Athens, they were put on cattle cars, and after days, reached Auschwitz-Birkenau. 400 of the Rhodes Jews were chosen for hard labor. The rest were killed.
Only 150 Jews of Rhodes survived the Holocaust. Between 60,000 and 70,000 Greek Jews perished during the Holocaust, 81% of the Greek Jewish population.
