A recently-launched E.U.-backed digital archive documenting the history of Greek Jews is offering free public access to more than 212,000 documents and over two million digital records, the European Jewish Congress said this week.
The Iossipos (“Josephus”) project, named after the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, has been implemented by the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki with roughly €4 million ($4.3 million) in funding from Brussels’ National Strategic Reference Framework 2021–2027 program.
Described by its developers as a landmark effort in cultural preservation, the website brings together archival material chronicling more than three millennia of Jewish presence in Greece, including Romaniote (Greek-speaking), Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities.
Thessaloniki, once known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans” following the arrival of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, became a major center of Jewish life before the Holocaust devastated its population. Beginning in March 1943, more than 50,000 Jews were deported from the city to Nazi destruction camps, with fewer than 2,000 surviving.
Much of the community’s archives were lost in the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917, which destroyed most of the city, or later stolen by Nazi Germany. Portions were recovered after WWII and held in institutions including Russia’s state archives, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, before being digitized and consolidated in the new repository.
The Iossipos initiative is centered around an online platform featuring historical documents, photographs, oral testimonies and audio materials, alongside interactive tools such as maps, augmented reality exhibits and a 3D reconstruction of interwar Thessaloniki.
The website also incorporates a folklore atlas, educational resources and biographical profiles of notable Greek Jews, as well as a curated audio archive of Judeo-Spanish music drawn from rare private collections.
Ambassador Yacov Livne, senior deputy director-general for public diplomacy at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, on Thursday hailed the effort as a “great initiative preserving the very rich Jewish heritage in Greece.”
“An important and timely effort,” Livne tweeted.
