GREECE RATIFIES NAZI-ERA ARCHIVE RELEASE DURING

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ATHENS 002106 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: GR PGOV PREL SUBJECT: GREECE RATIFIES NAZI-ERA ARCHIVE RELEASE DURING AMB KENNEDY VISIT REF: THESSALONIKI 60 ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: During the Athens visit of Special Holocaust Envoy Kennedy, the new Greek Parliament in its first official ratification act approved by unanimous consent the amendment to the International Tracing Service (ITS) agreement, capping off the eleven-nation approval process for release in digitized format of the Bad-Arolsen archive. On the Jewish cemetery issue in Thessaloniki, Jewish Communities Board President Constantinis said they did not expect the university built on the site to be razed but did expect compensation from the GOG, which had acknowledged the legitimacy of the Jewish communities' claim. Education and Religion Ministry Secretary General Platis said he was sensitive to Jewish concerns about the cemetery but also did not want to stand in the way of an expansion of the university. On an October 24 visit in Thessaloniki, the university rector and administrative director both told Kennedy that there were no plans to expand the university at its current site on old cemetery land. END SUMMARY. INTERNATIONAL TRACING SERVICE -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Ambassador Christian Kennedy, Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, visited Athens October 19-24 to lobby for ratification of the amendments to the International Tracing Service (ITS) agreement to allow release of electronic copies of the Bad-Arolsen archives, as well as to discuss other issues related to Holocaust education and remembrance in Greece. The Bad-Arolsen archive housed in Germany is a huge collection of WWII-era displaced-person and Nazi detention, concentration-camp, and labor records. In May 2006, the ITS Commission adopted amendments to its founding agreements to allow each of the eleven member-states to receive a digitized copy of the archive. (NOTE: The eleven Commission member-states include: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK, and the U.S. END NOTE.) Over the last year, ten of the eleven member-states had approved the amendments through their various internal approval processes. Greece had prepared legislation for parliamentary consideration in August, but then devastating forest fires and snap elections delayed work on the legislation. ¶3. (SBU) Consideration of the ITS amendment ratification was among the very first issues taken up by the newly-constituted Parliamentary Committee for Defense and International Affairs, which passed the ratification bill out of committee on October 17. Ambassador Kennedy arrived in Greece on October 19 and discussed final ratification with a number of Greek politicians, officials, and Jewish community leaders. Newly-elected Defense and International Affairs Committee Chairman Miltiadis Varvitsiotis explained that he and Parliamentary President (speaker) Sioufas welcomed the opportunity to ratify the ITS amendments and noted Greece's sensitivity to Holocaust issues. Photini Tomai, Director of the MFA diplomatic archives and who, together with Ambassador Alexander Philon of the MFA Center for Analysis and Planning, has done excellent service representing Greece on the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, said Greece was amongst the first Commission member-states to sign the ITS amendments and regretted that Greece would be the last to ratify, even if the delay was due to the forest fires and snap electios. ¶4. (SBU) Working at a record pace, the full Parliament approved the ratification by unanimous consent on October 23 in what was its first official approval of a final piece of legislation since newly convening after the September elections. Embassy released a press statement Oct 24, quoting Ambassador Kennedy's congratulations to the Parliament and his note that the historic vote capped off the member-state approval process. Despite Greece's fast action to catch up to the other ten member-states in the approval process, Greece for now will not accept its own copy of the digitized archive. Varvitsiotis explained that this was due to the lack of an adequate facility and the costs of establishing and maintaining archive-access software and trained personnel. Nevertheless, Varvitsiotis said he wanted Greece to establish its own Holocaust museum, which could become the archive repository. THESSALONIKI CEMETERY -------------- ¶5. (SBU) In addition to the ITS ratification, Ambassador Kennedy and his interlocutors also discussed other issues of interest to the Greek Jewish community, including the controversy over the Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki (reftel). The cemetery was expropriated following its ATHENS 00002106 002 OF 003 destruction during WW II, and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was subsequently built on the site. Moses Constantinis, President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece -- the umbrella organization representing the nine surviving Jewish communities in Greece (of a total of 40 before the war) -- said they did not expect the University to be razed. They believed, however, that they were entitled to compensation -- either in the form of money or a new piece of property of comparable value. Constantinis said the GOG acknowledged the validity of the claim but had not yet offered any concrete proposals. Ambassador Kennedy noted the opposition of some Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel to compensation for cemeteries, but Constantinis countered that the money would greatly benefit the struggling Jewish community in Greece today and thus was a noble way to commemorate the dead. ¶6. (SBU) Secretary General of the Ministry of Education and Religion Dimitris Platis questioned why a new place could not be found to move the bones from the Jewish cemetery, adding that this was done frequently in the U.S. when a new highway or building was to be constructed. Ambassador Kennedy explained the religious sensitivities regarding Jewish cemeteries and emphasized our desire that there be no new construction on vacant parts of the cemetery land in Thessaloniki. If there were any construction, he implored, "I hope you'll be working with international bodies that have dealt with these issues extensively in the past." SG Platis said they would do so but "without denying the right of the university to expand." At the conclusion of the meeting, SG Platis said that he would call the university rector to discuss the issue once Ambassador Kennedy left his office. He said he would ask the rector to consider what would happen if during construction ancient Greek ruins were discovered, which, he opined, "would make you stop (construction) forever." He concluded by saying that he didn't want "any trouble from expansion at the university, but I don't want to stop any expansion either." (COMMENT: Platis had been in his current position for only 23 days and it is unclear whether his references were only to hypothetical "expansion" of the university, real expansion, or simply renovations of current structures. This was the first we had heard mention of any plans for expansion. END COMMENT.) Ambassador Kennedy later asked ITF member Ambassador Philon to discuss the serious ramifications of an expansion with Platis, which he agreed to do. UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI RECTOR: NO PLANS TO EXPAND -------------- -------------- ¶7. (SBU) In an October 24 visit to Thessaloniki, Ambassador Kennedy met with the rector of Aristotle University and the administrative director. Confirming previous assurances (reftel),both said that there were no plans to build anything new on the current campus that stands atop the pre-1942 cemetery. The administrative director pointed out that there were two new campuses in the city because there was no space in the current main campus. A total of five faculties were to be located in the new campus. HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, ANTI-SEMITISM -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Others issues that Ambassador Kennedy raised with his interlocutors in Athens included Holocaust education and anti-semitism in Greece. Constantinis of the Central Board of Jewish Communities described many of the challenges facing Greece's Jews today. He noted, for example, that only three communities now had rabbis (Athens, Thessaloniki, and Larissa) and that the maintenance of the various Jewish properties was expensive and difficult. On Holocaust education, Constantinis described the memorial ceremonies and events held in Greece, including the January 27 Day of Remembrance, an official Greek commemoration since 2004. He also provided Kennedy with a book on the Holocaust that he said each Greek high school student was now receiving. On anti-semitism, Constantinis said there was no evidence of official anti-semitism or of organized Greek anti-semitic groups, but vandalism and graffiti were problems. ¶9. (SBU) Ambassador Kennedy visited the Athens synagogue -- actually two synagogue buildings adjacent to each other and home to one Jewish community. Rabbi Jacob Arar and President of the Athens Jewish Community Benjamin Albalas listened intently to Kennedy's description of the Bad-Arolsen archive and the significance of the release of digitized copies. They then provided a tour of the two synagogues, which had recently been renovated, thanks to a wealthy donor. They described their community as vibrant, with relatively many young members. ATHENS 00002106 003 OF 003 ¶10. (SBU) A high point of the visit was a tour of the Jewish Museum of Greece, which is home to a fascinating, well-organized, and well-preserved collection on the diverse history of Greek Jews. Enthusiastic and dynamic museum director Zanet Battinou conducted the tour, discussed details of the Holocaust in Greece, and described the historic interplay of the Greek Romaniote and Sephardim communities. She explained that of the estimated 75,000 Jews in Greece before the war, 86 percent died at the hands of the Nazis, who shipped them to death camps and slave labor in occupied Europe (there were no mass executions in Greece itself). Today, there are about 5,500 Jews in Greece, some of whom are survivors or descendants of those transported northward, some of whom were "hidden children" -- Jewish children taken in by Greek Christian families for protection -- and some of whom were escapees and their descendants, including Battinou herself, whose family fled to Turkey before Nazi deportations began. COUNTRYMAN