Before you come
For four hundred years this was a Sephardic city. Its history does not stop in 1912.
By Loena Luxury SuitesUpdated August 20262 min read
By the early twentieth century roughly half of Thessaloniki's population was Jewish, mostly Sephardim who settled here after the 1492 expulsion from Spain. It was among the foremost centres of Sephardic culture anywhere, with its own newspapers, schools and printing houses, and a port that stopped on Shabbat, and the cooking still carries traces of it.
In February 1943 the occupation authorities forced Thessaloniki's Jews into two ghettos, and the first train left for Auschwitz-Birkenau on 15 March. By that August more than 45,000 people had been deported. The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki puts its own count at 46,091, of whom 1,950 returned. Eight months earlier, on 11 July 1942, nine thousand Jewish men were ordered to assemble in Eleftherias Square and held there through the day, the Black Saturday. The old Jewish cemetery, with more than 300,000 graves, was destroyed in December 1942. The Aristotle University campus stands on that ground today, and a memorial was unveiled there in 2014.
The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki is at Agiou Mina 11, a few minutes from Aristotelous. It closes on Saturdays and on Jewish holidays. The Monastirioton synagogue on Syngrou came through the occupation because the Red Cross used it as a warehouse, and it serves as the city's central synagogue today. Visits are arranged in advance through the community at info@jmth.gr instead of by walking in. The Holocaust Museum of Greece is being built on the site of the old railway station the deportation trains left from. Its construction contract was signed in January 2026 and the build is planned to take two years, so it is not open. Eleftherias Square itself is a construction site into 2027 while it becomes the Park of Remembrance.
Ben Gurion (TLV) to Thessaloniki Macedonia Airport (SKG) takes about two and a half hours, with direct routes concentrated in July and August. Check current schedules with your airline. From Ladadika, where we are, the Jewish Museum, Aristotelous and the seafront are all on foot.
About two and a half hours from Ben Gurion (TLV) to Thessaloniki Macedonia Airport (SKG). Direct routes are most frequent in July and August. Check current schedules.
At Agiou Mina 11, near Aristotelous Square. It is closed on Saturdays and on Jewish holidays, so check the museum's own hours before planning around it.
Visits to the Monastirioton synagogue are arranged in advance through the Jewish Community at info@jmth.gr. It does not operate on open admission.
Not yet. It is under construction on the site of the old railway station. The contract was signed in January 2026 and the build is planned to take two years.
