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How the Kefalonia killings led to the World War II massacre of Greece’s Jews
The Holocaust in Greece has always occupied a strangely small place in the broader memory of World War II. This is despite the fact that Greece lost somewhere around 80 to 90 percent of its prewar Jewish population, one of the highest proportions in occupied Europe, and that Thessaloniki had been one of the great Jewish cities of the continent. The destruction was so complete that it is easy today to visit Greece, even repeatedly, without quite appreciating what disappeared.
I was reminded of this on Kefalonia, an Ionian island where we spent part of this summer. We try to get to a Greek island most years, but this trip unexpectedly led into a history that connected the collapse of Fascist Italy, a largely forgotten German massacre of Italian soldiers and the final destruction of much of Greek Jewry.
In September 1943, two months after Italy overthrew Benito Mussolini — then abandoning its alliance with Hitler and signing an armistice with the Allies — German forces on Kefalonia turned against their former partners. The roughly 12,000 men of the Italian Acqui Division resisted German demands to surrender their weapons. After defeating them, the Germans executed thousands of Italian prisoners in one of the largest massacres of prisoners of war of World War II.
But Italy’s defeat had another consequence that was ultimately more important for Greece. Much of the country had been under Italian occupation since 1941, and Italian authorities, despite being Fascist occupiers, had generally resisted German efforts to deport Jews from the territories they controlled. This produced the strange situation in which Jews could sometimes find relative safety by moving from German-occupied Greece into Italian-held territory.
On Sept. 8, 1943, that protection effectively disappeared.
As German troops moved to disarm and, on Kefalonia, massacre their former Italian allies, they also took control of Italy’s occupation zones. Jewish communities that had survived the first years of the war were suddenly exposed to the machinery of the Holocaust. The German takeover of Italian Greece thus links two histories that are usually remembered separately: the slaughter of the Acqui Division and the destruction of the remaining Jews of Greece.
The Ionian islands show with unusual clarity what followed.
Corfu, north of Kefalonia, had a Jewish community stretching back centuries. In June 1944, the Germans rounded up nearly all of its roughly 1,800 Jews and deported them, principally to Auschwitz. Few survived. On Zakynthos, just south of Kefalonia, the Germans also demanded the Jews. There, Metropolitan Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Karrer refused to provide the requested list, while local residents hid their Jewish neighbors. All 275 Jews survived.
Kefalonia had once had a Jewish community of its own, but most had left before the war, so there was no comparable population remaining when the Germans took over. Within a short distance, then, three Ionian islands produced three different Jewish outcomes: a community destroyed on Corfu, an entire community saved on Zakynthos and a community on Kefalonia that had largely departed before the Germans arrived.
Behind these island stories was the much greater catastrophe of Thessaloniki, the largest city in northern Greece. Before the war, roughly 50,000 Jews lived there, descendants largely of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. They had helped make Thessaloniki one of the great Jewish centers of Europe, a city whose Jewish identity was woven deeply into its commercial and cultural life. Beginning in 1943, the Germans deported the overwhelming majority to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most were murdered.
This is part of what makes the Greek Holocaust so striking. Jews had lived in the Greek world for more than 2,000 years. The Romaniote communities were among the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, predating the arrival of the Sephardim by many centuries. In a few years, most of that world was destroyed. Of roughly 72,000 to 77,000 Jews in prewar Greece, a small fraction survived.
On Kefalonia, some memory of the Italian killings still survives. Kosmas Theodoratos, a 30-year-old islander, told me a story passed down through a friend’s grandmother. Older villagers had claimed that after the massacre they could “smell the blood all the way to the village.”
How far away was it? “A few kilometers,” he said. Even he was skeptical. “It sounds unreal, to be honest,” Theodoratos said. “But that’s the quote my friend’s grandmother had said to us when we were younger.” The witnesses are almost all gone now. “The older generation that lived a little closer to it” talked about the massacre, he said. “There’s not a lot of them left now.”
The same, of course, is increasingly true of the generation that remembers the Jewish communities of Greece before their destruction.
Kefalonia therefore seems worth revisiting not simply because of what happened to the Italians here, extraordinary as that story is. September 1943 was a hinge in the occupation of Greece. Italians who had been occupiers became victims of the Germans; Jews who had found a precarious refuge under Italian rule lost it; and communities that had existed for centuries suddenly found themselves facing deportation and extermination.
The results can still be traced from island to island: Kefalonia, Corfu, Zakynthos. And beyond them stands Thessaloniki, where an entire Jewish civilization was almost erased. Europe seems placid today. But evidence of the tempest is never far from view, for anyone willing to look.
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Providence voters pass ballot initiative that could lead to divestment of city funds from Israel
(JTA) — Voters in Providence, Rhode Island, have approved a ballot measure that could result in the city divesting public funds from Israel, according to local media, in a major victory for the Israel boycott movement.
In a major victory for the Israel boycott movement, voters in Providence, Rhode Island, have approved a ballot measure that could result in the city divesting public funds from Israel, according to local media.
With 81 of 82 polling locations partially reported, the Rhode Island Board of Elections tallied 75% voting to approve the measure versus 25% rejecting. Both the Rhode Island Current and the Boston Globe report the measure was approved.
“We are overjoyed that the city of Providence has voted — by more than a 3 to 1 margin — to divest our collective dollars from support for genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Lex Rofeberg, who runs the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound and was an organizer with the Providence divestment initiative, told JTA. “This historic moment can serve as an example for other cities around the country hoping to align their investments with their values.”
The ordinance calls for the capital city to refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.” Though the ballot language does not mention Israel by name, it was heavily supported by local pro-Palestinian groups and opposed by some Jewish and pro-Israel groups.
A representative for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island previously told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group would explore legal options to challenge the ballot measure in the event that it passed.
The vote makes Providence the largest municipality yet to vote in favor of some form of Israel divestment, following the lead of Somerville, Massachusetts, whose voters approved a nonbinding divestment measure last year. Providence is home to an estimated 15,000 Jews, or around 7% of its population. Progressive Jewish groups, including the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, were among the ballot measure’s advocates.
The city’s mayor, Brett Smiley, a pro-Israel Democrat who converted to Judaism while in office, lost his primary to a democratic socialist, an early indicator of which way the divestment vote would go.
Activist initiatives to challenge U.S. financial aid to Israel have picked up steam in the years since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and ensuing Gaza war. On the morning of Election Day, President Donald Trump, who described aid to Israel as a political liability, announced the U.S. would end nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of the year.
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Republican Lawler concedes to Democrat Conley in fierce battle for Jewish vote in NYC suburbs
(JTA) — Republican congressman Mike Lawler has conceded to Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a former national security official, after competing fiercely for Jewish voters in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.
Lawler has been a staunchly pro-Israel member since joining Congress in 2023, and was endorsed by the Republican Jewish Coalition and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
Conley was endorsed by the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel, and has said she supports Israel while opposing the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
Lawler, who is Catholic, has deep ties to the district’s large Orthodox Jewish population, and touted their support recently when asked about the neck-and-neck polling.
Both Lawler and Conley have tried tying their opponent to polarizing figures in their respective parties. Lawler has asserted that Conley, a moderate, will not separate herself from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and particularly New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has a lower favorability rating outside the city. Conley denounced Mamdani’s statement on the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack after Lawler challenged her to do so during a debate.
Conley, meanwhile, has tied Lawler to President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a rubber stamp for Trump’s legislative priorities.
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In early LA mayoral results, Karen Bass holds slim lead over Nithya Raman, who sparred with DSA on Israel
Early returns in the Los Angeles mayoral election showed incumbent Karen Bass with a slim lead over Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose comments on Israel became a flashpoint in the race.
The first batch of results — totaling about 500,000 votes — showed Bass leading Raman, 50.8% to 49.2%.
The final outcome may not be known until Wednesday or later, a common occurrence in tight California races due to the preponderance of mail-in ballots. Nearly 90% of California voters did so by mail in the June primary.
But if the primary results are any indication, Bass’ lead may evaporate as more votes are counted.
In the June 2 open primary — a system in which the top two vote-getters from any party advance to a runoff — Raman trailed a Republican, Spencer Pratt, by eight points for second place behind Bass. She won the ensuing batches of mail-in ballots, but did not pass Pratt until June 7. She ultimately surpassed him by more than four percentage points.
Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has clashed with the organization — and frustrated many of her Jewish constituents — while trying to strike a balance on Israel. She has called the war in Gaza a genocide, but declined to adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions platform — a stance that led the DSA to consider expelling her.
Bass, a mainstream Democrat who served six terms in Congress before running for mayor in 2022, entered the race as a historically unpopular incumbent, largely thanks to her response to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. Raman endorsed Bass prior to declaring her own candidacy on the last day to enter the race, a move Bass has characterized as a personal betrayal.
The polls swung back and forth in the weeks leading up to the election. Bass, who won most labor endorsements, was leading until September, when one poll sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Raman ahead by 11 points with a third of voters still undecided. A follow-up poll by the Times last week showed the two in a dead heat.
Unlike many other DSA candidates up for election across the country on Tuesday, Raman, an urban policy wonk who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was 6, never made Israel a focal point of her campaign. Instead, she focused more on housing, homelessness and budget policy.
But her membership in the DSA, an interview she granted Hasan Piker during the primary and the genocide comments dogged her anyway, especially among Jewish Angelenos.
Raman, after publicly condemning the DSA’s anti-Israel statements after Oct. 7, sponsored a resolution for a ceasefire and return of hostages in March 2024, disappointing mainstream Jewish groups who called the motion one-sided. Then, during the primary, Raman told Piker she believed the Gaza war was a genocide and that Israel was an apartheid state. She also said she would not seek the endorsement of pro-Israel Democratic party groups as she had in 2024.
Her record on Israel seemed likely to come up when Raman participated in the candidate forum for Jewish voters Sept. 29. But Raman struggled to get through answers about the DSA, Piker and especially genocide and BDS — which she called a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” — leading to loud audience groans. During Bass’ turn on stage, the mayor said she did not support BDS and did not believe the war in Gaza was a genocide.
Mail-in voters historically skew to the left, and the primary vote may offer a preview of the margin Raman might need.
In that election, about 58% of the total votes were tallied election night, when Bass led Raman 36.5% to 21%. Raman got the biggest share of the ensuing ballot batches, beating Bass by about five percentage points.
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