The Jeff Malka Sephardic Collection

Victims from Crete, Florina and Volos, Greece

BACKGROUND

This database includes records from the island of Crete and two Greek towns; Florina and Volos.

Crete

During WW II, the Greek island of Crete was occupied by the Germans in 1941. Because the local population resisted with determination, the three main towns, Chania, Rethmynon, Herakleion, were badly bombed. In June 1944 Cretan Jews were arrested, sent to Herakleion, and put on the ship Tanais.  Together with some 600 Greek and Italian prisoners the ship left the port Herakleion but sunk shortly thereafter.  All the passengers perished.  The only Jewish remains in Chania is the Ets Hayim (Tree of Life) Synagogue that has been restored with much care.

The Crete entries in the database include the names of the 264 Jewish victims, most of them from Chania. Their given names are often double because the second name (or initial) is the father’s name. These double names were split in the database.

Volos

 A four-page document, typed in Greek, issued by the Jewish Community of Volos, Greece was found among the collection of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. It lists all the Jews from Volos who perished in the Holocaust. This list is based upon official evidence presented by the Director of the Assembly of the Jewish Community of Volos after the return of those saved due to acts of the Christian population on the Greek soil.

The list includes surname, given name, father's name, age, death conditions.
The names have been checked in the Yad Vashem Central Databases of the Holocaust Victims, and the mention of Page of Testimony has been added, when found. Many thanks to Mrs. Marcia Ikonomopoulos for the translation from Greek.

DATABASE

This database consists of 703 records of Holocaust victims from Crete, Florina and Volos. The database was prepared by Mathilde Tagger.

The fields in the database are:

• Last Residence           
• Surname
• Given Name
• Father’s Name
• Age
• Comments

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the tremendous contributions and lifelong dedication of Mathilde Tagger, z"l who made this index available. For many years, and right until her untimely death, Mathilde Tagger was a very close friend and collaborator with Jeff Malka. Together they worked to promote Sephardic genealogy research and educate the public about its enormous potential.

In addition, we express our grateful appreciation to Dr. Jeff Malka for his monumental ongoing effort to collect and make accessible Sephardic genealogical information, and for his generosity in contributing his extraordinarily valuable collection to JewishGen.

Finally, we thank Mike Kalt, HTML Volunteer, for placing this description online, and to Nolan Altman, Director of Special Projects and Coordinator of the Holocaust Database, for his continued devotion and dedication to JewishGen's important work.

Search the Database

This collection can be searched by via the JewishGen Holocaust Database, the JewishGen Jeff Malka Collection or the JewishGen Sephardic Collection