Ioannina, Greece Holocaust Victims

Introduction by Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulous
Museum Director - Kehila Kedosha Janina Museum
https://www.kkjsm.org/

BACKGROUND

Jews have lived in Ioannina, Greece since the time of the Second Temple, according to the community’s oral history.  In 1940, Greece entered World War II fighting off the attempted Italian invasion on the Albanian Front. The young men of Ioannina served their country with pride, some sacrificing their lives for their country. As of April of 1941, Ioannina was in the Italian Zone of Occupation, as the Germans divided Greece among their allies.

Comparative calm set in. Life went on as usual. Marriages took place and babies were born. Some, very few, sensed danger, especially after word of the deportation of the Jewish community of Salonika reached the small city of Ioannina, and fled the city for Athens. Most stayed. It was not easy to leave. The Germans entered the city during the summer of 1943 and with the capitulation of Mussolini in September of 1943, Ioannina came under German control. The days of the community were numbered.

On March 25, 1944, the Jewish Community of Ioannina, Greece, was rounded up and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of the 1,960 deported, more than 1,800 would never return. They would perish in the Nazi death camps.

For more information on the Jews of Ioannina and other Greek towns, please see the Museum’s website at https://www.kkjsm.org/

DATABASE

This database includes 1,829 victims for Ioannina, Greece.

Names listed are based on the Greek spelling. Therefore, names such as Cohen will appear under “K” since there is no “C” in Greek and the name was spelled “Koen”. There are also no “Confinas” or “Confinos” since both names were spelled “Koffinas” and were most likely changed in pronunciation when coming to the United States.

There are also times that there were two names for the family. This was due to the way the Romaniotes named (Solomon ben Samuel, etc.) Very often, the name that had become the surname for the family was only used for municipal records but the family was known by another name. We have included whatever information was available to us. Where there is no mention of age or relationship (or occupation) in the database, it is because we did not have this information.

The fields for this database are as follows:

• Surname
• Given Name
• Nickname
• Year of Birth
• Husband’s Name
• Father’s Name
• Maiden Name or Father’s Name
• Address
• Occupation
• Comments

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are deeply indebted to Leon Kabeli, who gathered these names, originally for the walls of the synagogue in Ioannina where each name is engraved in stone, and then so graciously shared them with the Museum to enable us to publish the Memorial Book and to make these names accessible on the Internet. We also want to thank Marcia Haddad Ikonomopolus, Museum Director for the Kehila Kedosha Janina Museum, for making this database available 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.

June, 2021

Search the Database

This collection can be searched by via the JewishGen Holocaust Collection, or the JewishGen Unified Search.