The Greek Parliament voted in favor of granting citizenship to descendants of Greek Jews, Holocaust survivors, on Friday. The voting took place after decades of delay. In 2011, the Greek government had voted in favor of granting citizenship to elderly Greek Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
It is estimated that 20,000 descendants of Holocaust survivors of Greek origin live in Israel, while several thousands are believe to live in the USA.
Some 60,000-70,000 Greek Jews, or at least 81% of the country’s Jewish population, were murdered by Nazi Germany.
All political parties voted in favor of the bill, except for Greece’s major opposition party New Democracy that voted “present” and far-right Golden Dawn that voted against it.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras critizined ND tweeting:
Δεν εκπλήσσει κανέναν η καταψήφιση από τη ΧΑ. H @neademokratia όμως οφείλει να ντρέπεται για την υποκριτική της στάση. (3/3)
— Alexis Tsipras (@atsipras) March 17, 2017
No one is surprised of the down voting by GD. New Democracy ought to be ashamed of its hypocritical behavior.
New Democracy said in a statement it did not vote in favor “accidentally” and that its position on the issue was clear and recorded in the minutes of the parliament session.
According to an article by Jerusalem Post, dated 2010, there were approximately 100 Holocaust survivors in Israel who would be granted citizenship.
On the occasion of the visit of former Prime Minister George Papandreou to Israel,
the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitris Dollis told the Post that the papers would be processed within months, and the survivors would be holders of Greek ID cards by early 2011.
While all of the survivors are elderly and the move would be mostly symbolic for them, the Greek minister had said that their descendants would then be able to file requests with the Greek Embassy to receive citizenship as children of naturalized Greek citizens.
As a member state of the European Union, Greek citizenship automatically grants its holders all the privileges of being a citizen of the EU.
The law valid as of 30 September 2011, affected victims of Holocaust, citizens of Isreael who were born in Greece until 9 May 1945 as Greek citizens and lost their Greek citizenship for various reasons.
In November 2012,six Holocaust survivors regained the Greek citizenship.
According to a report, a ceremony at the Greek embassy in Tel-Aviv on Tuesday witnessed a naturalisation ceremony for six Holocaust survivors who were born and raised in Greece up until WWII.
Another 160 requests for the reinstatement of citizenship to Greek Jews that emigrated from the country in the wake of the war were pending, according to the Greek envoy, who expressed his optimism that they would soon be fulfilled.
It was estimated that a total of 300-350 elderly Greek Jews could get their Greek citizenship back.
With regards to latest Law about granting citizenship to descendants, please, contact Greece’s diplomatic missions abroad.
Sorry to be so unimpressed, but the Greek Jews and their descendants were always Greek citizens. So how did their citizenship get removed? By Hitler? I don’t think so: he just murdered them. Frankly, the Greek state has always behaved in a disgusting and discriminatory way to its minorities — Jews, Roma, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims. It is no great surprise that ND opposed a law undoing what they are historically party to. Nobody can forget how racist and obnoxious the Samaras government was to immigrants and refugees, but people have forgotten that minorities are also part of that national disgrace.
It might be a surprise to you and other globalists who aim to erase all human cultures, but greece is the nation of greeks. non-greeks might be welcome to visit, but the country is greek. The same applies to hundreds of other nations (not necessarily modern states) around the world.. and the same power-drunk globalist agenda everywhere has driven a hysterical and relentless attack on anything resembling national identity, hiding behinds words like ‘liberalism’ and shouting ‘fascist’ or ‘racist’ at anyone who disagrees with them.
First of all, I don’t know what a globalist is, so your comment makes no sense. Do you mean someone who dares to leave his country and live in another one? If so, you know where in your anatomy you can shove that idea. Secondly, Greece when it was created in 1832 was not a nation of “Greeks”. Most of the revolutionaries were not Greeks; about one third of the population were Albanians, and there were also many Jews and other minorities. Greece throughout its proud history has always been a multicultural land — even at the time of Plato and Aristotle, when there was no such thing as the nation state. Only a city state.
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The only thing that makes a Greek citizen is the formal legal attribution of citizenship, conferrred by the Greek state. This does not require Greek ethnicity. Moreover, there are many Greeks across the world who do not have Greek citizenship and are not eligible to vote in Greek elections.They are not Greek citizens but they are Greeks.
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Once you start talking about what is a Greek, you will find a complex situation that you cannot even comprehend, let alone handle. Greek citizenship is not limited by religion or ethnic group. Try reading the Constitution. Try reading some Greek history. It is an absolute scandal that Greek governments since 1945 have been allowed to perpetuate the heritage of the Nazis — such as the inclusion of religion on the taftotita, which was done by Hitler himself. The Greek Orthodox Church was very happy to preserve formalised Nazi discrimination and fought hard against Simitis and the EU to keep the disgusting Nazi ID cards in Greece.
“Most of the revolutionaries were not Greeks;”
Oh really? Because they lived outside of the Ottoman Empire? Or inside it? Or perhaps because there was no sovereign Greece…..?
So Capodistrias was “Russian” and Rigas was “Austro-Hungarian” etc.
Mr. Soros, aka “Guest(Xenos)”, try as you will to saw away at this old (OLD!) nonsense, we are onto you.
Your ignorance of Greek history is showing. I do not have a single educated Greek friend who disagrees with those comments. Half of the revolutionaries could not speak Greeks; nearly half were Albanian. Most of the Greek merchants in Asia Minor refused to support the revolution, and it was very dependent on support from a wide range of non-Greeks.
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And kindly keep your anti-intellectural populist comments to yourself. Implying that I have an anti-Greek agenda is both ignorant and highly insulting. You can also keep your fake patriotism to yourself, as you are far more British than Greek.
Perfectly expressed anon, i congratulate you and concur.
Guest[Xenos] is utterly predictable in his nonstop Economist / Guardian / NYT Globo-speak.
I don’t know what is the matter with you. Do you need a psychiatrist?
81% of Greek Jews were exterminated. That is even worse than in NL where 75% was exterminated, also one of the highest numbers in Europe. That was made easy because there was tax system that kept track (for tax reasons) who adhered to which religion. Because of the strong pillarization of society, people lived in separated neighborhoods. And of course there was collaboration by some traitors with the Nazis. Often they just did this for financial reasons. Many though risk their own lives by hiding Jews. The Jewish counsel also collaborated with the Nazis. After the war some of the survivors of that counsel were prosecuted for that. Also after the war, people that came back from the camps and who had lost their families were poorly treated by the government. Only until recently they or their successors have been compensated for this wrong doing.
Upward of 70% of greek jews lived in Thessaloniki, where their rabbis (mysteriously and bewilderingly-) undertook to round them up – against the advice of other greeks – and hand them to the Wehrmacht. This is the reason that the percentage is so high.
Greeks were not perfect in their treatment of jews. However, many were hidden and helped, and the Greek Orthodox church not only spoke out against their deportation but hid them in monasteries.
It may surprise you to know that Israel recognises Greece as “righteous among nations” because of this.
If you bothered to read the accounts published by the remaning Greek Jewish community, or even asked them in person, you would know what happened. There is nothing mysterious about the foolish behaviour of their leaders (not all were rabbis): they made serious errors of judgement about how to respond to the Nazis. Instead of using published scholarship, you are just reciting common Greek gossip.
More rants from guest xenos aka Turkish secret service with his hatred towards Greece. . Since you hate Greece and Greeks so much Mehmet You can take your anti greece fascism elsewhere. I think everybody on here would be much happier instead of being exposed to your vile attitude towards Hellas
Kalimera!
The Jewish community of Salonika – a city that many locals call more Jewish than Turkish than Greek or btw: – in 1943 paid 2.5 Million Drachmas to Max Merten to free 9000 Jewish men out of “work to death” slave-labour they were forced into to do all over Greece – today it’s about 45 million Euro.
Merten took the money and later on send them to Ausschwitz with most others and also let’em pay once more, this time for train-tickets.
This fathersucker was caught but then freed from Greek prison for these famous 110 million Deutschmarks tricky Germoney now thinks of as being the deal that frees Krautland from paying war reparations to Greece or victims they’ve left behind in Greece and handed over to Germoney in the end.
Beside these facts there are more facts: First of all most Jews or Jewish Greeks – Nazis did the same – calling all of them Jews – just like after civil-war all not nationalistic resistance-fighters were marked “communist” – were rescued because Turkey closed eyes for several thousands of them that got smuggled out of Greece by partisans and guaranteed free transit to Lebanon to the Greek army.
The same Greek army Churchill deported thousands of troops to Sudan in 1944, in a time then he already had started cold-war via collaborating with Nazis in Peleponnes and the Greek collaborators – Security Battalions – out of the latter one can see continuity to the colonels Junta and todayâs X.A. – drink with Manolis Glezos about this Greek history or look for his writings and interviews. You might also ask him – if he’s still in good health, hopefully – about the German soldiers that have changed enemy-lines in these times in Greece as this is another Proletarian blocked out chapter in history-lessons, as all other Europe several thousand took this chance to resist Nazism, also in Greece – there’s also a nice novel about one of them called “The Cretan Guest” by Klaus Modick – planned to get movie soon.
And regarding all shit that happened back then and most of today’s people don’t have any clue of how difficult and dangerous it was to fight back, shut up, there are enough occasions and possibilities to fight back now as the struggle against capitalistic sellout and social cannibalism through austerity still keeps going.
sorry, there r sum mistakes … may be later i can correct that if needed
it took two days to post this due to captcha malfunctions
what about a software that allows to correct a post for half an hour or so, any thing planned this direction anyway?
Bravo! At least we have a few sane and informed people commenting here.
Thanks but I’m not supporting your other position, that some disappointed Philhellenees don’t know all languages and dialects is one thing but this sounds too much of Fallmayrer. Do you think Arvanites are no Greeks?
LOL. What I think is of no consequence at all. Greeks have rounded on Fallmayrer but his scientific position was closer to the truth than the ideologies of Greek politics.
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Greeks now consider Albanian migrants resident in Greece for many centuries (Arvanites) to be Greeks. And as I have posted elsewhere, in negotiations for the Congress of Berlin in 1878 the Greek government’s position was that there was no such thing as an Albanian: that they were all really Greeks and the territory they were living in (modern Albania) should be annexed to Greece.
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My point is that Greek identity — like all modern identities — is a socially constructed concept and has nothing at all to do with ancient history or genetics. Its legitimation comes from some shared cultural parameters, but is mostly pragmatic acceptance of a status quo and a clear political move to cohere the population of a “nation state” — regardless of the realities of diverse languages, cultures and ethnic groups. There is a mass of literature on this from across the world: no dissent from anyone other than the fascist right, who continue with the Nazi dogma about “blood” and genetics.
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So, by all means support the status quo. I am not complaining about it. I am pointing out the lies and nationalist propaganda that some people post here. It is not irrelevant that until fairly recently the Roma in Greece were denied ID cards and Greek citizenship. Jews after 1945 were treated as second class citizens, and their children refused Greek citizenship — being told that they were Israeli citizens when they were born in Greece of Greek parents. So, to my mind, celebrating that Greece in 2017 has eventually accepted international and European norms about citizenship is ok, but people need to be aware that this situation should never have occurred in the first place.