Proclamation by the Greek National Liberation Front (EAM) to Rescue Jews

NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS DISTRICT

PROCLAMATION

To the entire Greek people, to the inhabitants of Athens.

Brothers,

The occupier is preparing to commit a new crime against our people. We are facing a new manifestation of the bestial brutality of Fascism, directed this time against the Jewish part of the Greek people. The bloodthirsty occupier is preparing to launch a most horrendous and terrible pogrom against Greek Jews, like the pogroms he had perpetrated in Germany and Poland. In Salonika, many thousands of innocent women and children are facing the threat of execution in huge massacres in concentration camps by the vicious Gestapo. The oppressors and murderers of the “New Order” in Europe are thirsty for the blood of many new victims.

This new crime is not directed only against the Jews but also against the Greek people, since the Jews constitute an integral part of the Greek people, and their fate is combined with that of the Greek people as a whole […] The Jews have displayed the same level of patriotism and self-abnegation as the rest of us, sacrificing their own blood for the fight against Fascism and the salvation of the homeland. The number killed, injured and maimed as a result of the fighting on the Albanian front is not low, and neither is the number of the Jews who fought together with the Greek people in our heroic struggle for the liberation of the homeland.

The pogrom against the Jews wishes to undermine our struggle for liberation. In hurting the Jews, the occupier also harms our peoples vigorous struggle as a whole. Our struggle is a terrible nightmare for the occupier, who is crushed under the blows inflicted on him by our allies on the eastern front and in Italy.

The National Liberation Front (EAM), therefore, calls upon the inhabitants of Athens and upon all Greeks and all Christians to extend their help in order to save the Jews. This can be done by massive protest demonstrations, big rallies and general mobilization aimed at frustrating the terrible Pogrom. Let us give asylum to all persecuted Jews; let us crush any traitor that harms the Jews.

DOWN with any pogrom against the Jews.

DEATH to the occupier and to any traitor and collaborator.

LONG LIVE the National Liberation Front.

Athens, 22.1.1943

The National Liberation Front (EAM) of the nationwide organizations of Rumeli, Thessalia, Eipirous, Thrace, Macedonia, the Seven Islands [of the Ionian Sea], the Dodecanese Islands, Crete, the Peloponnese, the Aegean Islands, and the Jews.

From: “Chronika,” the newspaper of Greek Jewry, Nov.- Dec. 1989.