Cerca
Percorso: USC Shoah Foundation Institute Thesaurus
Descrittore
Termine preferito
(PIQ) Grecia CercaDefinizione
Location: Southernmost tip of the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe, bordered in 1939 by the Ionian, Mediterranean, and Aegean Seas, and by Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Yugoslavia.
Capital city: Athens.
History:
Since the Bronze Age, Greece was the site of several important ancient cultures, was part of the Byzantine Empire, and then occupied by the Ottoman Turks. Greece gained its independence from the Ottomans in 1830, establishing a kingdom. During WWI, Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies. The interwar years were marked by political and economic instability and conflict with Turkey over borders and repatriations. In 1936 the premier John Metaxis established a dictatorship. During WWII, the Italians occupied Epirus in October 1940, the Germans occupied Macedonia in April 1941, and Bulgaria occupied Thrace. In 1943 Germans began deportations of the Jews of Salonika to the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland. Greek Jews also fled to the countryside and the mountains or participated in resistance activities. Mainland Greece was liberated in September 1944, while Rhodes Island was liberated in May 1945. Before the war, there were approximately 77,000 Jews living in Greece of which an estimated 59,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust. In 1946, a civil war between communist and royalist/republican factions broke out, ending in 1949 with the royalist victory. Postwar Greece experienced political instability, military coups, and a succession of governments, eventually proclaiming itself a presidential republic in 1973 and abolishing the monarchy. (en-US)
Fonte
Shermer, Michael and Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why do They Say it? Berkeley: University of California Press. 2000. p. 177