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Greece Museums
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Jewish Museum of Greece
10-06-2013 18:53The Jewish Museum of Greece is situated at 39, Nikis street, in the centre of Athens, in Plaka district, close to the Syntagma Metro Station. The museum has a permanent exhibition of ritual artifacts, documents, manuscripts and every day life elements of the Jewish community of Greece.
The establishment of a Jewish museum was an idea first conceived in the 1970’s by members of the Jewish Community of Athens. The Museum was first established in 1977 and housed in a small room next to the city’s synagogue. It housed objects salvaged from the Second World War II, artifacts, documents and manuscripts of the 19th and 20th centuries and jewellery of the Jews of Thrace that had been seized by the Bulgarians in 1943 and had been returned to the Greek government after the establishment of a communist regime in Bulgaria.
In 1984, the museum moved to a rented space occupying the 3rd floor of 36, Amalias Avenue. In the following years the activities of the museum expanded involving both the research and study of the Greek Jews and publishing. The increasing needs of the Museum for more space, led to the purchase of the current 19th century neoclassical building which was renovated and, in late 1997, opened its doors to the public.
The unique collection of the Jewish Museum of Greece includes more than 8,000 objects. The exhibition consists of Synagogual artifacts and ritual textiles such as traditional cylindrical wooden cases (tikkim) for the Scrolls of the Torah (Pentateuch), which are typical of the Romaniote Greek-Jewish tradition.
The second level of the museum is devoted to history, covering the long period from the 3rd century B.C until the end of WW II using archaeological material, old documents, historic manuscripts and significant publications.
The fourth level is devoted to the Holocaust (Shoah) covering the events during the German Occupation, starting with the first anti-Semitic measures in Thessalonica in 1941, until the liberation of the few survivors of the concentration camps in 1945 but also the participation of Greek Jews in the Resistance. In the fifth level, traditional costumes, festive and wedding outfits are exhibited from Romaniote Jews of Ioannina and Sephardic communities of Thessalonica.
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