The history of the Jewish people includes many bleak moments, which reached their climax in the Nazist Holocaust. These moments were portrayed in books, films, and songs, but mostly were depicted in distressful memories. Oblivion is the main enemy of both collective and personal memories. It is the one to blame for killing both memory and the historical past.

This digital exhibition is a tribute to honor the Jewish presence in the little town of Kastoria, adding its memory to the world’s historical puzzle. Kastoria, a little town situated in the northwest edge of Greece, in Western Macedonia, had always embraced the Jewish people. Kastoria is built amphitheatrically on a peninsula, which juts into Lake Orestiada It stands near the border between Greece and Albania, among the mountains of Grammos and Vitsi.

A prehistoric settlement in the village Dispilio was discovered on the banks of the lake, which are a reference point for the town’s evolution. As we can see in the prehistoric designs of the remains, people were timelessly and harmoniously connected with water. The lake was a feeding source, a safe shelter, even a source of inspiration.

In the fifth century BCE, the town was called Keletron (allurement) and was the capital of the ancient Greek tribe Orestis. The lake (Orestiada) got its name from this tribe. An organized Jewish community was established there, after the conquest of the Middle East by Alexander the Great. A great number of Jews immigrated to several towns in Macedonia and adopted the Greek language. In the period of the Byzantine Empire, the Jewish communities of Macedonia thrived and enjoyed special privileges. The Macedonian town of Kastoria became a notable center, where energetic, Greek-speaking Jews known as Romaniotes lived and worked. This term derived from the word “Rome,” which was a synonym for Byzant.

In the second half of the tenth century, the Jewish community of Kastoria, which consisted of 3,000 people, began to acquire a very important role in the life and development of the town. When Kastoria was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1385, a small Greek- speaking Jewish community still lived there. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, though, the sultan obliged this community to emigrate to Constantinople because he wanted to colonize the deserted city. A few Jews remained in Kastoria. It was at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries that Jewish refugees from Apulia in Italy and from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) began to arrive in Kastoria.

The Spanish Jews (Sephardim) were richer and more educated, so in the mid-seventeenth century they managed to assimilate the Greek-speaking and the Italian Jews. The Sephardic culture prevailed in the synagogue and the Hebrew-Spanish language (Ladino) became the language of communication among the Jews. The Romaniote culture, which governed weddings and family law, continued to exist until the eighteenth century. The Jewish district was extended around the synagogue and the community buildings. Before the fire in 1719, there were several synagogues that burned down. The last synagogue of Kastoria, called Aragonia, was built in 1830. During this period, there were many famous Jewish scholars and rabbis who taught in the town’s religious school. At that time education was strictly religious; the curriculum became secular in the nineteenth century with the establishment of a new elementary school with a kindergarten and a mess hall.

The main business activities of the Jewish community in Kastoria revolved around commerce and the craft industry (mainly fur). This doesn’t mean that the Jewish people weren’t occupied with other jobs. On the contrary, Jews took part in all strata of local society. Jews and Christians cooperated harmoniously in the town through the ages. In 1912, Kastoria became part of the Greek state and the relations between Jews and their Christian neighbors remained harmonious as ever. During the interwar period (1918–1941), the Jewish community blossomed both financially and culturally. Many Kastorian Jews, who had emigrated to the United States because of combative conflicts and business slumps, became well-off there and benefited the Kastorian Jewish community by sending money to construct community buildings and provide meals for poor pupils. Before the Second World War, the relations between the Jewish and Christian communities were friendly, with the exception of an anti-Semitic bloody assault that took place in the mid-1930s. On October 28, 1940, the Italian Axis forces attacked Greece from Albania, but the Greeks managed to repel the enemy. Unfortunately, on April 14, 1941, the German forces occupied Kastoria, though they assigned Italians to be in command of the town. In 1943, Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies and the Germans took charge of the command in Kastoria. The anti-Jewish measures began in the town and ended with the deportation of the Kastorian Jews on March 25, 1944. The terror of the Holocaust then began for them. After liberation, only thirty-six out of the 900 people of the Jewish community of Kastoria returned.

The period of decline for the community had begun. Many Jewish people abandoned the town because they didn’t see any viable future in it, and in 1972 the community ceased to exist altogether.

“If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative,” said the writer Primo Levi, an Italian survivor of the Holocaust. For this reason, the project of this digital exhibition is to make known the Jewish presence in Kastoria, which is not so well remembered today. Visitors will gain a clearer understanding of how great was the loss of the Jewish population in Kastoria. The exhibition will also challenge visitors to grapple with issues such as anti- Semitism, racism, recollection, and oblivion, as well as promote the importance of keeping and protecting the memory of this Jewish community, against the encroaching oblivion that our era threatens.