'Jerusalem of the Balkans': Exploring Thessaloniki's lost Jewish history - opinion
I had long wanted to visit the city where the port once closed on Shabbat, and where Jews were both longshoremen and leaders in commercial development
Assessment
This is a travelogue reflecting on the erasure of a once-thriving Jewish community in Thessaloniki. The city's port closing on Shabbat hints at a world where Jewish life was central to civic and commercial identity. What is at stake here is memory itself, how a city reckons with a past that was systematically destroyed. The reader should watch for how the author navigates the tension between present-day Thessaloniki and the ghost city of its Jewish past.