The Jewish community of Ioannina, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Greece, was the largest Jewish community in Greece where the Jews spoke Greek and not Ladino. This community expanded under both Ottoman and Greek rule. At its height, on the eve of the Second World War, the community numbered some 5,000 Jews. Most of the Jews in Ioannina were religious, and the community included, Zionists, merchants, philanthropists, scholars, intellectuals and public activists.
Many of the city’s Jews emigrated immediately before the Holocaust, primarily to the Land of Israel and the United States. The Jewish community was severely affected when the Nazi occupation began in September 1943. Thousands of Jews escaped to the south of Greece. In March, 1944, the rest of the Jews in Ioannina, some two thousand people, were deported to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nearly all of them were murdered. After the Holocaust only some 160 Jews returned to Ioannina.
This is the story of the Jewish community of Ioannina in Greece.