Spinalonga – The Island

Spinalonga - "The Island"

Few places are imbued with the pervasive sense of pathos as the place known in Greek as the “Island of the Dammed” which I visited a few days ago. Made famous by Victoria Hislop’s book “The Island” Spinalonga was Europe’s last Leper Colony in the days when the disease was incurable, operating from 1903 until its closure in 1957.

Spinalonga seen from the village of Plaka on the mainland

The black flags flying from the upper bastion symbolising
Spinalonga's past as a Leper Colony

The entrance tunnel to the Venetian Fortress. It is now mirrored as part
 of a series of artworks  to symbolise the island's history.
The Lepers never had mirrors.

It was one of a chain of Venetian Fortresses defending Crete from Turkish invasion. The island of Crete, then known as Candia, remained Venetian for almost 400 years before succumbing to the Ottoman Army of Yussuf Pasha in 1669. The Siege of Candia (modern Heraklion, Crete) was a military conflict in which Ottoman forces besieged the Venetian-ruled city and were ultimately victorious. Lasting from 1648 to 1669, it was the longest siege in history. Spinalonga, along with Gramvousa and Souda, remained in Venetian hands even after the rest of Crete fell to the Ottomans in the Cretan War (1645–1669) until 1715, when they fell to the Ottomans during the last Ottoman–Venetian War. These three forts defended Venetian trade routes and were also useful bases in the event of a new Venetian-Turkish war for Crete. Many Christians found refuge in these fortresses to escape persecution from the Ottoman Turks.

"Main Street" - Spinalonga

The island of Spinalonga (Kalidon) has captured the imagination of many over its long history. One of the most visited tourist attraction on Crete, thousands of visitors every year walk along the narrow streets through the village on Spinalonga. The name Spinalonga is Venetian, meaning "Long Thorn." The official name is Kalidon, but so well known as its former name Spinalonga not even the sign posts and the boats that take you to the island will call it anything but by its Venetian name. The Venetians called it Spinalonga after a small island near Venice which is now days been renamed Giudecca. The fortress on the island was built by the Venetians using building materials from an original ancient fortress on the island. It was founded in 1579 by Luca Michiel and the island was used as in defence of Crete usually against the ever expanding Turks and pirates. The Venetians were defeated by the Turks in 1669 however the island stayed in Venetian hands until 1715. Later in history it was inhabited by Ottoman Turks until 1903 and when they left the island became a leper colony by order of the Cretan Government of the time. After Crete was joined in union with Greece on 1 December 1913, lepers from all over Greece were moved to the island which had a population around 400/450.

Map copyright PlanetWare.com

Today, we do not quite understand the stigma of Leprosy which was then incurable and condemned the sufferer to a life apart. At the time sick people with Leprosy were known as the untouchables, because the illness was incurable and wrongly considered contagious, and was also known already from the Old Testament as a punishment from God to incredulous and impure people. Leprosy is caused by a slow-growing bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. It is transmitted via droplets from the nose and mouth of untreated patients with severe disease, but is not highly infectious; indeed 95% of the population have a natural immunity. If left untreated, the disease can cause nerve damage, leading to muscle weakness and atrophy, and permanent disabilities. Today, Leprosy can be easily treated with a 6–12-month course of multidrug therapy. The treatment is highly effective, and has few side-effects and low relapse rates; there is no known drug resistance. It is also known as Hansen’s disease after the Norwegian physician who first developed a treatment in the 1870’s and identified the main symptoms and the parthenogenesis of the disease. His treatment stopped the disease progressing but it was only in the 1930’s that multidrug therapies were developed which reversed the disease’s progress. The disease originated in India and was brought to the Middle East by the armies of Alexander the Great. The Crusaders are reputed to have brought it to Europe where the superstitious medieval mind needed little persuading that the very visible suffering of those afflicted was a punishment from God and with its grotesque progress those sufferers were dammed on Earth.

Lepers on Spinalonga

Doctor, Priest and Inmates, Spinalonga, 1931

There were two entrances to Spinalonga, one being the lepers' entrance, a tunnel known as "Dante's Gate". This was so named because the patients did not know what was going to happen to them once they arrived. However, once on the island they received food, water, and medical attention and social security payments. Previously, such amenities had been unavailable to Crete's leprosy patients, as they mostly lived in the area's caves, away from civilization. Living conditions were very poor and eventually the lepers formed their own community with its own laws. In the 1930's a generator was installed, and a library, school and churches were built - things began to improve. Plaka began to grow as villagers from the area used it as a base to sail to the island to sell produce to the colony - by now the lepers were given a small pension. Shops began to appear on the island including raki bars and a bakery.  Improvements continued throughout the 1940's and 1950's, but the feeling of isolation remained and the residents of Spinalonga began to lobby the Government to be moved.  In 1957 the last lepers were moved to a colony near Athens, and Spinalonga fell into ruin.

Even today along the “main street” on the island there are Turkish and Venetian areas. In the 1930’s conditions improved and lepers on the island were paid a pension which they could use to buy goods and services from the mainland. After WW11 new accommodation blocks were built and many of the families moved out of the houses into these. This ironically meant that they were often better off than the mainlanders in the adjoining villages of Elounda and Plaka who became economically dependent on “The Island.”

"Dante's Gate"

It is this symbiotic relationship between the islanders and the mainland which is explored in Victoria Hislop’s book which is set on Spinalonga and on the village of Plaka which lies within swimming distance across from it. The Island tells the story of Alexis Fielding, a 25 year old on the cusp of a life-changing decision. Alexis knows little or nothing about her family's past and has always resented her mother for refusing to discuss it. She knows only that her mother, Sofia, grew up in Plaka, a small Cretan village, before moving to London. Making her first visit to Crete to see the village where her mother was born, Alexis discovers that the village of Plaka faces the small, now deserted island of Spinalonga, which, she is shocked and surprised to learn was Greece's leper colony for much of the 20th century. It is here that Alexis meets an old friend of her mother's, Fotini, who is prepared to tell her for the first time the whole tragic story of her family. What Fotini tells her is shocking and tragic; it is the story which Sofia has spent her life concealing: the story of Eleni, her grandmother, and of a family torn apart by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island and with the horror and pity of the leper colony which was once there, and learns too that the secrets of the past have the power to change the future. “The Island” is a vivid, moving and absorbing tale, with its sensitive, realistic engagement with all the consequences of, and stigma attached to leprosy.

Spinalonga (and Crete’s) darkest moment in modern times came during the German occupation. The Battle of Crete in 1941 was vicious with the German Airborne division sustaining 7,000 casualties with not just the Allies but ordinary Cretans attacking German Paratroopers with anything they could find. The resistance continued throughout the war with the people paying a terrible price with German executions of anybody suspected of resistance becoming commonplace. By 1945 with the help of a small group of Allied commandos and supplies the Cretans had retaken most of the island with the Germans under siege in Chania in the west. They even helped (and paid a high price) to capture the German Commander of Crete in 1944, General Kreipe, and to spirit him off the island to Cairo. The event was later immortalised in the book 'Ill Met By Moonlight' by Billy Moss and the film of the same name. The Germans were forbidden to enter on the island of Spinalonga which became a refuge for those fleeing the occupation. Instead German soldiers would take up position on a concrete domed water tank in Plaka opposite and use people swimming to and fro for target practice. Many died this way trying to escape or going back to the mainland for food.

The effect of Spinalonga on the villages of Plaka and Elounda was strange. Because of the Leper Colony many in these villages had jobs on the island or made money supplying goods or services. On the one hand you had the dread of leprosy and on the other hand you had this symbiotic dependency build up between the people of these economically depressed villages and the leper colony which people could not leave but where they had a steady income and a thriving community. Indeed on the island you had shops and cafes and social events. More than that the people felt protected and there were marriages and children, so you had affected and unaffected people living side by side on the island. At the end many were fearful to leave and feared being shunned back in the “world.”

Church of St Panteleimon on Spinalonga which was used by the Lepers. 
Known in Greek as Παντελεήμων "all-compassionate" 
he is also referred to as Panteleimon the Healer, 

hence the dedication of the church to him on the Leper Colony.

Elounda, where most of the ferry’s leave from for the island, is located in east Crete, north of Agios Nikolaos and south of the seaside resort of Plaka. It was once a picturesque fishing village in the lovely Mirabello Bay, so named by the Venetians for its “lovely view.” The inhabitants lived from farming, fishing, salt extraction from the Venetian saltpans, and emery mining. In the hills around Elounda is found a mineral unique to Greece, “akonopetra” or whetstone, a type of fine emery used to make whetstones and emery paper to hone tools used in many different jobs. The emery of Elounda had long been known in Europe by the name of “Turkey stones” or “Naxos stone”. More recently from the early 1930s to the outbreak of World War 2 Flying Boats of Imperial Airways used the sheltered bay at Elounda, between the town and Spinalonga Island (known then as Mirabella Harbour) to stop on the flight from London to South Africa, the Far East and back.

The former Prime Minister of Greece Andreas Papandreou was particularly fond of Elounda and came here on holiday at least once a year. He introduced it to French President Mitterrand and Libyan leader Gaddafi, while Elounda was also a favourite resort of Kostas Simitis, another more recent Greek Prime Minister. Apart from politicians, Elounda often welcomes Arab princes with their large families, film and music stars, Russian tycoons and other VIPs from all over the world.

After its years of dereliction Spinalonga is coming back to life as a restoration programme continues and there are interesting and often poignant displays of life on the island with many artefacts from the period. There are two churches on the island as well as the hospital and newer buildings. The most poignant place is the graveyard for the lepers never left the island even in death. They were buried in temporary graves and after three years their skeletons were dug up and removed to an ossuary adjoining the graveyard. Earlier visitors speak of human bones being visible. The earlier neglect by the Greek State was redeemed by the colony itself and enlightened administrators who both built a real community on the island and improved the care and medical treatment of the inhabitants. When the colony was closed in 1957 there were only 30 nervous patients left who were transferred to the Hospital of Santa Barbara in Athens.

The other church on the island, Agios Georgiou. St George was
Patron Saint of the Crusades which is somewhat ironic as
the Venetians acquired Spinalonga and indeed all of
Crete as a result of the 4th Crusade which instead of recovering
the Holy Land resulted in the shameful Rape of Constantinople.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/fall-of-byzantium.html

Spinalonga is a natural rock formation which the Venetians probably made into an island by cutting a channel to separate it from the Kolokitha Peninsula.  The original fortifications and dwellings are at the base of the island with two artillery bastions and musket points at the corners. Within these walls are also cisterns which collect rainwater from the rock as there are no groundwater sources on the island. Later, upper fortifications were built on top of the rock to cover the lower fortifications. This had the effect of making the Fortress of Spinalonga impregnable as the lower bastions were covered by artillery fire and the upper guns were out of range of attacking ships.

The Graveyard with the temporary unmarked graves

The ossuary where the bones of the lepers were re-interred
in boxes after three years in the graves

And what of Victoria Hislop and her book “The Island?” Well it would be wrong to say she is admired and respected on the Island of Crete, although undoubtedly she is. Rather she is loved; loved as a Xeno for learning Greek and talking to people on Crete about the reality of Spinalonga, the reality on the island and on the communities of Plaka and Elounda. Loved for telling the human story of the colony for it has allowed the Greeks to talk about something which was dark and hidden. Now the book in Greek and other languages is for sale all over the island and Spinalonga is the most visited tourist attraction on Crete after the Palace of Knossos. Victoria still has a house there but on the far side of Agios Nikolaos from Spinalonga.

The one downside is that the Island is run by the dead bureaucratic hand of The Ministry of Culture which knows as much about running visitor attractions as I do about banana ripening. So with 3,000 daily visitors in season paying 3 Euros a go what toilet or catering facilities are available on the island? The answer my friends are none, zilch, diddly squat or to use the Greek, ZERO. This is doubly strange because a Kafeoin and toilets have been built (no doubt with EU grants) but the lazy bureaucrats in Athens can’t be bothered to open them, no doubt citing budget cutbacks but forgetting their paying guests are entitled to some facilities and dignity. They will never improve because this stultifying Ministry does not speak to tourists but do of course speak to each other about their self-important jobs. Indeed I must not be unfair and I must assume, despite the evidence, that some of them have actually applied for their jobs.

Victoria Hislop and Manoli Foundoulakis, a former leprosy sufferer who lived 

in the hills overlooking Spinalonga, in the village of Ano Elounda. 

He died on 28 May 2010 peacefully at the age of eighty-seven.

With the passage of time the small village and walls of the fortress have begun to crumble, however much work has been done on the island over the last few years to repair its fabric and this continues. But no repairs will ever plaster over the all pervading sense that this island is a special place where every stone speaks to you of the pathos and melancholia of those who came to live and to die without ever leaving the Island of the Dammed.

A sculpture on the upper bastion depicting an inmate about to jump.
 In fact during its 54 years as a Leper Colony there were
no suicides on the island and no visitors caught the disease.

                                                                                                                                                           
For more on the history of Spinalonga and tours of the area see Victor Zorba’s website. He has written a history of the Island and has been running tours for 25 years.

http://www.victorzorbas.com/eng_index.html

Iran Amok?

American military bases surrounding Iran - The US has also invaded the two countries on either side of Iran with disastrous results for those countries and their people and for the US Budget Deficit

The Western Media led its cheerleader Fox New are constantly harping on about “The Iranian Threat” – but this seems another version of Goebbels “Big Lie” technique. The map of the United States military bases surrounding Iran displays a reality which is self evident (especially to Iranians) but the consistent story in the western media is that Iran is threatening the West. In fact no Middle Eastern country (Arab & Iranian) has threatened the West in living memory but since 1914 the West has interfered in the Arab world and Iran / Persia for its own selfish purposes. Not for nothing did Osama Bin Laden, an Arab Nationalist supported and bankrolled by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, consistently refer to the “Shame of the Treaty of Sevres.”


The "Shah" of Iran - installed by America and Britain

After World War 1 when the British conquered much of the Middle East, they re-drew much of the boundaries not according to the Ottoman rule or to ethnic lines, but rather according to strategic objectives and various political agreements with France (such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement). As a result, much of the border issues that developed later in the twentieth century, such as between Iraq and Kuwait, between Iran and Iraq, and even between Syria and Turkey, were results of the British and French colonial powers arbitrary drawing of the borders. The inhabitants of the Middle East are still harvesting the poisonous fruits of this betrayal of the original Arab Revoloution to this day.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html

Iran was invaded by the Allies in World War 2 and partitioned between the Soviets and Britain / America whilst its natural resources were ripped off as the spoils of war. We know that Bush committed several hundred million dollars towards a program creating instability in Iran and that Obama has never renounced the operation. Iran, surrounded by threatening enemies and the daily recipient of dire threats from Israel and the United States, has absolutely no history of aggression: it has started no conflicts in its entire modern era, but naturally enough it becomes concerned about its security when threatened by nuclear-armed states.

Such threats from the United States are not regarded idly by anyone, coming as they do, from a nation occupying two nations of Western and Central Asia, a nation whose invasions have caused upwards of a million deaths and sent at least two million into exile as refugees.


Iran's nuclear programme began under the Shah - Israel's Mossad has engaged in cyber terrorism and assassination of Iranian scientists - with the countries leading the so called "War on Terrorism" firmly looking the other way

As for the other regular source of threats against Iran, Israel, it is a nation which has attacked every neighbour that it has at one time or another. In the last two years alone, it has killed more people in Lebanon and Gaza than the number who perished in 9/11. It is also a secret nuclear power, having broken every rule and international law to obtain and assist in proliferating nuclear weapons. By most estimates Israel has 150/200 nuclear warheads and is bankrolled as its military proxy by the United States to the tune of $3 Bn. a year – money America has to borrow from China?


Mohammed Mosaddeq - Time Magazine cover January 1951

And remember, too, Iran had a democratic government more than half a century ago, that of Mohammed Mosaddeq, but it was overthrown in 1953 and the bloody Shah installed in its place by the very same governments now meddling in Iran, the United States and Britain. Leave the Iranian people to sort out the regime which is oppressing and failing to deliver for its people as they sorted out the American installed Shah who took power from Mohammed Mosaddeq who was removed in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the United States CIA at the request of the British MI6.

So who is running amok in the Middle East? Certainly not Iran.


USS Abraham Lincoln entering the Straits of Hormuz - "Give us your oil!"

A Muslim at Yad Vashem - Selahattin Ülkümen

Yad Vashem

We sometimes forget how diverse much of the world was before the 20th Century – How in many parts of Europe, Middle East, India and Africa Christians, Muslims, Copts, Jews, Farsi, Armenians and others lived together, often intermarried, and traded. So in Prague we had a unique Judaeo / Christian culture and a Germanic / Czech literature exemplified by Frank Kafka, in Morocco we had the Jewish areas, the “Mellah” under the protection of the King and a city like Essaourira which was half Jewish and Muslim and which to this day is painted in the Jewish colours of blue and white. And on the Island of Rhodes we had a Jewish Community which had been there since Roman times and made up a third of the population of the town and spoke “Ladino”, the language of the Sephardim, the Jews from Spain and Portugal who had been welcomed by the Ottomans as “People of the Book” after their expulsion from Iberia.



Then in the 20th Century much changed. There have been genocides in history, the 8 million South American indigenous people’s estimated to have perished in silver mines in Bolivia and in the 20th Century and before WWII writers such as Winston Churchill used the terms to describe the destruction by the dying Ottoman Empire of the Armenian population of Turkey, as well as the attempted destruction of the Greek and Assyrian populations, a process observed by a joint Germano-Austrian military mission. Smaller events occurred, often unnoticed by an indifferent world. By 1923 the Muslim population of Crete which had a similar ethnic makeup to Cyprus was extinguished along with its unique Greek speaking Cretan Turk culture by the last of compulsory population exchanges. In German South-West Africa under the Kaiser the native African people who fought against colonisation experienced the first German Death Camps. The father of one Hermann Göring was the colonial Governor at the time. But what makes the Nazi Holocaust of Jews and others in Germany and 21 occupied and allied countries unique is the scale, the premeditation and the sheer cold ruthlessness and cruelty in implementing the policy for a “Final Solution” agreed at the Wanesee Conference in 1942.


Bimah from a synagogue on Rhodes

The “Final Solution” failed, but not by too much – historians and others can speculate what could have happened if, with the vagaries of war, Germany had not been cast back at El Alamein and had conquered Palestine or if the war had continued for a year longer allowing the 6 Death Camps to continue their deadly work. As it was of the Jews in Europe at 1939 two thirds of them had been murdered by the racist Nazi state and its fellow travellers by 1945.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/auschwitz-birkenau.html

The Final Solution failed and at Yad Vashem both the Martyrs and the Heroes of the Shoah are commemorated. On a hill at Har Hazikaron, the Mount of Remembrance, just outside Jerusalem, Yad Vashem is a vast, sprawling complex of tree-studded walkways leading to museums, exhibits, archives, monuments, sculptures, and memorials. Yad means “hand” but also “memorial”, while shem means “name”. The name of the museum derives from a Biblical verse:

“And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (Yad Vashem) that shall not be cut off“.


Plaque commemorating the holocaust victims from Rhodes


Jewish schoolgirls Rhodes 1930's

Since its inception, Yad Vashem has been entrusted with documenting the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust period, preserving the memory and story of each of the six million victims, and imparting the legacy of the Holocaust for generations to come through its archives, library, school, museums and recognition of the Righteous Among the Nations.

The last monument (in fact 2,000 trees planted to commemorate those who helped Jews) also demonstrates the power of diversity. What used to be known as the Righteous Christians has been changed to the Righteous Gentiles because a Muslim, Selahattin Ülkümen, was the first non-Christian to receive the award. In June 1990, Ülkümen was installed on the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel. The Avenue also contains a further nod to diversity for installed here is the only member of the Nazi Party commemorated at Yad Vashem along with his wife Emilie, Oskar Schindler.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/jewish-krakow.html


Identification portrait of Selahatin Ülkümen, Turkish Consul-General in Rhodes.

On Rhodes, Jewish descendants of refugees from the Spanish Inquisition had prospered during 390 years of Ottoman rule, and then under Italian occupation. But following Mussolini's removal from power in 1943, the Nazis took over the island, which, at that time, had a Jewish population of some 1,700. On July 19 1944, the Gestapo ordered all of the island's Jews to report for "temporary transportation to a small island nearby", but in fact to take them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Alexander Angel a young Jewish boy on Rhodes wearing the star of David in 1943. Jews on Rhodes were not required to wear the yellow star and he is wearing it as an innocent gesture of pride. He was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944

Ülkümen, the 30-year-old Turkish Consul General, approached the German commander, General von Kleeman, telling him that Turkey was neutral in the war and demanding that all Jewish Turks on Rhodes, including their spouses, whether Jewish or not, should be released at once. But, as Ülkümen later remembered: "The German commander said that, according to Nazi laws, all Jews are Jews and had to go to concentration camps. I objected. I said that, under Turkish law, there is no difference between whether a citizen was Jewish, Christian or Muslim. . . I said that I would advise my government if he didn't release the Jewish Turks and that it would cause an international incident. Then he agreed." Ülkümen was playing a dangerous game. He bluffed the Germans — there was no such law. Ülkümen's action saved the lives of 42 Jewish families. The rest of the Jews on the island were deported to Greece and from there to Auschwitz.


German Army occupying Kos Town in September 1943

The Jewish community of Rhodes goes back to the 1st century CE. In 1480, the Jews actively defended the walled city against the Turks. At its peak in the 1920s, the Jewish community was one-third of the total population. The community was mostly wiped out in the Holocaust. Kahal Shalom, established in 1557, is the oldest synagogue in Greece. It is still standing in the Jewish quarter of the Old Town of Rhodes. It has been renovated with the help of foreign donors but very few Jews live year-round in Rhodes today, and services are not held on a regular basis. This synagogue is maintained basically as a memorial to the 1800 Jews from Rhodes and Kos deported to the concentration camps from here, with plaques in French (the language of educated Ottoman period Jews in the Aegean). There's a museum in the back with photos of the Jewish community and its life on Rhodes and also in its widespread Diaspora in both the United States and in Africa. The museum was set up by a Los Angeles attorney of Jewish Rhodian descent.




Rhodes Town

The Platia ton Evreon Martyron /Square of the Jewish Martyrs was named to honour the large Jewish community of Rhodes almost completely wiped out by the Nazis during the summer of 1944. A 1929 Italian tourist guide so described the Jewish quarter of Rhodes: “Beyond the Admiralty we enter the Jewish quarter where the atmosphere is so different from that of the Muslim quarter: the latter is very silent with family life going on behind closed doors, the Jewish quarter is happily noisy with children screaming and the open doors allow to see women doing their chores in rooms and courtyards.”

That is now all gone; On July 19, 1944 the island’s 1700 Jewish inhabitants were rounded up by the Gestapo and sent to extermination camps, of whom only some 151 survived.


President of the Jewish Community laying a wreath to the victims of the Holocaust at La Juderia




The “Square of the Martyred Jews” (known in Greek as “Martyron Evreon”), is located in the heart of the former Jewish Quarter of Rhodes Town. The present park area of the square was originally an area of Jewish homes and small shops. However, the area was bombed during World War II, and in its place was established a small park and square. The present fountain ornamented with three seahorses replaced a previous fountain that was destroyed during World War II.




Selahattin Ülkümen 1914 - 2003

Ülkümen’s bold personal action is credited with saving 42 families. But his bluff didn't go unanswered. In September 1943, the German army occupied the island of Rhodes and moved to close the Turkish consulate, the last remaining Turkish consulate in Axis-controlled territory. When Turkey protested, German planes bombed the building, seriously injuring Ülkümen’s wife, Mihrinisa, who later died. His wife, nine months' pregnant, was seriously injured and died of her wounds while giving birth to the couple's son, Mehmet.

In the end, all those on Ülkümen’s list were released, while the rest of the Island's population of 1,700 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Among those he saved was Albert Franko, who already had been placed on a transport to Auschwitz from Piraeus. When it was determined that Franko's wife was a Turkish citizen, Ülkümen had him taken off the train and returned to Rhodes. In August 1944, when Turkey broke diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ülkümen was interned on the Greek mainland. He was released only on May 8, 1945.


Six Jewish women from Rhodes photographed in Bologna, Italy in June 1945 who survived

It will come as no surprise to those who study such things that those responsible for the War Crimes in the Dodecanese, for the deportation and extermination of the Jewish population, for the summary execution of Italian Officers and the hanging of Greek Partisans were never punished. General Ulrich Kleeman went on to lead hundreds of his troops to their deaths when his Panzergrupppen was destroyed by the Red Army at the disastrous Battle of Budapest in 1945. He died of natural causes in Germany in 1963 and his honour from Hitler of The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross was displayed on his coffin. Selahattin Ülkümen continued in the Turkish Diplomatic service until his retirement and never sought recognition for his bravery. His actions were recognised and lauded by the Rhodian Jewish Diaspora and are a testament to our common humanity and bond.


The president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece, Moisis Constantinis (R) presents on July 24, 2008 in Rhodes an award to Mehmet Ülkümen (L), son of Selahattin Ülkümen, The Turkish Consul General on the island who in 1944 saved 42 Jewish families from being deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Selahattin Ülkümen 1914 – 2003

Remember the Shoah and respect the memory of the victims.

“in the world which will be renewed”

“בְּעָלְמָא דְהוּא עָתִיד לְאִתְחַדָּתָא”

See also;

Jewish Kos

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/06/jewish-kos.html

Rhodes Town

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/03/rhodes-town.html