April 22 1941 – 25 Nisan 5701
Nazi Germany completed its conquest of Greece. The invasion was started by Hitler’s Italian ally, Mussolini, in 1940, but the Greek army’s uncompromising resistance, aided by limited British intervention, kept the Axis forces at bay. Then in March 1941 Italy’s resounding defeat on the Albanian front persuaded Hitler to send German forces into Greece, and the Greeks were swiftly overwhelmed despite the army’s heroic efforts. Thessaloniki was captured on April 18, dooming almost its entire Jewish population to the ovens of Auschwitz in the summer of 1943. Realizing his country’s conquest was inevitable, Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis killed himself with his pistol. The Nazi conquest ruined the Greek economy, created widespread devastation in response to attempts at underground resistance – the Greek resistance was among the most widespread and effective in Europe. Tens of thousands died of famine under Nazi occupation, and by the end of the war, only ten per cent of the country’s Jewish population remained. 90 per cent of Greece’s seventy thousand Jews had been killed or deported to extermination camps, where the vast majority were gassed immediately on arrival.