Preserving Cretan Jewry
By STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG

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On June 8, 1944 the Greek tanker Tanias, commandeered by the Germans,
was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Vivid 53 km. west of
Heraklion, capital of the Greek island of Crete. Aboard were several
hundred Greek and Italian prisoners of war, and all of the 265 Jews of
Crete, many of them children.
Knossos the Lustral Basin,...

They had been taken by trucks, concentrated by the Nazis into a camp
in Heraklion, herded onto the ship and were being sent off to Piraeus
on the Greek mainland in transit to the death camps of Poland. There
they were destined to meet their end by gassing, hard labor and
starvation. The prisoners of war were to be forwarded to work in labor
camps for the Nazi war effort, and would also most likely meet their
deaths there.

As a result of the torpedoing, all the passengers and crew sank to a
watery grave. Admiralty records state that it was wartime policy to
attack all enemy ships coming out of the harbors of Crete, which were
being used to transport German troops back to the mainland, and the
Royal Navy had several submarines on standby to monitor the ports.

Today, out of a total population of more than half a million, the Jews
of Crete number just seven men and three women, and there is no
official monument to those who perished in 1944. Of the eight or so
synagogues that stood on the island before World War II, none remained
after the German occupation of 1941 to 1944. All, except for one, were
vandalized, taken over by squatters and eventually demolished.

Hania, the provincial capital of western Crete, had boasted two
synagogues of which one, Beth Shalom, was destroyed by German bombing
in the initial attack on Crete in 1941. The other, Etz Haim, withstood
the war but in a ruined state. It stood in the old Jewish quarter,
called Ovraiki, around the original harbor, later extended by the
Venetians, who called the area "Zudeccha" or Jewish ghetto.

The building dates from the late 15th century, and may have been
constructed from the shell of a partly destroyed chapel. It served the
Sephardi and Romaniote (Byzantine-Greek) Jews of the city for many
years and was vandalized by the Germans in 1941. It was then further
looted by the local population, and the Germans handed it over to five
families of squatters, who divided it up and lived there until 1956,
when the structure remained as a deserted ruin.

It the following year it came to the notice of Nikolas Stavroulakis,
who was returning on a sentimental visit to his roots. He was director
of the Jewish Museum in Athens, and on his retirement determined to
try to save what was left of Etz Haim. Stavroulakis is a Jew of Cretan
and Turkish origin, whose mother came from Istanbul. He studied
history at Oxford University, eventually came back to his native city
and has now made it his life's work to restore Etz Haim as a living
memorial to the 265 Jews who perished on the Tanias in 1944.

Stavroulakis was able to organize the restoration of the synagogue
through the World Monuments Fund of New York, which listed it as one
of the hundred most endangered ancient religious sites. With the help
of the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece and many public
and private donors, such as Lord Jacob Rothschild and Ronald S.
Lauder, restoration work started in 1996. Stavroulakis and his
engineer, Mato Levi, supervised the work, which meant a complete
rebuilding of the walls and roof, reconstructing the timber women's
gallery, and refitting the interior with new pews, a new Torah ark and
bima (reading desk), all of which were commissioned from the
traditional carpenters of Jakarta, whose work was similar to that of
the medieval joiners of Greece. The work was completed in October 1999
and the synagogue reopened to the public.

THE BUILDING has several unusual features. Right behind the prayer
hall is the mikve, fed by a local spring. It is still in use, though
the water is very cold and unheated, an original touch. Also behind
the hall is a small garden with four graves. These are of local
rabbis, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, who had to be buried
here at times when the local population was openly hostile to the
Jews. In one case three attempts were made to move the corpse to the
cemetery and each time it was prevented by aggressive hooligans, so it
was decided after a delay of three days to conduct the burial in the
yard behind the synagogue.

One grave still has the original tombstone lying on it, though
shattered into many pieces. Another commemorates Rabbi Hillel
Eshkenazi, "tzaddik, hassid and kabbalist," and is dated 1710.
Stavroulakis found and marked this grave based on the prewar testimony
left by the last rabbi of Hania, Av Evlagon.

The area also includes a large white ossuary containing the bones of
15 skeletons recently unearthed in a new development, and which
Stavroulakis identified as Jewish, being right by the old Jewish
cemetery, now completely destroyed.

The Etz Haim Synagogue stands close to the harbor. The area is still
medieval in layout, and the synagogue stands in an alleyway called
Parados Kondylaki, which is approached by a short walk from Kondylaki
Street, starting at the harbor. It is an area of tiny pedestrian
streets and overhanging houses, now full of tourist shops and
restaurants, none of them kosher. The area is very attractive to
tourists and many visitors drop in to see the synagogue. But there are
few regulars and a minyan is only achieved on Friday evenings with the
help of tourists.

Any visitor will be greeted by a volunteer guide, usually Samuel
Kohen, 58, of Bulgaria, who has lived in Jerusalem and for the last
five years in Crete. He is the perfect guide as he speaks Greek,
Hebrew and English as well as Ladino and several Balkan languages. One
does get the feeling, both from Kohen and the director, Stavroulakis,
that these remaining Jews are splendidly cosmopolitan, men of the
world, but strongly devoted to the local culture of Crete and anxious
to see the preservation of Jewish life on the island.

The Jews of Crete have a distinguished history. and the Bible refers
to the island several times, though before Jews settled there. King
David had a personal bodyguard of Cherethite and Pelethite soldiers (2
Samuel 8:18) and the prophet Amos refers to the Philistines from
Caphtor (9:7), another name for Crete.
Knossos the Lustral Basin,...

Knossos the Lustral Basin, used by the Minoans like a mikve.
Photo: STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG

During the Roman Empire, a message of peace to the Jews was sent from
Rome to many states and communities around the eastern Mediterranean,
and this included Gortyna in central Crete (I Maccabees 15:23), so it
can be assumed there was a Jewish community there. Philo of Alexandria
mentions a large community in Crete, and the second wife of Josephus
was of Jewish extraction and came from "the most notable people in
Crete" (Life, 427).

In the fifth century, the Jews were persecuted by the Emperor
Theodosius, and life continued to be difficult under the Christian
Byzantines and later the Muslims. It seems that Jewish customs had
become lax, as in 1228 there were published the Takanot (Regulations
of) Kandya to regulate Jewish observance in Heraklion, then called
Candia.

The Venetians had conquered the island in 1204 and they held it for
nearly 500 years. Jewish life prospered, presumably in the wake of the
extended trading contacts of the Venetian fleets, but in 1364 a number
of Jews were killed in retaliation for a local (non-Jewish) rebellion
against the Venetians. The capital, today Heraklion, was enlarged and
named Candia, based on its defensive moat, called the Khandak. Some of
the major exports were honey and raisins, and sweetmeats made from
them, and this gave rise to the English word candy.

JEWISH LIFE expanded in Candia, and the Historical Museum of the city
displays the coat of arms of the Chen family, with the inscription
"Degel Mahaneh Chen" which was displayed on the tombstone of Don
Shealtiel Chen, rescued from the destroyed Jewish cemetery. It appears
that certain wealthy Jewish families were permitted to enter the
nobility during the later period of the Venetians.

The museum is housed in a grand mansion that was built in 1870 on the
site of the former rabbi's house, which stood opposite the main
synagogue of Heraklion, near the seashore. After its destruction by
the Nazis, the site was used by the Xenia Hotel, which has itself been
pulled down and made into a garden area in front of the museum and
alongside the coastal road.

Besides the rampant lion family crest of the Chen family, the museum
contains a full history of the Tanias tragedy, as well as other events
of the difficult life of the Greeks in Crete during the German
occupation. There is no doubt that there was collaboration and that
the locals took advantage of requisitioned Jewish property, but there
were also many acts of resistance and heroism on the part of the Greek
partisans and their Allied colleagues who came to the island to fight
the Nazi occupation.

Any visitor to Crete will have to go to see the Minoan palace of
Knossos, the prime historical site of the island, dating back 4,000
years. Thousands of tourists swarm across it each summer to be
impressed by the excavations and reconstructions of the British
archeologist Sir Arthur Evans. This was his life's work, but much of
it has been criticized by later scholars, who dislike the fact that
Evans did not differentiate clearly between the original work and his
colorful rebuildings.

There is also disagreement on the role of this wonderfully extensive
palace, laid out in labyrinthine detail on all of its several stories,
with many large storage areas, originally filled with enormous pottery
jars. Evans claimed that it was the palace of King Minos, who lived in
the 17th century BCE, but other scholars, not disputing the date,
consider it to have been an oversize mausoleum, a vast palace to the
dead. The large warehouses and storage jars were for the preparation
and conservation of the cadavers of royalty and the nobility, to
preserve them for life in the hereafter.

In this connection it is interesting that Evans restored a small
building that looks like an elaborate ancient Egyptian kiosk and is
found to have steps down to a deep water basin, filled by rainwater.
Evans called this the North Lustral Basin, to purify the faithful or
the priesthood before they took part in the cult. His critics would
say it was a place for washing the bodies of the dead before
preservation in the jars. We would designate it as a mikve, a ritual
bath, and it is indeed likely that it served such a function within
the Minoan cult. Whatever the original purpose, it is a reminder of
the widespread significance, across the ages, of ritual washing of
both the living and the dead.

There is another Jewish connection to Knossos, as there is evidence
that the village, a suburb of Heraklion, housed a Jewish Samaritan
community in the first century BCE. This is not as unexpected as it
may seem. Another Samaritan community had a synagogue on the Greek
island of Delos, known from an inscription found there, and other
Samaritan communities are known to have existed in the early Diaspora
around the eastern Mediterranean.

Evans labored hard to make Knossos visible and attractive to the lay
crowd. Stavroulakis has done the same with the Etz Haim Synagogue, but
his purpose has been a more personal and more deeply commemorative
one. He has worked over the last 50 years to bring back some semblance
of Jewish life to the island and at the same time to honor and
commemorate those 265 innocent Jewish souls that perished so miserably
in the sea off their homeland some 65 years ago.

The writer is a senior fellow of the W.F. Albright Institute of Jerusalem.

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June Samaras
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