The Jews of Greece 1

On the first day of the 28th Olympiad, I'm posting some links on the Jews of Greece.

Earliest known Jewish settlement in Greece: Third Century B.C.E.
Estimated number of Jews in Greece on eve of World II: 77,000
Estimated number of Jews in Greece today: 5,000
Most important "Jewish city" in Greece: Salonika

You can take a 'Virtual Jewish History Tour' of Greece here - and get some background on the Jewish communities before the Second World War here:

The Jews of Greece were proud descendants of the Spanish Jews who had fled the religious persecution of the Inquisition some five hundred years earlier. The Sultan had opened the lands of the Ottoman Empire to the Jewish refugees, and they settled all across the Mediterranean - in cities like Salonica, Kastoria, Athens and Constantinople. The customs and traditions of the Spanish Jews soon dominated the Jewish communities of the region, and within a few years the port city of Salonica, in northern Macedonia, became the most important Sephardic city in all of Europe.

By the early twentieth century, Sephardic communities could be found throughout the entire Balkan region... By the second decade... there were twenty four official communities in Greece, a small percentage containing Romaniotes, or Greek-speaking Jews, whose origins dated back to the first century.