The City and the City plot
Before the 1930s, the Jews were the dominant community in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. In the late 1920s the population structure changed with the influx of Greek refugees from Asia Minor, and together with the local population they founded the anti-Semitic EEE - the Nationalist Union of Greece. Supported by Prime Minister Venizelos and local newspapers, they began persecuting the Jews. Nazi Germany occupied the country in 1941, and by 1943 the Jews were put in a ghetto, murdered in local concentration camps, and sent to Auschwitz. 96% of the 55,000 Jewish inhabitants were exterminated.