Abstract
This chapter provides a general introduction to the major themes of the book, exploring the cultural construction of Greek identity, the rise of political antisemitism in Greece, and the life and career of Metaxas. The late nineteenth-century conceptualization of Greek identity (based on language, religion, and culture) would come to dominate Metaxist discourse during the years of his regime, limiting who could be considered part of the dictator’s Third Hellenic Civilization and creating a binary paradigm of inclusion and exclusion for any non-Christian groups. This same focus on Greek identity shaped the characteristic features of Greek antisemitism, which became increasingly political in nature after the Greek War of Independence. The chapter concludes with a short biography of Ioannis Metaxas and his rise to power.
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Notes
- 1.
General Archives of the State (GAS), Speech given in Thessaloniki, 10 November 1937, Metaxas Archive, file 28, 3.
- 2.
See newspapers such as Μακεδονία [Macedonia], Will his downfall occur? 26 July 1936, and Do not be concerned: The Greek Franco is not in a position to do anything—Already the people have pulled out his teeth, 27 July 1936.
- 3.
See William Korey, The origins and development of Soviet anti-Semitism: An analysis, Slavic Review 31.1 (1972): 111–135.
- 4.
The overwhelming majority of these memoirs or testimonies begin in 1941 with the Nazi invasion of Greece and do not mention the Metaxas period. See Frangiski Ambatzopoulou, Γιομτώβ Γιακοέλ: Απομνημονεύματα, 1941–1943 [Yomtov Yakoel: Memoirs, 1941–1943] (Athens: Παρατηρητής, 1993); Ambatzopoulou, Το Ολοκαύτωμα στις μαρτυρίες των ελλήνων εβραίων [The Holocaust in the testimonies of Greek Jews] (Athens: Επίκεντρο 2007); Steven Bowman, ed., The Holocaust in Salonika: Eyewitness accounts, trans. Isaac Benmayor (New York: Bloch, 2002); P. Κ. Εnepekidi, Οι διωγμοί των Εβραίων εν Ελλάδι, 1941–1944 [The persecution of the Jews in Greece, 1941–1944] (Athens: Παπαζήσης, 1969); Alexander Kitroeff, War-Time Jews: The case of Athens (Athens: Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, 1995); Νina S. Νachmia, Ρέινα Ζιλμπέρτα: Ένα παιδί στο γκέτο της Θεσσαλονίκης [Reina Zilberta: A child in the Thessaloniki ghetto] (Athens: Ωκεανίδα, 1996); Αlbertos Νar, Κειμένη επί ακτής θαλάσσης [Written on the seashore] (Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 1997). The works that do cover both pre- and post-Holocaust periods are those which focus on the history of a Jewish community; see Eftihia Nachmias Nachman, Yannina: A journey to the Past (New York: Bloch, 2004); Joshua Eli Plaut, Greek Jewry in the twentieth century, 1913–1983: Patterns of Jewish survival in the Greek provinces before and after the Holocaust (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996).
- 5.
A related, yet distinct topic not addressed in the present work is the examination of various Jewish communities in Greece. Nor does this book focus on their sociolegal status during the interwar period.
- 6.
The Slavo-Macedonians are a Slavic-speaking minority situated in Northern Greek region of Macedonia. They are a linguistic minority that had been appropriated by neighboring Balkan states as a vehicle for territorial expansion over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- 7.
The Megali Idea was the dominant foreign policy of the Greek state that sought to acquire territories that were part of the former Byzantine Empire and considered by the various political leaders as “Greek.”
- 8.
See, for instance, Jon V. Kofas, Authoritarianism in Greece: The Metaxas regime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Tasos Kostopoulos, H απαγορευμένη γλώσσα: Κρατική καταστολή των σλαβικών διαλέκτων στην ελληνική Μακεδονία [The forbidden language: State suppression of Slavic dialects in Greek Macedonia] (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2000).
- 9.
Apostolou, Andrew, Greek collaboration in the Holocaust and the course of the War, in The Holocaust in Greece, ed. Giorgos Antoniou and A. Dirk Moses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 89–112. The eradication of the Cham Albanians was accomplished during the Nazi Occupation of Greece during World War II.
- 10.
The Vlachs were targeted by Romania and intended to exploit the Vlachs by encouraging them into the “idea of partitioning the Pindus region from the Greek state to establish an independent monarchy, under a Romanian prince. This is reflected in 1916, when the Italian army marched after the other Allied military forces in Macedonia, announcing to them the independence of the Pindus.” Romania’s political and territorial agenda was supported by other Central European countries that found it an ideal opportunity to undercut Greek commercial success in the Balkans for their own economic benefit. See General Administration Macedonia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thessaloniki, Regarding the conduct of the trial of the slaughtering of the soldier Bousoulega verifying events, 30 November 1932, Minorities-Refugees, 1932–1934, no. 41/7/1932, file 36.3, 4. Albanians did not pose a major threat until the establishment of an independent state following the Balkan Wars. Until then, Albanians were not perceived as a minority threat, especially since they fought alongside the Greeks during the Greek War of Independence.
- 11.
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the conflicting territorial expansionist campaigns of the Balkan states led to the exploitation of various minority groups. Respective Balkan states appropriated minority groups to further their respective territorial claims.
- 12.
Romaniote Jews were the oldest Jewish community in Greece and spoke Greek as their primary language, while the Sephardim were Iberian Jews who were expelled at the end of the fifteenth century and a large number came to the Ottoman Empire. The Sephardim spoke Ladino as their primary language and were perceived as being reluctant to learn the Greek language. For a detailed explanation of the history of the Jewish communities, see Chap. 2.
- 13.
George Mavrogordatos, Stillborn republic: Social coalitions and party strategies in Greece, 1922–1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 228.
- 14.
Giorgos Th. Mavrogordatos, Μετά το 1922: Η παράταση του Διχασμού [After 1922: The of the Prolongation of the Schism] (Athens: Πατάκης, 2017).
- 15.
Miroslav Hroch argues that Zionism is a national movement comparable to others in Europe; see Hroch, Comparative studies in modern European history: National, nationalism, social change (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007).
- 16.
Metaxas continued Venizelos’s policies concerning education, Sunday rest day laws, and the appropriation of portions of the Thessaloniki Jewish cemetery. See Chap. 3 for a fuller discussion.
- 17.
See Chap. 3 for a more detailed discussion on the Maccabee Sports Association.
- 18.
How and in what manner the Jews were to be assimilated depended on the specific Jewish community targeted. For example, the Romaniote Jews were fairly integrated into Greek society and culture; these Jews spoke Greek, attended (the large majority) Greek state schools, and so on. In contrast, the majority of Sephardic Jews spoke either Ladino or French, attended minority or foreign schools, maintained their own newspapers, and so on. Thus, the Metaxas government took pains with the Sephardic Jews to address these “cultural” issues, forcing compliance to policies such as the use of Greek in foreign and minority Jewish schools, adhering to the Sunday rest day laws, and so on.
- 19.
While not all members of the Jewish community voted conservative, nor did a majority of Jews vote conservative in every interwar election, a large majority of Jews did vote for the political faction to which Metaxas had belonged.
- 20.
Using the example of the Sephardic Jewish community, their voting pattern in Thessaloniki was split according to internal divisions; the “Moderates” supported Venizelism, the “Zionists’ supported the anti-Venizelists, and the “Internationalists” supported the KKE. The Zionist support of anti-Venizelism during the interwar period is also exemplified in the induction of Metaxas to the Golden Book for his support of the Zionist cause. The general perception of the Jewish majority vote favoring anti-Venizelism is highlighted in Mavrogordatos, Stillborn republic, 241, and his discussion of the “Jewish danger” to Venizelist electoral aspirations. Also, both Maria Vassilikou (Politics of the Jewish community of Salonika in the inter-war years: Party ideologies and party competition [DPhil thesis, University College London, 1999]) and Rena Molho (Salonica and Istanbul: Social, political and cultural aspects of Jewish life [Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005]) discuss the factions that existed in Thessaloniki.
- 21.
Hroch, Modern European History, x.
- 22.
In 1797, Rhigas Ferraios promoted a multiethnic polity in his New political constitution of the inhabitants of Rumeli, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Aegean, and the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, but this vision was marginalized in favor of a homogeneous image of the nation. This statist view of national identity would prevail and be formalized in Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos’s six-volume Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικού Ἔθνους ἀπό τῶν ἀρχαιοτάτων χρόνων μέχρι τῶν καθ’ ἡμάς [History of the Hellenic Nation from ancient times to today] (Athens: Ανέστης Κωνσταντινίδης, 1886). See Maria Koundoura, The Greek idea: The formation of national and transnational identities (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 87–93.
- 23.
Nicholas Doumanis, The Ottoman Roman Empire, c. 1680–1900: How empires shaped a modern nation, in The Routledge History of Western Empires, ed. Robert Aldrich and Kirsten Mckenzie (Routledge: London, 2013), 214.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, Redefining the nation: Shifting boundaries of the “Other” in Greece and Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies 47.1 (2011): 167–182, esp. 168.
- 26.
Ibid., 168.
- 27.
Ibid., 168.
- 28.
Dimitris Livanios, The quest for Hellenism: Religion, nationalism and collective identities in Greece (1453–1913), The Historical Review/La Revue Historique 3 (2006): 55.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Nikolaos Chrysoloras, Religion and national identity in the Greek and Greek-Cypriot political cultures (PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science), 103.
- 31.
Ioannis Grigoriadis, The Greek Revolution and Ottoman studies: Problems, methods, and revisions (paper presented virtually at the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 27 August 2021, https://www.ottomanturkishstudiesassociation.org/wotsap-past-meetings/).
- 32.
One of the most notable proponents of biological racism is Arthur de Gobineau, who wrote Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines [Essay on the inequality of the human races] (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot frères, 1853–1855) and developed the theory of the Aryan master race.
- 33.
Michael Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 27.
- 34.
Stefanos Katsikas, Introduction, in European modernity and Islamic reformism among the late-Ottoman and post-Ottoman Muslims of the Balkans (1830s–1945), special issue, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 29.4 (2009): 435–442.
- 35.
Richard Clogg, The Greek Diaspora: The historical context, in The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century, ed. Clogg (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1999), 19.
- 36.
The term Hellenization refers to the cultural assimilationist policies employed by various Greek administrations toward minorities and newly incorporated ethnic Greeks following the Balkan Wars. For a more detailed discussion of Hellenization, please see Chap. 3.
- 37.
Katerina Lagos, The Metaxas dictatorship and Greek Jewry, 1936–1941, Journal for Modern Hellenism 23–24 (2006–2007): 45–80.
- 38.
Effi Gazi, “Fatherland, religion, family”: Exploring the history of a slogan in Greece (1880–1930),” paper presented at the Modern Greek Studies Association Annual Symposium, NYU, New York, October 2011, accessed 18 November 2000, https://www.academia.edu/1057905/Fatherland_Religion_Family_Exploring_the_History_of_a_Slogan_in_Greece_1880_1930_. For a substantive discussion of the slogan’s use during the Metaxas dictatorship, please see Marina Petrakis, The Metaxas myth: Dictatorship and propaganda in Greece (London: I. B. Taurus, 2006).
- 39.
Ethnos is the term used to describe individuals of Greek ethnicity. For Metaxas, members of the Greek ethnos were defined in cultural terms: those individuals who spoke Greek and believed in the Orthodox faith. See Chap. 4 for a more detailed discussion of ethnos and Jewish inclusion/exclusion.
- 40.
Keith S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis, eds., The usable past: Greek metahistories (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003).
- 41.
Kostopoulos, Απαγορευμένη γλώσσα.
- 42.
See Chap. 3 for a complete discussion concerning EEE, including its origin, antisemitic bias, and involvement in the Campbell Pogrom of 1931 in Thessaloniki.
- 43.
Tobias Blümel, Antisemitism as political theology in Greece and its impact on Greek Jewry, 1967–1979. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 17.2 (2017): 181–202, quotation at 183.
- 44.
Ibid., 184.
- 45.
Blood libel accusations made a presence in the Greek lands starting in 1840. For further discussion of blood libels, see Chap. 2. Also, see Spiridon Trykoupis, Ιστορία της Ελληνικής Επανάστασης [History of the Greek Revolution], 2nd ed. (London: n.p., 1860), vol. 2, 174.
- 46.
In 1930, nearly 50% of the Greek Christian population was illiterate. See A. A. Sipitanou, Illiteracy in Greece: Presenting and confronting the problem, Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 10.1 (2004): 31–45.
- 47.
The Asia Minor Catastrophe is the historic reference to the defeat of the Greek military in 1922 in present-day Turkey. The Asia Minor Campaign of 1919–1922 sought to capture territory beyond what was given in the Treaty of Sevres (1920) following World War I.
- 48.
Dhimmis are non-Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire who were granted special status and safety in Islamic law in return for paying the capital tax. This status was originally only made available to non-Muslims who were “People of the Book” (Koran), namely, Jews and Christians, but was later extended to include other religious sects.
- 49.
According to Katherine Fleming, the period following Greek independence represented the beginning of the emergence of Greek Jewry as a “unified, nationalized category, [that] emerged out of multiple and fragmented communities” and was completed with the Holocaust and the foundation of the state of Israel; see Fleming, Greece: A Jewish history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 8.
- 50.
An example of this disregard can be seen in the continuation of the Judas Iscariot effigy burning that occurred during Holy Week of Greek Orthodox Easter. While this effigy burning frequently led to violence toward the Jews, little, if anything, was done to prohibit this incendiary behavior.
- 51.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Principles of international politics, 5th ed. (London: SAGE Publications, 2014), 82.
- 52.
Joana Bürger, Between Corfu and Athens: Moisis Caimis’s contribution to the making of Greek Jewry (1885–1916), in Jewish minorities between nation-building and emigration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century East Central Europe, ed. Francisco Di Palma and Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, special issue, QUEST: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History; Journal of the Fondazione CDEC 20 (December 2021): 163.
- 53.
Mayer S. Maisis, Η ιστορία της Εβραϊκής κοινότητας Χαλκίδας από το 586 Π.Χ. έως το 2001 Μ. Χ. [The history of the Jewish community of Chalkida from 586 BC up to 2001 AD] (Chalkida: Ισραηλιτική Κοινότητα Χαλκίδας, 2013), 217.
- 54.
Mavrogordatos, Stillborn republic, 240.
- 55.
Ibid., 241.
- 56.
Ironically, the royalists would seek to abolish the electoral bill and allow Jews (and other minorities) to vote as individuals. From the royalist perspective, the Jews were supportive of the royalist parties and would help secure a royalist electoral victory. However, this did not mean that the Jews would be included in substantive political accommodations. See Chap. 3 for a discussion on interwar policies toward the Jews.
- 57.
Mavrogordatos, Stillborn republic, 241.
- 58.
According to Dina Danon, the Greeks of Smyrna had already developed a strong hostility toward the Jews because of their perceived loyalty to the Ottoman state. Their loyalty was considered inimical to Greek irredentist aspirations, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the Greeks engaged in wholesale banishment of Jewish peddlers in the Greek neighborhoods as well as full boycotts of Jewish businesses (as seen following the Greco-Turkish War of 1897). It can be argued that these negative perceptions and behaviors toward the Jews accompanied the Asia Minor refugees when they arrived in Greece. See Danon, The Jews of Ottoman Smyrna: A modern history (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), 14.
- 59.
Marilena Anastasopoulou, Coming to terms with forced migration: An intergenerational studies of Asia Minor refugee memory in Greece, paper presented at Biennial Hellenic Observatory PhD Symposium on Greece and Cyprus, London, London School of Economics, 15 June 2019, 4.
- 60.
Mavrogrodatos, Stillborn republic, 194.
- 61.
The rise of the EEE should be understood in the context of the aftermath of the Fire of 1917. To a large extent, blame for the outbreak of the fire—and subsequent destruction of a vast portion of the city (approximately 32%)—was placed on the Jewish community.
- 62.
Mavrogrodatos, Stillborn republic, 255.
- 63.
Blümel, Antisemitism as political theology, 185. See also Rena Molho, Popular antisemitism and state policy in Salonika during the city’s annexation to Greece, Jewish Social Studies 50.3–4 (1993): 253–264; Molho, Η αντιεβραική νομοθεσία του Βενιζέλου στον μεσοπόλεμο και που η δημοκρατία βόρει να κάνει άργος του Αντισημιτισμού [The anti-Jewish legislation of Venizelos in the interwar period and how democracy can become a supporter of Antisemitism], Σύγχρονα Θέματα [Contemporary issues] 82 (June 2003): 53–59; Molho, The close ties between nationalism and antisemitism: The Hellenization of Salonika, 1917–1948, Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 24 (2015): 217–228.
- 64.
According to Roderick Beaton, the Idionym law was “a knee-jerk reaction to a phenomenon that was feared but not well understood … [and] this measure was mainly directed against communists and trade unionists”; see Beaton, Greece: Biography of a modern nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 250.
- 65.
Blümel (Antisemitism as political theology, 185) details the impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Greek intellectuals and society. He also states that before the publication of the Greek edition of the Protocols in 1928, there was already a popular belief in a “Jewish World conspiracy, i.e. blaming Jewry for the Asia Minor Catastrophe (Greco-Turkish War 1919–1922) and ‘all the misery and misfortune they brought no only to our [Greek] own race, but on all mankind’ … [and] contextualized with an imaginary Judeo-bolshevist threat.”
- 66.
See Fragiski Ambatzopoulou, Ο Άλλος εν διωγμώ: Η εικόνα του Εβραίου στη λογοτεχνία και στον κινηματογράφο [The Other in persecution: The image of the Jew in literature and cinema] (Athens: Themelio, 1998), 205–206; Maria Vassilikou, Οι εθνοτικές αντιθέσεις στην Ελλάδα του Μεσοπολέμου: Η περίπτωση του εμπρησμού του Κάμπελ [Ethnic antagonisms in interwar Greece: The case of the Campbell arson], Ίστωρ [History] 7 (1994): 153–174; Emilio J. Demetriades, Thessaloniki, 1925–35 (Thessaloniki: Παρατηρητής, 1994) 301–355, cited in Maria Kavala, An example of the ideological use of the press: The Anti-Semitic discourse of the newspaper Makedonia in Salonika and its columnists (1911–1944), paper presented at The 7th International Conference, Serb-Croat Political Relations in the 20th Century-Defending the Rights of National Minorities, Center for History, Democracy and Reconciliation, Golubic Obrovacki, Croatia, 22–27 August 2014, 9.
- 67.
The Slavo-Macedonians could avoid repression provided that they accepted Hellenization; only then would they receive the “respect” given to all citizens. See Kostopoulos, Απαγορευμένη γλώσσα.
- 68.
Joachim G. Joachim, Ioannis Metaxas: The formative years, 1871–1922 (Mannheim: Harrassowitz, 2000), 12.
- 69.
Ioannis Metaxas, To προσωπικό του ημερολόγιο [His personal diary] (Athens: Γκοβόστης, 1967), vol. 1, 122.
- 70.
Ibid., 527.
- 71.
P. J. Vatikiotis, Popular autocracy in Greece, 1936–41: A political biography of General Ioannis Metaxas (London: Routledge, 1998), 25.
- 72.
Joachim, Metaxas, 22.
- 73.
Vatikiotis, Popular autocracy in Greece, 27.
- 74.
Joachim, Metaxas, 16.
- 75.
Ibid., 17.
- 76.
Ibid., 17.
- 77.
Ibid., 17.
- 78.
Thanos Veremis, Introduction, in The Metaxas dictatorship: Aspects of Greece, 1936–1940, ed. Robin Higham and Veremis (Athens: The Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism, 1993), 6.
- 79.
Joachim, Metaxas, 32.
- 80.
Ibid., 32.
- 81.
When I examined his personal library, the following books on antisemitism existed: Georges Batault, Le problème juif: La renaissance de l’anti-Semitism, l’exclusivisme juif (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1921); Roger Lambelin, Le péril juif: L’impérialisme d’Israël (Paris: Grasset, 1924); Batault, Israël contre les nations (Paris: G. Beauchesn, 1939). However, Israël contre les nations was not read by Metaxas; the pages were still uncut.
- 82.
Joachim, Metaxas, 337.
- 83.
Metaxas, Προσωπικό του ημερολόγιο [Personal diary], vol. 5, 78–100.
- 84.
Joachim, Metaxas, 334.
- 85.
Ibid., 349.
- 86.
Ibid., 214.
- 87.
Although Venizelos and “Venizelism” came to be seen as representing republicanism, Venizelos could be more accurately described as anti-royalist. In the year before his death, Venizelos changed his opinion and made public statements supporting the monarchy and its role in Greek politics.
- 88.
Vatikiotis, Popular autocracy in Greece, 143.
- 89.
The Free Thinkers Party would last until 1936 when Metaxas became dictator of Greece. The party would not join Metaxas in power and helps reflect the nature of Metaxas’s rule during the dictatorship.
- 90.
Joachim, Metaxas, 351.
- 91.
Since he served as Prime Minister until 3 August 1936, Metaxas was titled President of the Government. This title accompanied Metaxas once he became dictator. This is why he was referred to as “Leader of the Nation” (Εθνικός Κυβερνήτης) during the dictatorship.
- 92.
Grigorios Daphnis, Η Ελλάς μεταξύ δυο πολέμων [Greece between two wars] (Athens: Ίκαρος, 1997), vol. 2, 418–421. Thanos Veremis argues that King George had a more active role in the establishment of the dictatorship; see Veremis, Introduction, 7.
- 93.
For more information regarding the magazine, η Νεολαία, see Eleni Machaira, Η Νεολαία της 4ης Αυγούστου: Φωτογραφές [The youth of the 4 August: Photographs] (Athens: Ιστορικό Αρχείο Ελληνικής Νεολέας, 1987); Marina Petrakis, Metaxas Myth.
- 94.
Mark Mazower and Thanos Veremis, The Greek economy, 1922–1941, in The Metaxas Dictatorship, Aspects of Greece 1936–1940, ed. Robin Higham and Veremis (Athens: The Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism, 1993), 127.
- 95.
This ultimatum, delivered by Italian Ambassador Emanuele Grazzi to Metaxas on 28 October 1940, stipulated that Metaxas allow Italy to occupy portions of Greek territory or face a military invasion.
- 96.
For a more detailed discussion regarding Metaxas’s political orientations, see Chap. 4.
- 97.
Few scholars have explored Metaxas’s perception and treatment of the Jews, and antisemitism is rarely mentioned in works focusing on Metaxas’s ideological leanings. Concerning national identity, David Close mentions in passing that Metaxist treatment of the Jews was “enlightened by Greek standards”; see Close, Ioannis Metaxas and the development of national consciousness, in Neohellenism, ed. John Burke and Stathis Gaunlett (Canberra: Australian National University, 1992), 148.
- 98.
Joachim, Metaxas, 351.
- 99.
Examples of scholars who have discussed Metaxas’s personal insecurities include Veremis mentioning Metaxas’s fear of isolation and failure (Introduction), 7. P. J. Vatikiotis also discusses Metaxas’s social and economic insecurities; see Vatikiotis, Metaxas—The Man, in The Metaxas Dictatorship, Aspects of Greece 1936–1940, ed. Robin Higham and Thanos Veremis (Athens: The Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism, 1993), 182. In Vatikiotis’s biography of Metaxas (Popular autocracy in Greece, 164), he states that Metaxas was concerned that political intrigues both within Greece and abroad might lead to his downfall from power.
- 100.
Metaxas, Προσωπικό του ημερολόγιο [His personal diary], vol. 7, 312–315.
- 101.
Ibid., 312.
- 102.
Ibid., 313.
- 103.
Ibid., 314.
- 104.
Ibid., 312–315.
- 105.
Metaxas, Προσωπικό του ημερολόγιο [His personal diary], vol. 8, 560.
- 106.
John S. Koliopoulos, Greece and the British connection, 1935–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 56.
- 107.
Ioanna Phocas (granddaughter of Ioannis Metaxas) recounted her mother (Nana Metaxas-Phocas) as mentioning Jews among her father’s friends. Both Mr. Mallach (first name unknown), a wealthy financier, and a local artist (whose name is unknown) who painted Nana Metaxas’s portrait (but did not sign the painting) as a sign of gratitude and friendship are examples of the Jewish friends Metaxas had throughout his life and career.
- 108.
Mavrogordatos, Stillborn republic, 253–262, 268, presents an ample discussion of the voting tendencies of the Jews of Greece.
- 109.
The Idionym law (Law 4229 of 1929) was passed by parliament to prevent “the implementation of ideas whose manifest purpose [was] the violent overthrow of the established social order” but targeted the communist party and communist ideas; see Leonidas K. Cheliotis, Depression and repression: Global capitalism, economic crisis and penal politics in interwar Greece, European Journal of Criminology 19.3 (May 2022): 419–441, quotation at 429.
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Lagos, K. (2023). Jewry and Ioannis Metaxas. In: The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20533-0_1
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