Greece; A Jewish History
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. xii, [2], 271, [3] pages. Includes introduction, 20 black and white illustrations, Acknowledgments, Notes, and Index. Also includes information on Independence and Expansion; The "Sephardic Republic": Salonika to 1923; Normalization to Destruction; "The Greeks": Greek Jews Beyond Greece; and Conclusion: Greek Jewish History--Greek or Jewish? This book is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews. The author describes the history of this diverse group and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece, as deportees to Auschwitz or emigres to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. Katherine Elizabeth Fleming is the Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Department of History at New York University (NYU). Fleming holds a Ph.D. in History (1995) from the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the modern history of Greece and the broader Mediterranean context, with a focus on religious minorities. Fleming is is the second director of the Remarque Institute. In addition to her appointments at NYU, Fleming is a permanent associate member of the faculty of the department of history of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where she runs a longstanding workshop on the history of the Mediterranean with the French historian of Italy, Gilles Pécout. Fleming has sat on the boards of numerous journals, among them the American Historical Review. Fleming is also President of the board of the University of Piraeus in Athens, Greece. Fleming's second book, Greece: A Jewish History, has received numerous awards: a National Jewish Book Award; Runciman Award; Prix Alberto Benveniste; honorable mention, Keeley Book Prize of the Modern Greek Studies Association and received considerable popular press in Greece. It has been translated into Greek and French. In the English-speaking academy the book has been widely and largely positively reviewed, though some reviewers have objected to its "diasporist" approach, which minimizes and to an extent rejects the centrality of Israel and of Zionism.
K. E. Fleming's Greece--a Jewish History is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only history that includes material on their diaspora in Israel and the United States. The book tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a paradox in that it wasn't fully formed until after most Greek Jews had emigrated or been deported and killed by the Nazis.
For centuries, Jews lived in areas that are now part of Greece. But Greek Jews as a nationalized group existed in substantial number only for a few short decades--from the Balkan Wars (1912-13) until the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent were killed. Greece--a Jewish History describes their diverse histories and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a Greek collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece--as deportees to Auschwitz or emigres to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. In such foreign settings their Greekness was emphasized as it never was in Greece, where Orthodox Christianity traditionally defines national identity and anti-Semitism remains common. Condition: Very good (small scratch on front cover).
Keywords: Holocaust, Anti-Semitism, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Immigration, Corfu, Israel, Palestine, Refugees, Zionism, Salonika, Sephardic, Venizelos, Metaxas, Deportations, Hellenization
ISBN: 9780691146126
[Book #79607]
Price: $35.00