Deportation of the Jews of Rhodes.

Fascist regime archives uncovered in 2011

Even in Rome no one knew about the records that had been left in the far away island – forgotten or destroyed.

The Jewish communities of Rhodes¹ and Kos were eradicated almost entirely during the Holocaust.² On July 20, 1944, the Jews of Rhodes and the neighboring island of Kos were sent by boat to the Greek mainland, incarcerated in the SS-operated transit camp Haidary and deported by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 151 Jews from Rhodes survived the Holocaust.³

Italy, which invaded the Dodecanese islands (including Rhodes and Kos)⁴ in 1912, seized the island group from the Ottoman Empire and administered it 35 years as the "Italian Possessions of the Aegean."

The Italians left the islands in 1947, with the signing of the Paris Peace Treaties, which formally ended the Second World War. The Dodecanese were ceded to Greece. Athens came into possession of the archives of all the documents produced by the Italian Carabinieri in Rhodes and found them in 2011.  They identified the contents in 2013.

Eirini Toliou, director of the archive, emphasizes "it was Mussolini himself who wanted these files, making them one-of-a-kind." Under Toliou's supervision, a team of researchers and archivists are preparing to inventory the material to make it available to experts.

"Hiding behind a discreet administration was the dark work of a shrewd dictatorship, bound to keep an entire population under control due to an obvious inability to give and receive trust."⁵

Many of the Italian Carabinieri Rhodes files concerned the local Jewish community in Rhodes up to the deportation in 1944. The Carabinieri recorded information on the lives, business, communal networks, political views and personal behaviors.⁶

Their story can now be re-examined under new light based on a much broader evidence of their interactions with the Italian authorities. The documents of the Central Special Bureau are currently been catalogued and digitized by the Greek State Archives and with the support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ⁷

1. NAME OF THOSE DEPORTED AND KILLED BY NAZI'S FROM RHODES IN 1944, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database. 

2. McElligott, Anthony. “The Deportation of the Jews of Rhodes, 1944: An Integrated History.” In The Holocaust in Greece, 58–86. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

3. Rhodes. THE HOLOCAUST IN GREECE.“In 1944 there were close to 2,000 Jews living on the island, 50 of whom, as Turkish citizens, fell under the protection of the Turkish consulate. The rest were deported on July 20, 1944.”

4. The Dodecanese  (literally "twelve islands") are a group of 15 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Turkey's Anatolia. Rhodes is the largest.

5. Nissirio, Patrizio Italian Dodecanese (1912-1947), thousands of secret police files emerge Untold story of how regime spied on residents will be available. AnsaMed.

6. Schlötzer, Christiane (2015). The secret of the last Jews of Rhodes. eSepharad.

7. New light on the deportation of the Jews of Rhodes and Koos. (2015). Centro Primo Levi.