Greece has honoured over 350 victims, among them 170 Greek Jews, at the former German-Nazi concentration camp, Ebensee, in Upper Austria, during World War II.
The ceremony, which took place on 28.4.2018, was attended by delegations of the Greek and Cypriot Embassy in Austria – led by Chrysoula Aliferi, Ambassador of Greece – by the Holy Diocese of Austria, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece with its General Secretary, Victor Eliezer, as well as by the Federation of Greek Associations in Austria, the Intercultural Association of Macedonia (led by their presidents) and the Association of Greek Students and Scientists of Graz.
A number of Greeks living in Austria also attended, as well as Dr. Quatember, founder and director of the History Museum in Ebensee, who substantially and procedurally helped with the placement of the plaque in Memory of Greek Victims at the former facilities of the concentration camp.
The representative of the Holy Diocese of Austria, priest Father Ilias, held a religious service in memory of the Greek victims, whereas the Jewish memorial prayer was offered by Victor Eliezer, the General Secretary of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, who later delivered a particularly moving speech.
At the concentration camp of Ebensee, most of the over 350 Greeks-victims of the Nazi atrocities were Christians who were killed there as resistance fighters or for being opposed to the Nazi regime, while 170 of them were Greek Jews from Rhodes, Kos, Ioannina, Athens and Thessaloniki, who were exterminated as Jews.
The concentration camp of Ebensee, located about 250 kilometers west of Vienna, was part of the central German-Nazi extermination camp of Mauthausen where over 120,000 prisoners were killed during World War II, among them the 3,700 Greeks who were victims of the Nazi atrocities.
