VZCZCXRO8774
OO RUEHIK RUEHPOD RUEHYG
DE RUEHTH #2106/01 2980749
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 250749Z OCT 07
FM AMEMBASSY ATHENS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0575
INFO RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE PRIORITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ATHENS 002106 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: GR PGOV PREL
SUBJECT: GREECE RATIFIES NAZI-ERA ARCHIVE RELEASE DURING 
AMB KENNEDY VISIT 
 
REF: THESSALONIKI 60 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: During the Athens visit of Special 
Holocaust Envoy Kennedy, the new Greek Parliament in its 
first official ratification act approved by unanimous consent 
the amendment to the International Tracing Service (ITS) 
agreement, capping off the eleven-nation approval process for 
release in digitized format of the Bad-Arolsen archive.  On 
the Jewish cemetery issue in Thessaloniki, Jewish Communities 
Board President Constantinis said they did not expect the 
university built on the site to be razed but did expect 
compensation from the GOG, which had acknowledged the 
legitimacy of the Jewish communities' claim.  Education and 
Religion Ministry Secretary General Platis said he was 
sensitive to Jewish concerns about the cemetery but also did 
not want to stand in the way of an expansion of the 
university.  On an October 24 visit in Thessaloniki, the 
university rector and administrative director both told 
Kennedy that there were no plans to expand the university at 
its current site on old cemetery land.  END SUMMARY. 
 
INTERNATIONAL TRACING SERVICE 
----------------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU)  Ambassador Christian Kennedy, Special Envoy for 
Holocaust Issues, visited Athens October 19-24 to lobby for 
ratification of the amendments to the International Tracing 
Service (ITS) agreement to allow release of electronic copies 
of the Bad-Arolsen archives, as well as to discuss other 
issues related to Holocaust education and remembrance in 
Greece.  The Bad-Arolsen archive housed in Germany is a huge 
collection of WWII-era displaced-person and Nazi detention, 
concentration-camp, and labor records.  In May 2006, the ITS 
Commission adopted amendments to its founding agreements to 
allow each of the eleven member-states to receive a digitized 
copy of the archive.  (NOTE: The eleven Commission 
member-states include: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, 
Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK, 
and the U.S.  END NOTE.)  Over the last year, ten of the 
eleven member-states had approved the amendments through 
their various internal approval processes.  Greece had 
prepared legislation for parliamentary consideration in 
August, but then devastating forest fires and snap elections 
delayed work on the legislation. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Consideration of the ITS amendment ratification was 
among the very first issues taken up by the newly-constituted 
Parliamentary Committee for Defense and International 
Affairs, which passed the ratification bill out of committee 
on October 17.  Ambassador Kennedy arrived in Greece on 
October 19 and discussed final ratification with a number of 
Greek politicians, officials, and Jewish community leaders. 
Newly-elected Defense and International Affairs Committee 
Chairman Miltiadis Varvitsiotis explained that he and 
Parliamentary President (speaker) Sioufas welcomed the 
opportunity to ratify the ITS amendments and noted Greece's 
sensitivity to Holocaust issues.  Photini Tomai, Director of 
the MFA diplomatic archives and who, together with Ambassador 
Alexander Philon of the MFA Center for Analysis and Planning, 
has done excellent service representing Greece on the 
International Task Force for Holocaust Education, said Greece 
was amongst the first Commission member-states to sign the 
ITS amendments and regretted that Greece would be the last to 
ratify, even if the delay was due to the forest fires and 
snap electios. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Working at a record pace, the full Parliament 
approved the ratification by unanimous consent on October 23 
in what was its first official approval of a final piece of 
legislation since newly convening after the September 
elections.  Embassy released a press statement Oct 24, 
quoting Ambassador Kennedy's congratulations to the 
Parliament and his note that the historic vote capped off the 
member-state approval process.  Despite Greece's fast action 
to catch up to the other ten member-states in the approval 
process, Greece for now will not accept its own copy of the 
digitized archive.  Varvitsiotis explained that this was due 
to the lack of an adequate facility and the costs of 
establishing and maintaining archive-access software and 
trained personnel.  Nevertheless, Varvitsiotis said he wanted 
Greece to establish its own Holocaust museum, which could 
become the archive repository. 
 
THESSALONIKI CEMETERY 
--------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) In addition to the ITS ratification, Ambassador 
Kennedy and his interlocutors also discussed other issues of 
interest to the Greek Jewish community, including the 
controversy over the Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki 
(reftel).  The cemetery was expropriated following its 
 
ATHENS 00002106  002 OF 003 
 
 
destruction during WW II, and the Aristotle University of 
Thessaloniki was subsequently built on the site.  Moses 
Constantinis, President of the Central Board of Jewish 
Communities of Greece -- the umbrella organization 
representing the nine surviving Jewish communities in Greece 
(of a total of 40 before the war) -- said they did not expect 
the University to be razed.  They believed, however, that 
they were entitled to compensation -- either in the form of 
money or a new piece of property of comparable value. 
Constantinis said the GOG acknowledged the validity of the 
claim but had not yet offered any concrete proposals. 
Ambassador Kennedy noted the opposition of some Jewish 
organizations in the U.S. and Israel to compensation for 
cemeteries, but Constantinis countered that the money would 
greatly benefit the struggling Jewish community in Greece 
today and thus was a noble way to commemorate the dead. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Secretary General of the Ministry of Education and 
Religion Dimitris Platis questioned why a new place could not 
be found to move the bones from the Jewish cemetery, adding 
that this was done frequently in the U.S. when a new highway 
or building was to be constructed.  Ambassador Kennedy 
explained the religious sensitivities regarding Jewish 
cemeteries and emphasized our desire that there be no new 
construction on vacant parts of the cemetery land in 
Thessaloniki.  If there were any construction, he implored, 
"I hope you'll be working with international bodies that have 
dealt with these issues extensively in the past."  SG Platis 
said they would do so but "without denying the right of the 
university to expand."  At the conclusion of the meeting, SG 
Platis said that he would call the university rector to 
discuss the issue once Ambassador Kennedy left his office. 
He said he would ask the rector to consider what would happen 
if during construction ancient Greek ruins were discovered, 
which, he opined, "would make you stop (construction) 
forever."  He concluded by saying that he didn't want "any 
trouble from expansion at the university, but I don't want to 
stop any expansion either."  (COMMENT: Platis had been in his 
current position for only 23 days and it is unclear whether 
his references were only to hypothetical "expansion" of the 
university, real expansion, or simply renovations of current 
structures.  This was the first we had heard mention of any 
plans for expansion.  END COMMENT.)  Ambassador Kennedy later 
asked ITF member Ambassador Philon to discuss the serious 
ramifications of an expansion with Platis, which he agreed to 
do. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI RECTOR: NO PLANS TO EXPAND 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) In an October 24 visit to Thessaloniki, Ambassador 
Kennedy met with the rector of Aristotle University and the 
administrative director.  Confirming previous assurances 
(reftel), both said that there were no plans to build 
anything new on the current campus that stands atop the 
pre-1942 cemetery.  The administrative director pointed out 
that there were two new campuses in the city because there 
was no space in the current main campus.  A total of five 
faculties were to be located in the new campus. 
 
 
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, ANTI-SEMITISM 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (SBU) Others issues that Ambassador Kennedy raised with 
his interlocutors in Athens included Holocaust education and 
anti-semitism in Greece.  Constantinis of the Central Board 
of Jewish Communities described many of the challenges facing 
Greece's Jews today.  He noted, for example, that only three 
communities now had rabbis (Athens, Thessaloniki, and 
Larissa) and that the maintenance of the various Jewish 
properties was expensive and difficult.  On Holocaust 
education, Constantinis described the memorial ceremonies and 
events held in Greece, including the January 27 Day of 
Remembrance, an official Greek commemoration since 2004.  He 
also provided Kennedy with a book on the Holocaust that he 
said each Greek high school student was now receiving.  On 
anti-semitism, Constantinis said there was no evidence of 
official anti-semitism or of organized Greek anti-semitic 
groups, but vandalism and graffiti were problems. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Ambassador Kennedy visited the Athens synagogue -- 
actually two synagogue buildings adjacent to each other and 
home to one Jewish community.  Rabbi Jacob Arar and President 
of the Athens Jewish Community Benjamin Albalas listened 
intently to Kennedy's description of the Bad-Arolsen archive 
and the significance of the release of digitized copies. 
They then provided a tour of the two synagogues, which had 
recently been renovated, thanks to a wealthy donor.  They 
described their community as vibrant, with relatively many 
young members. 
 
ATHENS 00002106  003 OF 003 
 
 
 
¶10. (SBU) A high point of the visit was a tour of the Jewish 
Museum of Greece, which is home to a fascinating, 
well-organized, and well-preserved collection on the diverse 
history of Greek Jews.  Enthusiastic and dynamic museum 
director Zanet Battinou conducted the tour, discussed details 
of the Holocaust in Greece, and described the historic 
interplay of the Greek Romaniote and Sephardim communities. 
She explained that of the estimated 75,000 Jews in Greece 
before the war, 86 percent died at the hands of the Nazis, 
who shipped them to death camps and slave labor in occupied 
Europe (there were no mass executions in Greece itself). 
Today, there are about 5,500 Jews in Greece, some of whom are 
survivors or descendants of those transported northward, some 
of whom were "hidden children" -- Jewish children taken in by 
Greek Christian families for protection -- and some of whom 
were escapees and their descendants, including Battinou 
herself, whose family fled to Turkey before Nazi deportations 
began. 
COUNTRYMAN