A trove of sacred Jewish artifacts from Greece, stolen by the Nazis and displaced for decades in Poland, is finally heading back home.
The 91 religious and ceremonial artifacts returned to Greece during a ceremony in Warsaw on Wednesday. Among them were Torah scrolls, a Torah mantle and silver finials that adorned a scroll’s wooden rollers—fragments of a rich Greek Jewish heritage that was nearly wiped out.
This marks the first time Poland has repatriated cultural property held under its care that was illegally taken from another country.
Jewish artifacts stolen by Nazis in Thessaloniki
The Nazis stole the objects from synagogues in Thessaloniki, a port city once known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans.” Jews made up half of Thessaloniki’s residents in 1919. Some 59,000 Greek Jews, over 83% of the country’s Jewish population, were killed in the Holocaust.
These items were seized by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a Nazi agency dedicated to looting Jewish valuables, as it plundered homes, synagogues, cemeteries, and cultural institutions across Greece in 1941. The objects were transferred to Nazi depots in southwestern Poland and rediscovered at a castle in Bożków after the war. In 1951, the Polish Ministry of Culture moved them to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where they remained until now.
This return follows years of advocacy and provenance research. The Greek government formally requested the collection’s restitution in 2024, and the World Jewish Restitution Organization coordinated with Greek and Polish authorities to facilitate it. Now, the objects are headed to the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens.
Related: The Butcher of Thessaloniki: The Rise, Fall, and Controversial Release of Max Merten