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Greek and Jewish Concert Benefits College

For nearly two centuries, Thessaloniki, Greece, reigned as the largest Jewish city in the world. Sephardic Jews expelled from their homes by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain found refuge there and even referred to the area as the “Mother of Israel.”

Dario Gabbai was one of thousands of Sephardic Jews living in Thessaloniki in the 1940s. But like so many others, his time in Greece was cut short. By April 1944, Gabbai found himself riding in a cattle car with his family to Auschwitz.

The Nazis had invaded, and the city would never again be the same: More than 95 percent of its Jewish population would be lost. Among them were the Jewish students at Anatolia College.

Today, Anatolia College functions as an elementary school, secondary school and a private nonprofit university in Greece, chartered by the state of Massachusetts and accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. But back then, the more than 90 Jewish students enrolled in the institution perished.

On Monday, approximately 300 people — Jews and Greeks alike — gathered at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel for “An evening of Greek and Jewish Music,” hosted by former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and his wife, Kitty. The fundraiser will benefit the college, helping create two memorial classrooms at the school, as well as support Holocaust education at the institution and in the city at large.

“We wanted to do it in memory of them,” said Kitty Dukakis, referring to the Jewish Anatolia students who were lost during the Nazi invasion.

Kitty Dukakis, who is Jewish, said the idea for the event began when she visited the school’s campus nearly two years ago but also stemmed from seeing the traveling photo exhibition, “Hidden Children in Occupied Greece,” which told the stories of 16 Jewish children in Greece who managed to escape death during the Nazi occupation, thanks to the Christian families who were willing to take them in.

“It was there that Kitty and I said … ‘Maybe we can do something. Bring the two communities together again,’” Michael Dukakis said at the start of the evening, while noting that he himself was often mistaken for being Jewish on the campaign trail, although he is in actuality Greek.

Consul General of Israel Yaacov Dayan and Consul General of Greece Dimitris Caramitsos-Tziras joined the Dukakis family on stage before the music started.

“We will not be silent. And when we speak, we do it on behalf of all the silent communities around the world,” Dayan said.

Craig Taubman, a local Jewish artist who has also composed music for television and films; Cantor Alberto Mizrahi, a Greek-born tenor and cantor at the Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago; the Rev. John S. Bakas, dean of the Saint Sophia Cathedral and the Greek Orthodox Community in Los Angeles; and Anna Vissi, a leading Greek recording artist, made up the eclectic group of Jewish and Greek musicians who entertained the crowd for the evening.

Gabbai, now 86, sat in the front row of the concert hall, far from the Nazi crematorium he was once forced to work in but managed to survive.

“It was a very beautiful evening, a good time” he said. “The singing brought me back to many younger days.”

— Lilly Fowler, Contributing Writer

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