This thesis analyses the Holocaust in occupied Greece and its effects on Greek political life. It is undertaken through a socio-political and historical interpretation of texts and archival sources. It draws especially from the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and her understanding of totalitarianism, nationalism, statelessness and ‘evil’. I aim to understand the changed position of Jews in Greek society from the fall of the empires, through the emergence of nation-states, to the period of deportations and extermination. I do so to comprehend the rise of nationalism in Greece. I examine a mix of primary and secondary materials – histories, memoirs and unpublished archives of Nazi rule – to cast light on the anti-Semitic laws implemented in Greece during the Nazi occupation and on the relationship of the Holocaust to the political regime that emerged in Greece after the war. I place particular emphasis on Jewish participation in the Greek Resistance, the political conflicts that emerged within the larger resistance movement, and the sensitive issue of collaboration, which was to shape much of the political agenda in Greece after the war. Through the use of diplomatic papers and Foreign Office files, I show how democratic anti-Nazi resistance movements were suppressed after the war by fascist forces and through the reluctance of the Greek bourgeois politicians and British officials to intervene. The politics of collaboration, underplayed in the current literature, also casts light on why perpetrators of the Greek Holocaust generally escaped legal prosecution in Greece and why resistance fighters were prosecuted through the implementation of martial laws and emergency decrees. Finally this thesis explores the ties that bind repression of the memory of the Greek Holocaust, to the development in post-war Greece of nationalist values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:640954 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Gikopoulou, Paraskevi |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/66498/ |
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