The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936–1941 by Katerina Lagos (review)

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Reviewed by:

• The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936–1941 by Katerina Lagos
• Mogens Pelt (bio)

Katerina Lagos, The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936–1941. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. xi + 273. Hardcover $129.99, eBook $99.00.

Although this book's title might suggest a focus solely on Greek Jewry under the Metaxas regime, its scope is much broader. It traces the history of Greek Jews from the Greek Revolution to the death of Ioannis Metaxas in January 1941, while at the same time presenting a comprehensive historical analysis of the relationship between Greek Jewry and the Greek state and society during the Metaxas regime. It may seem counterintuitive to end the book with the death of Metaxas since, only a few years later, most members of the Jewish communities in Greece were killed during the Axis occupation: 85% of Greece's local Jewish population were exterminated during the Holocaust, one of the highest percentages in Europe. The role of the Greek population ranged from assisting the Nazis in the deportation to hiding Jews and protecting them from persecution.

Lagos's main argument for zeroing in on the Metaxas period is twofold. First, the historiography concerning Greek Jews has focused mainly on the Holocaust, and we need to go beyond that period to establish an analytical context and explain the prior development of relations between Christian and Jewish Greeks. Second, Lagos argues that that the treatment of Jews by Greek Christians during the deportations should not be seen as a culmination of their treatment under Metaxas. On the contrary: the Metaxas dictatorship was the last period of peaceful Christian-Jewish relations before the Holocaust, something for which Metaxas himself was credited: in November 1937, he was inducted into the Golden Book by the Zionists of Greece, and the rabbi of Thessaloniki congratulated Metaxas on reestablishing an atmosphere of peace and calm for the Jewish community since taking power the year before. At first glance, when seen in a European context where most authoritarian regimes enacted [End Page 127] anti-Jewish legislation, this may appear as a conundrum; even more so because the Metaxas dictatorship resembled the regimes in Germany and Italy in its way of presenting itself to the public. Yet the regime's stance toward Jews was in fact much more favorable than that of previous governments, including those of Eleftherios Venizelos, the leader of the Liberal Party who had previously governed Greece in long stints since 1910. This raises two questions: How should we understand the Metaxas regime, and why did it follow such a different policy compared to contemporary Europe and to previous Greek governments?

Lagos's thesis is that prejudice toward the Jews in Greece differed from that in the rest of Western Europe because of the Ottoman practice of placing Jews and Christians on an equal footing in relation to Muslims, who enjoyed privileges the two other communities did not have. While religious antisemitism existed, political antisemitism only began to make itself felt with the Greek Revolution. This trend was nurtured by the fact that many Jews, especially Sephardim, refused to join the revolution as they were reluctant to give up their status in the Ottoman Empire for a new and unknown one in a future Greek state. This created tensions, which rose in tandem with the territorial expansion of the Greek state and were exacerbated by various Greek governments' demands during the twentieth century for the obligatory integration of Jews into Greek state structures and society.

Tensions between Orthodox Christians and Jews emerged most famously in Thessaly during the Greek-Turkish war of 1897 and in Ioannina and Thessaloniki during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. The influx of refugees from Asia Minor added to this trend and prompted the creation of the National Union of Greece (EEE), culminating in the Campbell Pogrom in Thessaloniki in 1931. All that was set on pause during the Metaxas dictatorship, however, and the new regime actually improved conditions for the Jews of Greece. Lagos stresses that these improved conditions should be interpreted less as a result of a deliberate policy and more as a byproduct of the police state, but the...