31 January 2025

A new virtual museum
and three memorials in
Corfu recall 2,000 Jews
who died in Auschwitz

The Holocaust Memorial by Georgios Karahalios (2001) remembers the 2,000 Jews of Corfu who were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Holocaust Museum of Corfu is a new museum that opened as a virtual museum earlier this month. It is the first virtual museum on the Greek Ionian island and the organisers hope that in time it will also become a physical museum too.

The Holocaust Museum of Corfu was established in 2025 as a result of over a decade of travel, research and hard work. Its role is to help people remember and understand the Holocaust, as well as the atrocities and horrors associated with it.

As I watched the Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations in Auschwitz earlier this week (27 January 2025), marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, and took part in the commemorations in Milton Keynes the previous day, I recalled my visit to Auschwitz at the end of 2016. But I also thought of my visits in recent years to many Holocaust museums and memorials, including those in Berlin, Paris, Porto, Thessaloniki, Venice and Vienna.

The sculpture by Georgios Karahalios shows a naked child clinging onto his naked father (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The launch of the Holocaust Museum of Corfu this month also reminded me of the Memorial to the Jewish Holocaust Victims from Corfu (Μνημείο Εβραϊκού Ολοκαυτώματος Κερκύρα). It commemorates the 2,000 Jewish people of the island who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944.

The Holocaust Memorial is a bronze sculpture by Georgios Karahalios. It was erected in 2001 by the city of Corfu and the Jewish community and dedicated on 25 November 2001.

The sculpture by Georgios Karahalios of a family is set on a large rough stone base in the middle of Plateia Neou Frouriou (New Fortress Square), a small square off Solomou Street. The square, surrounded by cafés and restaurants, is in the north of the old town, near the port. It is about three minutes’ walk from the last remaining synagogue and an area that was at the heart of Jewish community life in Corfu before World War II.

The Holocaust memorial shows a family of four naked figures – a father and mother with their two small children. The mother is cradling an infant, the father has outspread arms with the young boy at his side, leaning his head and arm against his father’s hip and hiding his face from viewers.

The sculpture by Georgios Karahalios includes a naked woman cradling an infant in her arms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Two stone plaques at the base of the monument have inscriptions in Greek and English:

Never again for any nation

Dedicated to the memory of the
2000 Jews of Corfu who perished
in the Nazi concentration camps of
Auschwitz and Birkenau in June 1944
by the Municipality
and the Jewish Community of Corfu
November 2001


The inscription on the sculpture by Georgios Karahalios in Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

About 2,000 Jews were living on Corfu before World War II began. The Italian occupation of Corfu lasted for two years (1941-1943) and was a difficult period for everyone, with shortages and starvation. Following the destruction of one synagogue in bombing, the two Jewish communities in Corfu, Greek and Italian, merged and all Jews on Corfu prayed in the Greek synagogue or La Scuola Greca on Velisariou Street.

All this changed when the Germans took control of the island. Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943, the Italian garrison withdrew from Corfu, and German forces occupied the island from 27 September 1943.

The SS soon planned to eliminate the Jewish community. On 9 June 1944, all Jewish families in Corfu were rounded up in the Kato Plateia (lower square) and taken to the ‘Ferrario’ or Old Fortress. They were forced to surrender all their valuables and the keys to their houses, which were then plundered.

About 200 Jews, mostly women, managed to avoid the German roundup and escaped to villages in the interior of the island, where they were hidden by friends.

On 11 June, 300 Jewish women were transported on a barge to Igoumenitsa and then on trucks to Athens. On 14 June, all Jewish men, with the remaining women, were sent on barges to Patras, then to Piraeus, and then on to the Haidari concentration camp in Athens. There they were crammed onto cattle trucks, with no water and little food.

After a horrific nine-day journey, 1,800 members of the Jewish community from Corfu reached Auschwitz-Birkenau on 30 June 1944. Immediately, 1,600 were sent to the gas chambers and the crematoria; only 200 were selected for work. Very few of them, almost all of them young, survived Auschwitz and the death marches to Germany.

After the war, a small community of survivors came together, centred around the surviving but ruined 17th-century Nuova or New Synagogue. The synagogue has since been restored.

The monument in the synagogue to the families who died in the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Nuova or New Synagogue at 4 Velissariou Street was one of three synagogues in Corfu before World War II, but the only one to survive the Holocuast.

A second Holocaust memorial in Corfu is in the Nuova Synagogue. It commemorates the 2,000 Jews from Corfu who perished in Auschwtiz and Birkenau, but lists 71 family names. To list all the victims would have been an overpowering if not impossible task.

The family names on the plaque are: Aaron, Aboaf, Akko, Alchavas, Amar, Asias, Asser, Balestra, Bakkolas Baruch, Belleli, Benakim, Ben Giat, Besso, Cavaliero, Cesana, Con, Dalmedigos, Dentes, Etan, Elia, Eliezer, Eskapas, Ferro, Forte, Gani, Gerson, Gikas, Haim, Israel, Jessula, Johanna, Kolonimos, Koulias, Konstantini, Lemous, Leoncini, Levi, Mandolin, Matathias, Mazza, Minerho, Mizan, Mizrahi, Mordo, Moustaki, Nacamouli, Nahmias, Nacson, Negrin, Nikokiris, Osmo, Ovadia, Perez, Pitson, Politi, Raphael, Razon, Romano, Sardas, Sasen, Serneine, Sinigalia, Sussis, Shoel, Varon, Ventura, Vital, Vitali, Vivante, Zaccar.

Inside the synagogue in Corfu, looking towards the Aron haKodesh or Holy Ark (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A third memorial in Corfu with associations with the Holocaust is outside the Church of Aghios Spyridon, the patron saint of the island. A bust outside the church commemorates Bishop Methodius Kontostanos, who was Metropolitan of Corfu and Paxos for 30 years from 1942 to 1972, including the years during the occuptaion of Corfu by Nazi Germany.

Bishop Methodios regularly attended all the High Holyday services at the Greek synagogue in Corfu and was a faithful witness against antisemitism during and after the Holocaust.

In his consistent witness, Bishop Methodios was a worthy successor to the first Bishop of Corfu, Saint Arsenios, who died in 800, or perhaps in 959, and who is one of the principal patron saints of Corfu along with Saint Spyridon. He was born in Constantinople to the Jewish parents. After becoming a Christian, he became the first Bishop of Corfu.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

A bust at the Church of Aghios Spyridon commemorates Bishop Methodios, who attended all holiday services at the synagogue in Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025:
38, Friday 31 January 2025

‘The earth produces of itself’ (Mark 4: 28) … fields at Shutlanger Road in Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

This is the last week in the 40-day season of Christmas, which continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation on Sunday (2 February 2025). This week began with the Third Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany III, 26 January 2025).

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Bosco (1888), priest and founder of the Salesian teaching order. I hope to find somewhere appropriate this evening to watch the opening match of the Six Nations between France and Wales. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘The seed would sprout and grow’ (Mark 4: 27) … a mulberry tree in Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Mark 4: 26-34 (NRSVA):

26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

Willow trees by the Monastery Lakes in Shutlanger, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

Chapter 4 in Saint Mark’s Gospel is the ‘parables chapter,’ recalling parables that make this chapter the central teaching section of this Gospel. Christ is in a boat beside the sea teaching a very large crowd who are listening on the shore (see Mark 4: 1-2). In this morning’s reading (Mark 4: 26-34), Christ describe the ‘kingdom of God’ by explaining the parable of sower scattering seed on the ground, which we read earlier this week, in the hope and expectation of the harvest (verses 26-29) and of the mustard seed that grows into a great tree (verses 30-32).

We may ask why Christ decides to talk about a mustard seed, or in Saint Luke’s Gospel about a mustard seed and a mulberry tree (Luke 17: 5-6), rather than, say, an olive tree. After all, as he was talking in the incident in today’s Gospel reading, he must have been surrounded by grove after grove of olive trees.

But, I can imagine, he is also watching to see if those who are listening have switched off their humour mode, if they have withdrawn their sense of humour. He is talking here with a great sense of humour, using hyperbole to underline his point.

We all know a tiny grain of mustard is incapable of growing to a big tree. So, what is Christ talking about here? Because, he not only caught the disciples off-guard with his hyperbole and sense of humour … he even wrong-footed some of the Reformers and many Bible translators who make mistakes about what sort of trees he is talking about in the Gospels.

Why did Christ refer to a mustard seed and a mulberry or sycamine tree, and not, say, an olive tree or an oak tree?

Christ first uses the example of a tiny, miniscule kernel or seed (κόκκος, kokkos), from which the small mustard plant (σίναπι, sinapi) grows. But mustard is an herb, not a tree. Not much of a miracle, you might say: tiny seed, tiny plant.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel, he then mixes his metaphors and refers to another plant. Martin Luther, in his translation of the Bible, turned the tree into a mulberry tree. The mulberry tree – both the black mulberry and the white mulberry – is from the same family as the fig tree.

As children, some of us sang or played to the nursery rhyme or song, Here we go round the mulberry bush. Another version is Here we go gathering nuts in May. The same tune is used for the American rhyme Pop goes the weasel and for the Epiphany carol, I saw three ships.

Of course, mulberries do not grow on bushes, and they do not grow nuts that are gathered in May. Nor is the mulberry a very tall tree – it grows from tiny seeds but only reaches the height of an adult person.

It is not a very big tree at all. It is more like a bush than a tree – and it is easy to uproot too.

However, the tree Christ names in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Greek συκάμινος, sikámeenos) is the sycamine tree, which has the shape and leaves of a mulberry tree but fruit that tastes like the fig, or the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus).

Others think the tree being referred to there is the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus), the big tree that little Zacchaeus climbs in Jericho to see Jesus (Luke 19: 1-10).

The sycamine tree is not naturally pollinated. The pollination process is initiated only when a wasp sticks its stinger right into the heart of the fruit. In other words, the tree and its fruit have to be stung in order to reproduce. There is a direct connection between suffering and growth, but also a lesson that everything in creation, including the wasp, has its place in the intricate balance of nature.

Whether it is a small seed like the mustard seed, a small, seemingly useless and annoying creature like the wasp, or a small and despised figure of fun like Zacchaeus, each has value in God’s eyes, and each has a role in the great harvest of gathering in for God’s Kingdom.

Put more simply, it is quality and not quantity that matters when it comes faith and love.

The Sower and the Seed … an image in the East Window by Mayer & Co in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 31 January 2025):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Reflection on 2 Timothy’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Canon Dr Nicky Chater, Chair of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Friendly Churches and Chaplain for these communities in the Diocese of Durham.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 31 January 2025) invites us to pray:

Holy God, we pray for people who cannot make use of many good things a society can offer because of our systems. We think of people who cannot prove their identity, or understand the necessary language, or fill in forms.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son revealed in signs and miracles
the wonder of your saving presence:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your mighty power;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty Father,
whose Son our Saviour Jesus Christ is the light of the world:
may your people,
illumined by your word and sacraments,
shine with the radiance of his glory,
that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed
to the ends of the earth;
for he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

God of all mercy,
your Son proclaimed good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
and freedom to the oppressed:
anoint us with your Holy Spirit
and set all your people free
to praise you in Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘World’s Smallest Seed,’ 40”x30” oil/canvas, by James B Janknegt

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org