Arta ארטה
A Romaniote community in Epirus known from the eleventh century; on 24 March 1944 the 352 Jews of Arta were arrested by the lists of the town hall and taken to Auschwitz.
Jews lived in Byzantine Arta from the eleventh century; Benjamin of Tudela in 1167 counted about a hundred here, a hundred people or a hundred families, according to the reading. In the fifteenth century the Ottomans moved the Jews of Arta to Istanbul, but the town was settled again, and after 1500 the exiles of southern Italy arrived, so that Arta had separate congregations from Corfu, Sicily, Calabria and Apulia, each with its own custom. In matters of law the community looked to Salonika. Here lived Rabbi Benjamin Zeev ben Mattathias, author of the responsa Binyamin Zeev.
In 1869 there were about eight hundred Jews in Arta; in 1915 the community founded the Zionist circle Mevakshei Zion; in 1940 it was counted at 384.
On 24 March 1944 the Gestapo, taking the names from the lists of the town hall, arrested 352 Jews of Arta; in April they were taken with the Jews of Preveza to Auschwitz. In 1958 about twenty Jews remained in the town.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The arrest lists of Arta, 24 March 1944 — the day and the number arrested
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, the numbers and the circumstances
Basis: documents and evidence.