Rita Moise

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Before World War II, Larissa had 1,020 Jews. Several members of the Community in arms participated and fought the enemy in many fronts. Later, many of them joined the National Resistance groups. Thirteen (13) Larissa Jews fell for Mother Greece (4 in the Albanian front and 9 in the battles against the Germans).
On March 24th 1944, the Germans arrested the Jews of Larissa and deported them to the death camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, etc. Only 5 returned; 235 (36%) were exterminated. The Community and the Municipality of Larissa have dedicated a Monument of Jewish Martyrs of the Holocaust in their memory. This Monument was built on the square called Plateia Evraion Martyron Katohis (Square of the Jewish Martyrs of the Holocaust), at the centre of the city (in the junction between Kyprou and Kendavron Streets). The square was made on a land plot that resulted from the town-planning of communal properties. The Monument was unveiled in April 1987.
It bears the following inscription:
The Jewish community erected this monument on the square dedicated by the city of Larissa, to the memory of the 235 innocent Jews of Larissa and their 6.000.000 brethren, who were victims of an atrocious genocide in the Nazi camps
In 1999, the Municipality of Larissa honoured the victims of the Holocaust by raising a votive stele in the memory of the tragic figure of Anne Frank, on a square which is named after her and which is on Erythrou Stavrou Street. The General Secretariat of the District of Thessaly had offered its financial support for the erection of this stele.