Steven B. Bowman is an American scholar and academic particularly known for his research of Greek and Jewish relations throughout the past three millennia, with emphasis on Byzantine and Holocaust periods. He is a professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches a wide range of courses in ancient and medieval Judaic Studies and modern Israel.
Bowman received his B.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts in 1964. In 1974 he completed his Ph.D. dissertation at Ohio State University on Byzantine Jewry during the Paeleologue period. He was appointed to the faculty of Judaic Studies in the University of Cincinnati in 1980, and became a full professor in 1990. Bowman published The Jews of Byzantium, 1204-1453 in 1985, followed by several books exploring the history of the Greek Jews during the Second World War. His fourth book, The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940-1945, was described by K.E. Fleming as one which "produced a careful and multilayered examination of Greek Jewry’s most devastating five years", [1] was characterized by Nikos Tzafleris as "the most complete chronicle to date of the Holocaust of Greek Jewry" [2] and by Aristotle Kallis as a "fascinating book" including a "complex set of stories relating to individuals, families, and entire communities". [3] In 2011 Bowman finished his Annotated Translation of Sepher Yosippon, published in 2012 as the first book of the Hackmey Jewish Classics series at Harvard University. Bowman is the editor in chief of the Sephardi and Greek Holocaust Library that has published several Greek Holocaust memoirs and had edited many other books.
Beginning in 1971, Bowman has received numerous awards for his scholarship, three Fulbright Awards, two National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and numerous awards in the United States (including the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Littauer Foundation, and the Miles Lerner Fellow at The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum [4] ), England (Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at Oxford) and Israel (Postdoctoral) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and research and travel grants to Yad Vashem) and was a Gennadeion Fellow in Athens. For his sabbatical in 2010-2011 Bowman received a Fulbright-Hays Travel Abroad Award for research at Cambridge University and a Lady Davis Fellowship (Postdoctoral) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for work on a monograph about Sefer Yosippon. He has lectured widely nationally and internationally on various aspects of Greek Jews and their relations with Greeks, and is particularly interested in exploring Greek and Jewish nationalism.
Bowman has been a visiting professor at New York University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a visiting lecturer at Haifa University and the University of California, La Jolla. In 2010, Bowman was appointed a visiting professor at Wolfson College (Cambridge University) to work on Genizah fragments of Sefer Yosippon.
Bowman has been a member of the Medieval Academy of America since 1963; since 1983 he was a National Council Representative of the American Academic Association for Peace in the Middle East (APPME), and since 1981 he is President Emeritus of the Faculty Council of Jewish Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. Bowman has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Hellenic Diaspora, Byzantine Studies/Etudes Byzantines and Shofar . Bowman has been a sometime member of a number of scholarly associations. He is also a member of the United States Byzantine Committee.
Bowman has also contributed articles on Greek Jewry and other topics to a 15 encyclopedias, including The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust and the Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs.
The Romaniote Jews or the Romaniotes are a Greek-speaking ethnic Jewish community. They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes have been, and remain, historically distinct from the Sephardim, some of whom settled in Ottoman Greece after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal after 1492.
Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites. The Romaniotes are a group of Greek Jews whose presence in the Levant is documented since the Byzantine period. Its linguistic lineage stems from the Jewish Koine spoken primarily by Hellenistic Jews throughout the region, and includes Hebrew and Aramaic elements. It was mutually intelligible with the Greek dialects of the Christian population. The Romaniotes used the Hebrew alphabet to write Greek and Yevanic texts. Judaeo-Greek has had in its history different spoken variants depending on different eras, geographical and sociocultural backgrounds. The oldest Modern Greek text was found in the Cairo Geniza and is actually a Jewish translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet).
The history of the Jews in Greece can be traced back to at least the fourth century BCE. The oldest and the most characteristic Jewish group that has inhabited Greece are the Romaniotes, also known as "Greek Jews." The term "Greek Jew" is predominantly used for any Jew that lives in or originates from the modern region of Greece.
Josippon is a chronicle of Jewish history from Adam to the age of Titus. It is named after its supposed author, Flavius Josephus, though it was actually composed in the 10th century in Southern Italy. The Ethiopic version of Josippon is recognized as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Richard I. Cohen, also known as Richard Yerachmiel Cohen is a professor of history, presently holding the Paulette and Claude Kelman Chair in French Jewry Studies in the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the history of Jews in Western and Central Europe in the modern period, in particular the Jews of France, art history, Jewish historiography, and The Holocaust.
David H. Kranzler was an American professor of library science at Queensborough Community College, New York, who specialized in the study of the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust.
David Sword Wyman was the Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Paul R. Bartrop is an Australian historian of the Holocaust and genocide. From August 2012 until December 2020 he was Professor of History and Director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, Florida. Between 2020 and 2021 he was an honorary Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. In April 2021 he became Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Gulf Coast University, and in 2022 he became an honorary Principal Fellow in History at the University of Melbourne. During the academic year of 2011-2012 he was the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
Jews were numerous and had significant roles throughout the history of the Byzantine Empire.
Rena Molho is a Greek historian who focuses on the different aspects of Ottoman and Greek Jewish history and culture and more specifically that of the Jews of Salonika.
Leni Yahil (1912–2007), née Leni Westphal, was a German-born Israeli historian, specializing in the Holocaust and Danish Jewry.
David Sorkin is the Lucy G. Moses professor of Jewish history at Yale University. Sorkin specializes in the intersection of Jewish and European history, and has published several prominent books including Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries.
Zev Garber is an American academic. He is Professor Emeritus and Chair of Jewish Studies at Los Angeles Valley College, and the editor of Shofar, a peer-reviewed academic journal of Jewish Studies. He is the former president of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. He was the subject of a Festschrift in 2009.
Glenn Davis Dynner is an American author and historian specializing in religion and history of East European Jewry. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies and a Professor and Chair of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College.
In March 1943, about 4,075 Jews living in Bulgarian-occupied eastern Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace were deported to Treblinka extermination camp and murdered. In an operation coordinated by Bulgaria and Germany, almost all Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Greece were rounded up on the early morning of 4 March 1943, held in camps in Bulgaria, and reached Treblinka by the end of the month. The death rate of 97 percent of the Jews living in the area in 1943 was one of the highest in Europe.
The Jewish cemetery of Salonica was established in the late fifteenth century by Sephardic Jews fleeing the expulsion of Jews from Spain, covered around 350,000 square metres (3,800,000 sq ft) and contained almost 500,000 burials. The cemetery's expropriation was envisioned in the urban redevelopment plan following the 1917 Great Fire of Thessaloniki, but strongly opposed by the Jewish community as disturbing the graves violated Jewish law. The cemetery was ultimately destroyed in December 1942 by the municipality of Thessaloniki as part of the Holocaust in Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece. The headstones were used as building materials around the city, including for Greek Orthodox churches, while the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was built on the grounds. The Jewish community never received compensation for the expropriation of the land, valued at 1.5 billion drachmas in 1943.
This is a list of selected papers or books about the Holocaust in Greece.
Michael Naoum Matsas is a Greek Holocaust survivor and author. He was born in Ioannina, and survived the Holocaust by hiding with the Greek resistance.
Zvi Hirsch Koretz, also written as Tzevi or SeviKoretz, was an Ashkenazi Jew who served as the Chief Rabbi of Saloniki's Jewish community from 1933 to 1945. His role as president of the Judenrat during World War II has been called into controversy, with many accusing him of being a Nazi collaborator.
The Jews in Kastoria were an ancient Jewish community that existed in Kastoria, Greece, from the 6th century until its destruction during World War II, when most of its members were murdered in the Auschwitz (Birkenau) extermination camp during the Holocaust.