Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece, has a rich multi-ethnic history. 

For centuries, the descendants of the Sephardic Jews, who had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century, played a major role in the life of the city. 

Before the Second World War, about 55,000 Jews lived in Thessaloniki. Less than 2,000 survived the Holocaust. Where the University of Thessaloniki now stands was once the site of one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world with almost 500,000 graves.

In 1943, the city authorities were given permission by the German occupiers to destroy the cemetery and use the gravestones for other purposes.