Map of the Jewish communities of Greece, Romaniote and Sephardic, 19^th c.

Male and female Romaniote costume from Ioannina. Watercolor by N. Stavroulakis.

Male and female Sephardic costume from Salonika. Watercolor by N. Stavroulakis.

Old Roma woman, Nea Liosia, Attica, 1996.

Greece as a geographical area constitutes, during the period in question (16th- 20th c.), initially part of the multinational Ottoman empire and, progressively from the beginning of the 19th c., of the national Greek state. For centuries in these lands, where the Greek cultural element was dominant, several 'national' and religious groups co-existed . The traditionally established multi-cultural character of this region favoured until recently the preservation of the identity of those groups, as well as their peaceful co-existence. The creation of the national states in the 19th c. changed the status quo, without upsetting the balanced co-existence of the different groups integrated in the newly founded Greek state. During the last two decades, new social conditions were created with the influx to Greece of political and economic immigrants, originating from countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Asia. The time-honoured mechanism of integration and peaceful co-existence is in danger of proving insufficient

Among the various communities that make up the Greek social canvas, two have been chosen and are presented here: the Greek Jews, the collections of the Jewish Museum of Greece, and the Roma people, through contemporary material.

The Jews settled for the first time in Greece around the 3rd c. B.C. for cultural and commercial reasons. They were easily integrated, as they already spoke the Greek language and formed the Greek-speaking Jewish population, the Romaniotes of Western and Southern Greece. In the Byzantine era, although religious prejudice existed, the Jews were not confined in ghettos and were not subject to violent persecutions. A second large wave of Jewish population took refuge in Greek territory in the 15th c. They were the Sephardim, who were exiled from the Iberian Peninsula by the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and were welcomed in the Ottoman Empire by the Sultan Bayazet II.

These Spanish speaking Jews settled in commercially important centres of Northern Greece and in several islands. The Sephardic Jews were successful financially, economically and politically, and maintained their culture, such as their Judaeo-Spanish language. Solonika became the centre of Sephardic life and loannind the heart of the Romaniote tradition. In 1832, after the establishment of the modern Greek state Jewish citizens were granted equal civil rights and obligations. During World War II, although many of Christian Greeks showed solidarity, 87% of the total Greek Jewish population were exterminated in concentration camps. Today about 5,000 Jews live in Greece organised in eight communities, fully integrated into contemporary Greek society.