Events Calendar – British School at Athens

image: German gun-emplacement at Thessaloniki with its communication trench lined with Jewish gravestones. Photographed by the British Army in November 1944. Author’s archive.

Upper House Seminar

Dr Roderick Bailey (University of Oxford), “Anglo-American attitudes to the protection of Jewish cultural heritage in Thessaloniki, 1943-46”

Abstract: During the Second World War, more than four-fifths of Greece’s Jewish population, including ninety-five per cent of Thessaloniki’s 50,000 Jews, were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. That war also saw some of the first international efforts to evaluate and classify the importance of cultural heritage with a view to its preservation. Today, concepts of what constitutes heritage and cultural assets are broader than those formulated in the 1940s; so are principles upon which cultural resources should be conserved and the historical and ethical criteria by which they are defined. Drawing on contemporaneous records, this lecture shows how Thessaloniki’s rich Jewish culture fell outside official Anglo-American assessments of which forms of history and heritage in wartime Greece should be prioritised for protection. In this way, it seeks to underline the implications of considering culture and the past as something to be measured and ranked, and how perceptions of their value depend on the observer.

Bio: Dr Roderick Bailey, a former early career fellow at the BSA, is a historian at the University of Oxford where he specialises in the study of modern war and conflict. His current research interests lie primarily in healthcare and issues around cultural heritage protection in times of conflict and crisis. He also has an established record in the study of Anglo-American interventions in southeast Europe during the Second World War (his publications include studies of Allied involvement with guerrilla and resistance movements in Fascist Italy and Axis-occupied Albania). Research for a current project, a study of Anglo-American interest in the protection of cultural heritage in mid-C20th Greece, is generously supported by an International Research Grant from Oxford University’s John Fell Fund (an award supporting research in the BSA Archive).

Hybrid event

To attend in-person in Athens, please register here

To attend online via webinar, please register here