By Keyword:   Chapter PROLOGUE 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 EPILOGUE Or, Page Number: Click on an image to see a larger, more detailed picture.		1943: Death and Resistance  pg. 456    A group of elderly Sephardic Jews gathers in the Jewish Quarter of Salonika, Greece. Such religious and social occasions would soon come to an end, as the Nazis began to enforce severe restrictions in 1943. The first deportations to Auschwitz followed in mid-March. By mid-August nearly 50,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz and Treblinka, with almost 80 percent killed there. Italian efforts to save Salonika's Jews were largely ineffectual; most of the Jews who avoided deportation did so only because they held passports issued earlier by Turkey, Italy, and a few other nations. Photo: YIVO / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive Invaded and conquered in 1941, Salonika, home to most of Greece's Jews, became part of a new Greek state headed by a pro-Nazi governor. The Germans harassed the Jewish community, demanding money and labor. In late 1942 they threatened to destroy the ancient Jewish cemetery if a huge payment was not made. Jews raised much of the required sum by the deadline, but the Nazis carried through on their threat anyway. Photo: Comite International de la Croix Rouge / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive Headstonesremoved from the Jewish cemetery at Salonika served as walkways, and Nazis desecrated and destroyed the remainder of the cemetery. Photo: YIVO / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive  May 31, 1943: A Nazi prison administrator in Minsk, Belorussia, reports that 516 German and Russian Jews have been killed in late May, their gold crowns and fillings taken from their mouths before their deaths.  June 1943: Jews of Dalmatia, Serbia, are transferred to the island of Rab, which is off the coast of Croatia.  Early June 1943: In a combination of street assaults and killings at Janówska, Ukraine, 10,000 Jews from Lvov lose their lives.   1943: Death and Resistance  pg. 456  The Holocaust Chronicle © 2009 Publications International, Ltd.