Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 Read Online Free PDF Page B

would carry traffic, views, light and air into the very heart of what had been the most insanitary, crowded and unregulated part of the Ottoman town. Even architectural forms themselves were to be regulated, and the plan, with a typical mixture of authoritarianism and naivety, proposed a uniformity of building styles (functional for the workers and lower-middle classes, neo-Byzantine for the downtown municipal buildings), height and colours (“unaesthetic” shades were to be prohibited). A wide avenue was to be cut running down the hill from a large central square on the Via Egnatia to the sea, flanked by grand public buildings, with traffic carried through the city on intersecting roads which ran parallel with the shoreline.
    There remained, however, the question of what was to be done with the former inhabitants of the fire-affected zone themselves. Where were they to live and what claim should they have, if any, on the expropriated land? Here was perhaps the most controversial aspect of the entire scheme. Desiring to preserve for itself as much room tomanoeuvre as possible, the government stuck fast to its original intention of compensating the owners with certificates which they could use to bid for building land under the plan when it was made available. Most refugees were housed temporarily in shelters and army barracks around the outskirts of the city. Gradually it became clear to them that they would not be returning home.
    As the overwhelming majority of these were Jews, there was little doubt in the minds of the leaders of the Jewish community that one of the goals of the plan was to drive Jews from the city’s centre. Protests were sent almost immediately to international Jewish organizations to solicit their support. The government denied that “it sought to displace the [existing] population of Salonica and settle another in its stead.” Its goal was modernity and civilization, not ethnic engineering. Yet the two were not incompatible and it is striking that most of those entrusted with the plan itself appear to have assumed that its impact on the ethnic balance of the city was not a secondary consideration. “Mawson did state,” reported Hetty Goldman to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, “that the fundamental purpose of the plan was to deprive the Jews of complete control of the city.” But, she went on, he added “that there was no desire to oust them completely. On the contrary, the Greeks wished to retain the Jewish element of the population and … those who could afford to buy back the larger ground plots would doubtless be able to do so. The man with the small property would be the one to suffer.” 8
    This was an accurate assessment. The Jews were not an accidental target for they were, at any rate in their traditional pattern of settlement, an integral part of the fabric of the Ottoman city: one could not Westernize Salonica without uprooting the Jews. On the other hand, Jews were not barred from the new plots in the heart of the city, nor prevented from buying there. On the contrary, the Jewish community invested heavily in land in the central zone, and a number of Jewish businessmen did likewise, alongside their Christian counterparts and competitors. The Stoa Modiano was built to house the fruit and vegetable market and a new central synagogue provided the public face of the new, highly centralized religious community. What happened was as much a socio-economic change as an ethnic one. With the government relying on private investors to bear the costs of rebuilding, the wealthiest former inhabitants of the centre benefited most and returned, while those who sold their certificates early or lacked funds were pushed to the shanty-towns on the outskirts. Jewish workerssettled on the slopes to the east and west of the city, while the Jewish middle classes enjoyed sea frontage from their villas on the way to Kalamaria. In fact, some of the poorest Jews in the city may well have