Chapter 4 Dehumanizing the Dead: The Destruction of Thessaloniki’s Jewish Cemetery

Killing the dead: The logic of cemetery destruction during genocidal campaigns

“…Brett Dakin (2002: 254) Furthermore, examples of cemetery destruction during genocidal campaigns are not unique to Bosnia-Herzegovina and the former Yugoslavia. Multiple studies explore the significance and messaging of cemetery destruction in the cases of Native American communities (Cameron, 1994), Iraq (Isakhan, 2011), Mali (Martinez, 2015), Jewish cemeteries in Greece by Nazis (Saltiel, 2014) and destruction of African American cemeteries (Rainville, 2009) and multiple other contexts where genocidal processes have been identified or are suspected. This suggests the transferability of an examination of the nature of a genocide that centres on the destruction of cemeteries as its metric.…”