ABSTRACT
The inclusion of Thessaloniki Jews in Greek national life in the 1917–1933 period remains a sensitive issue, with a standard account that sees Thessaloniki Jews as opposed to the city’s being part of Greece. The Greek state handled the issue more carefully than is usually recognized, and Jewish intellectuals worked to build linguistic and cultural bridges through the community’s educational system as well as the state’s. By the beginning of the 1930s, knowledge of Greek had made important progress, particularly in the younger generations of Thessaloniki Jews. The Campbell anti-Semitic pogrom of 1931 was due to the success of the Venizelist assimilationist policy rather than to its failure.
