Chrysostomos of Zakynthos

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Memorial to Bishop Chrysostomos and Loukás Karrer at the site of the Zakynthos synagogue destroyed in the 1953 Ionian earthquake.

Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos (1890–1958) was the Metropolitan Bishop of Zakynthos during the Second World War, and a key figure in saving the entire, 275-person strong Jewish population of the island. During the Nazi occupation of Greece, Mayor Loukás Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos refused Nazi orders to turn in a list of the members of the town's Jewish community for deportation to the death camps. Instead they secreted the town's 275 Jews in various rural villages and turned in a list that included only their own two names. The entire Jewish population survived the war. However, as punishment for insubordination, the Nazis took all of the island's children to work in camps, but fortunately not to be killed. When they had loaded up the children into a truck and drove away, the truck stopped because of sheep crossing the road. Two children jumped out and escaped the Nazis.

Statues of the Bishop and the Mayor commemorate their heroism on the site of the town's historic synagogue, destroyed in the earthquake of 1953. In 1978, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel, honored Bishop Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukás Karrer with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations", an honor given to non-Jews who, at personal risk, saved Jews during the Holocaust. After the war, all of the Jews of Zakynthos moved either to Israel or to Athens.

External links

• [1]
• [2]
• Chrysostomos of Zakynthos at Yad Vashem website