[26] Jews occasionally faced antisemitic violence such as the 1891 riots in Corfu and the 1931 Campbell pogrom, carried out by the National Union of Greece (EEE) in a suburb of Salonica.

[32] Historian Steven Bowman states that while the physical destruction of Greek Jews took place from 1943 to 1945, "an economic, social, and political assault predated the vicissitudes of World War II".

During the winter of 1940–1941, Italians and Greeks fought in Albania,[40] but in April 1941, Germany joined the war and occupied all of mainland Greece by the end of the month and Crete in May.

[41][42] A group of generals announced a new government with German backing on 26 April, while the royal family was evacuated to Crete and then to Cairo, where the Greek government-in-exile was established.

[46][47] Bulgaria occupied Western Thrace and eastern Macedonia, where it immediately undertook a harsh Bulgarianization program, sending more than 100,000 Greek refugees westward.

[46][47][48] The collaborationist Greek government began to see Bulgaria as the main threat and did all it could to secure German support for limiting the size of the Bulgarian occupation zone.

[51] To curry favor with the Germans, collaborationist prime minister Georgios Tsolakoglou announced that there was a "Jewish problem" in Greece—the term was not a part of prewar discourse—adding, "this question will be definitively solved within the framework of the whole New Order in Europe".

[55] In Salonica, German occupation forces tried to exacerbate the divisions between Greek Jews and the Christian population, encouraging newspapers to print antisemitic material and reviving the EEE, which Metaxas had banned.

[49] In the second half of 1941, Jewish property in Salonica was confiscated on a large scale to rehouse Christians whose residences had been destroyed by bombing, or who had fled the Bulgarian occupation zone.

[58] In February 1942, the collaborationist government acceded to German demands and fired high-ranking official Georgios D. Daskalakis [el] because of his alleged Jewish ancestry.

[76] Building defenses for a possible Allied attack in the northern Aegean coincided with preparations for the deportation of Salonica's Jews and the deployment of German advisor Theodor Dannecker to Bulgaria, to ensure that Western Thrace was also cleared.

[77] According to historian Andrew Apostolou, the collaborationist Greek leadership continued to cooperate with the Germans to ward off Bulgarian aspirations for the permanent annexation of Western Thrace and Macedonia, while creating exonerating evidence in case the Allies won.

[78] Both the collaborationist administration and postwar governments used the war as an opportunity to Hellenize northern Greece, for example by the expulsion of Cham Albanians and the displacement of many ethnic Macedonians.

[88] This roundup was planned on 22 February,[89] and entailed the Bulgarian Army sealing off neighborhoods so that the police could conduct arrests based on lists of names and addresses.

[93] A German official, Günther Altenburg, notified the prime minister of the collaborationist government, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, on 26 January, but there is no record of him taking action to prevent the deportations, except two letters of protest written after they had already begun.

[96] On 6 February, the SS group tasked with the deportation arrived in the city and set up headquarters at 42 Velissariou Street in a confiscated Jewish villa.

[101] German authorities tried to convince the Salonican Jews to cooperate by telling them that they would be resettled in Poland, giving them Polish money and allowing them to take some minor possessions when they left.

Barzilai negotiated a deal with EAM; in exchange for sheltering Jews in rebel-controlled areas, he paid the Jewish community's entire cash reserve.

Without sufficient troops, and faced with the opposition of the collaborationist Greek government headed by Ioannis Rallis, the Nazis had to put off deportation operations until the following year.

[121] In some places, Jews did not take the opportunity to escape because of a lack of awareness of the threat, failure of Jewish leadership, negative attitudes to the resistance, and reluctance to leave family members behind.

In March 1944, the Jewish holiday Passover was used as a cover for coordinated roundups around Greece carried out by the Geheime Feldpolizei (German military police) and Greek gendarmerie.

[120] On 24 March, Jews from all the remaining communities in mainland Greece were arrested, including Patras, Chalcis, Ioannina, Arta, Preveza, Larissa, Volos, and Kastoria.

[125][126] After the 1943 armistice, the Italian garrison of Corfu refused to surrender, and Germany forcibly occupied the island following battles that left the Jewish quarter in ruins.

The Mayor of Corfu stated, "Our good friends the Germans have cleansed the island from the Jewish riffraff"—the only case where a Greek official publicly approved of the deportation of Jews.

[128] Regional survival rates varied greatly because of a variety of factors, such as timing of deportations, the attitude of the local authorities, and the degree of integration of Jewish communities.

[136] According to Greek Holocaust survivor Michael Matsas, the decisive factors influencing survival rates were the strength of resistance organizations and the reaction of the Jewish leadership.

[152][153] Unlike the other resistance organizations, EAM publicly appealed to Greeks to help their Jewish fellow citizens,[119] and actively recruited young Jews to join ELAS.

[165][166] Lacking any property or place to live and not helped by local authorities, Jews found themselves sleeping in improvised shelters in conditions that were compared to the Nazi concentration camps.

[195] Historian Katherine Elizabeth Fleming writes that often, "the story of the destruction of Greece's Jews has served as a vehicle for the celebration of Greek Orthodox kindness and valor".

[196] Fleming states that while some acted heroically in rescuing Jews, "at times, Greek Christians were complicit in the destruction of Jewish lives; many more were unmoved by it; and no small number welcomed it".