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French minister honoured by Thessaloniki Jewish community

Updated: 30/Jul/2006 17:29

Nicolas Sarkozy, French interior minister

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ATHENS (EJP)--- French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was honoured at the French Embassy in Athens by the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, his city of origin.

Sarkozy, an aspiring Presidential candidate, was awarded a plaque by president of the community David Saltiel along with the vice-president, Jack Benmayor, and treasurer and university professor Russo Uli.

It read: “In memory of Nicola Sarkozy’s visit to Greece from the Thessaloniki Jewish Community the town of your ancestors, mother and city of Israel and Jerusalem of the Balkans.”

Along with the plaque the community gave the French minister an album of his genealogical tree going back to his great-great-grandfather along with pictures of his ancestors. Sarkozy recognized some of the of the people in the pictures from his family albums.

Emotional gratitude

Visibly moved, Sarkozy thanked the community. “My roots are here,” he said. He promised to make another visit as the key note speaker when the community marks Holocaust Memorial Day on January 29 2007 and also to visit his great-grandfather’s grave and lay a wreath.

Sarkozy’s great grand father, Mordechai Malah and his wife Reina lived in Salonica and had seven children. One of them, Benico, was sent to Paris to study medicine, married and converted to Catholicism changing his name from Benico to Benedict. One of his two daughters, Andree Malah, married Paul Sarkozy Nicolas’ father.

The graves of Sarkozy’s great grandfathers, who died in 1913, still exist today at Stavroupoli in Thessaloniki where it was transfered from the old cemetery just before the Germans walked in Salonika during WWII and destroyed the Jewish cemetery.