13 Facts About Zvi Koretz

Zvi Koretz's office was given, on the condition that he would be able to learn Ladino and Greek within three months, and after doing so he would begin to make a name for himself by working with the government on their behalf.

Zvi Koretz would receive letters of reassurance from General Metaxas that the Jewish people would continue to be welcomed in Greece during the 1930s and would successfully petition funding for two new Jewish schools in Salonika.

In March 1937 Zvi Koretz was able to negotiate an additional 500,000 drachmas for the local Jewish schools, however in June the community adopted measures to dismiss educators due to the threat of bankruptcy.

Zvi Koretz would be honored as the first Jewish member of the Parnassos Literary Society following the memorial service.

Zvi Koretz was arrested in Athens on 15 April 1941 and deported to Vienna where he was held in a gestapo prison for nine months.

Zvi Koretz would be released in 1942 at the insistence of local industrialists to take part in the negotiations to replace Jewish slave laborers with paid Greek workers.

Zvi Koretz was able to negotiate a deal where the Jews would be released from the camps in exchange for over 2 billion drachmas in ransom, an amount the Nazis considered the Jews liable for due to their participation in the Greco-Italian War.

On 11 December 1942 Zvi Koretz was named Judenrat president, replacing Saltiel, he was the only remaining Jewish community leader who spoke German beside the former President, and would negotiate with the SS officers Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner over how the deportations of Jews were to be done.

Zvi Koretz would act against members of the Greek resistance, threatening to expose members who attempted to recruit young Jews.

Zvi Koretz would be liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army when the Soviets captured a train that was stranded in Trobitz while transporting Jews from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt, this train would become known as The Lost Transport.

Zvi Koretz was buried in the Trobitz cemetery alongside other victims of The Lost Transport.

Zvi Koretz would be survived by his wife and son, Arieh.

Zvi Koretz would tell the community that the deportations only meant that they would be relocating to Poland, where the Jews would be settled with a new life and work.