It was inevitable that the experiential legacy of Ilias Petropoulos from Thessaloniki and his passion for engaging with what national historiography had rejected for decades would lead him to explore the Jews of Salonika. What "pushed" him to tackle the painful aspects of memory was the revival of anti-Semitism in Greece during the Metapolitefsi.

This is the historical context of Petropoulos' writings presented in this book. His articles served as the cries of a sincere anxiety from an active — perhaps the only one at that time — writer who protested against voluntary oblivion and the state uses and abuses of History, revealing through his writings aspects of the silenced Jewish past and the daily life of the multinational city of Salonika.

It is not at all secondary that Petropoulos wrote as a witness of the events, as a non-Jew, speaking from the position of someone belonging to the majority community. In this sense, Petropoulos offers his readers a way to read History and position themselves, both individually and collectively, within the historical flow.