There are several books about the wonderful city of Thessaloniki, they are worth mentioning and recommending. On every page you can find something interesting, touching, something that concerns us directly or indirectly. There is everything. You can even hear the rumbling of trains full of innocent Thessaloniki Jews. In March 1943, the Nazis deported almost 50 thousand Jews by train to Auschwitz. They traveled for five days, without water or food, in inhumane conditions, and these trains also passed through our region. They left Thessaloniki and never returned. Thessaloniki had the largest Sephardic community in Europe, and today only a few hundred of them live there.
Thessaloniki is a hub, an important city, that's why it needs to be explored, those books read. First of all, "Thessaloniki, the ghost city" When Mazovera. An exceptionally well-conceived and concise book about the city. How it was founded, which armies passed through it and why, who built and destroyed it, who left it willingly or unwillingly and who was the last to arrive. Among all this information about Thessaloniki, one piece of information rings a bell and can be heard far away. He was born in Thessaloniki Ataturk!
How? Easy. As it is Johnny Stulic Born in Skopje, like many others born in cities with which their families have no direct ties. All of them are children of reassigned and reassigned military personnel. Or refugees, or those who sought their fortune.
When Ataturk was born, Thessaloniki was part of the Ottoman Empire, an important city, but also a place where reformist ideas and movements were born. Thessaloniki was also the center of the Young Turks, a group that advocated modernization and reform of the empire, all of which influenced Ataturk's later views.
Ataturk is Kemal. Ataturk means father of the Turks, at that time he was the only one who bore that surname. He deserved it. But the name is equally important, it was given to him by his teacher at the military school. Kemal means “perfection”, it is “completeness”, when everything is as it should be, to the end, without error and flawless. That is what Kemal means.
If someone is going to Turkey, or going to Thessaloniki, it is good to get informed. A little. We live in the time of Google, ChatGPT, and above all there are libraries, encyclopedias, there are translated and untranslated books and collections, it would be good to get acquainted with the country you are going to before a trip. For most ambassadors who came to Yugoslavia, books were mandatory reading. Ivo Andrić, to get to know the country they have come to, to penetrate the soul of the people. When traveling to Turkey, you should at least read something about Ataturk, Istanbul, watch great films Fatih Akin and read at least Orhan Pamuk.
Members of Parliament, ministers and officials should do the same, that in the breaks between searching for their own name and arguing with bots and dissenters, they type in another name, a little more important. Because, for example, the Ataturk Museum was built in 1953, and half of the seedlings of the beautiful trees surrounding that museum in Ankara were donated by the SFR Yugoslavia. There are connections, whoever wants to see will find the point.
Those who don't want to read will make gaffes, embarrass themselves, the party, the state, everything in order, and will even say that they "visited the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk."
If our politicians and MPs are capable of anything, it's going viral for their gaffes. Everyone is remembered for their deeds. Ataturk for his great reforms, and ours for their great break-ins.
Bonus video:
