Metropolitan Chrysostomos and the Jews of Zakynthos

Reflections on a Significant Figure in the Greek Old Calendar Movement

By Archbishop [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Etna

 

 

Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos (+1958) was born in Piraeus, Greece, in 1890. After completing his primary and secondary education, he enrolled in the School of Theology at the University of Athens in 1907, from which he graduated with the highest distinction (summa cum laude). Fluent in French and German, he held a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Munich, where he also studied law. An extraordinary scholar, he wrote a number of books and articles on the Faith in which he vociferously defended the holy traditions of the Orthodox Church. [1]

Therefore, well before its adoption by the Orthodox Church of Greece in 1924, His Eminence expressed his strong opposition to the use of the Gregorian Papal—sometimes euphemistically and rather artlessly referred to as the “Revised Julian”—Calendar in the Orthodox Church. He was among the three Hierarchs of the State Church of Greece who, in May of 1935, returned to the Church (Old or Julian) Calendar and assumed leadership of the some eight hundred Orthodox communities in Greece that had refused to accept the calendar reform, seeing it as a violation of ancient tradition. Together with these two other Hierarchs, he Consecrated four additional Bishops, in order to establish an ecclesiastical administration in resistance. [2]

In the face of deposition, exile, and persecution by the State Church of Greece, Metropolitan Chrysostomos and two of the newly-consecrated Bishops eventually submitted to the State Church and abandoned the Old Calendar movement. After his exile to one of the remote Strophades Islands in the Ionian Sea, near the Island of Zakynthos, Chrysostomos was restored to his See, where he served until his transfer to another diocese in 1957. Vilified by some voices in the Old Calendar movement for his failure to withstand the actions taken against him after his heroic stand against the calendar innovation, others have acknowledged him as a man of conscience whose dedication to his beloved spiritual children, from whom he could not abide separation in exile, prompted his return to the State Church.

Whatever the case, Metropolitan Chrysostomos will forever be remembered for his unyielding stand against Hitler and his Nazi hoops, when Greece was invaded by Germany, as part of what was called das Unternehmen “Marita” (Operation Marita), on the morning of April 6, 1941. Thus began the frightful systematic extermination of Greek Jews, who had been in the country since antiquity and who sought refuge in huge numbers in Greek Macedonia after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. As part of the extermination process, in 1944 the German occupation invaded the Island of Zakynthos and ordered the mayor of the city of the same name to hand over a list of all of the Jews on the island. It was the island’s Bishop, Metropolitan Chrysostomos, who presented the mayor’s list to the Nazis, on which was written only the name of the mayor and his own name: “Here are your Jews,” he told the Nazis. “If you choose to deport the Jews of Zakynthos, you must take me.”

It is also said that Metropolitan Chrysostomos communicated directly with Hitler, interceding for the Jews of his diocese. The devastating earthquake of 1953, in which the archives of the island were lost, makes the confirmation of this claim impossible. However, in fact, no Jews were ever deported from Zakynthos and its entire population of two hundred seventy-five Jews was saved. They were hidden by the populace and protected by the risky bluff of the island’s Bishop.

Metropolitan Chrysostomos, along with the mayor of Zakynthos, is included at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust Memorial, with the “Righteous Among Nations.” Metropolitan Chrysostomos is also honored in a special display at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. We Greek Old Calendarists—often reviled—should proudly remember and emulate, along with all Orthodox, this man of conscience, whose courage has been largely forgotten and ignored. Let us revive his memory and, again, laud his actions. Αίωνία ή μνήμη. May his memory be eternal!

 

Notes

1. See biographical notes in A. Damaskinos G. de I. Alexopoulos, The Old Calendarists in the Diaspora, trans. Archbishop Chrysostomos and John V. Petropoulos (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2009), p. 59. See also Ή Θρησκευτική και Ηθική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια (He threskeutike kai ethike enkyklopaideia; The encyclopedia of religion and ethics), s.v. “Chrysostomos” (Athens, 1968), Vol. XII, cols. 422-426, which, conveniently enough, makes no mention of Metropolitan Chrysostomos’ involvement in the founding of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Greece.

2. See a history of the Old Calendar movement in Archbishop Chrysostomos, Bishop Ambrose, and Bishop Auxentios, The Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Greece (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2009), fifth edition, esp. pp. 17-39.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXVII (2010), No. 2, pp. 15-16.