A Greek newspaper in a front-page headline called Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme “The Jewish Connection.”
Avriani, a leading weekly, devoted five pages of its Dec. 21 edition to the Madoff scandal, emphasizing at least six times that Madoff is Jewish and calling him the “Jewish guru of the market.”
The paper used the Greek term Evraios, or Hebrews, to imply that Jews are behind the world’s financial problems.
This is not the first time the newspaper has slurred Jews. The day after Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, the newspaper’s front page read, “The end of Jewish domination. Everything changes in the USA and we hope that it will be more democratic and humane.”
The paper’s chief editor, Themos Anastasiadis, is no stranger to the Jewish community. In 1995, Anastasiadis made a public joke about the Holocaust. After the Central Jewish Board complained to the Union of Journalists of Athens, his license was suspended for a month.
The president of the Central Jewish Board, Moisis Konstantinis, said his organization is looking into how to respond to the latest incident.
Anastasiadis did not return a call for comment.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
