“96%” is a piece of documentary theatre on Thessaloniki’s Jews, a lecture performance about a dark and forgotten story that has left visible traces. Attempting an archaeology of the present, “96%” searches for those traces, not only in studies, archives and testimonies, but also with on-site research in the city of today, in the streets, in the closed shops, in old and new buildings, even in the National Theatre of Northern Greece itself. “96%” is part of the European theatrical and pedagogical programme “Landscapes of Devastation”, which takes place simultaneously in three cities: Thessaloniki, Madrid, Berlin.

The programme is a collaboration of the National Theatre of Northern Greece with Schaubühne (Berlin) and La Joven Theatre (Madrid), funded by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) and co-produced by the company TooFarEast Productions. In the framework of the programme, educational workshops were realized in schools with over 300 teenage participants.

In March 1943, the first train to Auschwitz left from Thessaloniki. By August, 50,000 Jews were deported there, most of whom never returned. 96% of the city’s Jewish community was exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps. The property they left behind passed into the hands of escrow agents, furniture and utensils ended up in Christian homes and shops, the marble slabs of the old cemetery were placed in the most unlikely places in the city. The largest Jewish community in the Balkans, which once gave the city the title “Mother of Israel”, was wiped off the map while a new social and economic elite emerged. Who resisted and who joined the violence? How were the mechanisms of memory suppression constructed and what is the role of a theatre? Why is this old story of interest to us now and how does it relate to our own future? In an attempt to critically approach a bygone era, the artistic team on stage talks with guests from the past, present and future of Thessaloniki and presents the findings of its research to compose a new historical and social mural of the “city of ghosts”.