How did approximately 1,000 Jews succeed in escaping from Axis-occupied Greece? How could they escape against all odds from a political and military context that drastically limited the agency of Jewish individuals and collectives, and what external factors influenced them during their flight? These questions are at the core of this research project, which deals with the exodus of Jews from Greece to Turkey in 1943 and 1944. The geographical focus is on the microcosm between Euboea and Çeşme, which was the scene of various forms of migration during the Second World War. The exodus was part of a network of migration movements and the fleeing individual thus became part of a context in which structures of flight, evacuation, smuggling and secret service activities overlapped. Within this framework, the project illuminates the actions of individuals, thereby bringing the individual and their agency to the fore.

Julia Fröhlich is a PhD candidate at the Department of Near Eastern Studies (University of Vienna) and DOC-fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2023–2025). Furthermore, she is editorial manager of Diyâr. Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Near Eastern Studies. Her research interests lie in the area of flight and migration phenomena (especially in the context of the Holocaust), trauma studies as well as women and gender studies in the context of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.