Multivocal Narratives of a Nonviolent Campaign in the May 1936 Thessaloniki Events: Class,Ethnic,and Gender Dynamics

Abstract

Interwar Greece, whose political schism had deeply divided society, witnessed a remarkable display of national unity in Thessaloniki through the solidarity movement of May 1936. A labor dispute involving tobacco workers sparked a series of nonviolent protests, strikes, and demonstrations. Facing the regime's brutal suppression — including 12 fatalities and around 30 severe casualties — the workers' cause garnered widespread support across social classes, within and beyond the working-class community. However, despite this support, the movement was ultimately quashed by the Metaxas pre-Fourth of August government and failed to achieve its objectives. To date, analyses of the May events in Thessaloniki have predominantly focused on the perspective of Greek male labor activists, examining their successes and failures. This research offers an alternative narrative by exploring the viewpoints of Jewish male and female activists within the Salonikian labor movement. It integrates their gender, ethnic, and cultural interpretations within an innovative theoretical model of civil nonviolent resistance. By blending theoretical elements with primary contemporaneous Greek and Ladino sources, this study not only challenges the prevailing Greek-centric narrative but also illuminates the specific roles and contributions of minority groups during the May events, from the ethnic and gender perspectives.

The bloody episodes of May 9, 1936, in Thessaloniki, marked a key moment in Greek labor history that highlights the often-overlooked role of Jewish workers and activists in labor resistance. ¹ What began as a tobacco workers' strike — with Jewish and Greek women playing a pivotal role — quickly escalated into a broader movement. While the strike stemmed from economic grievances, the gendarmerie's brutal repression led to 12 deaths (including two Jews), as well as hundreds of injuries and mass arrests among both the Jewish and Greek communities. This violence not only exemplified the suppression of labor rights but also illuminated the complex intersection of ethnic identity, gender, and class solidarity in Thessaloniki's labor movement.

Labor unrest, inter-ethnic cooperation, mass protests, and state repression defined Thessaloniki's labor landscape between the 1910s and 1930s, but the May 1936 events encapsulated these tensions in a singularly explosive moment. These dynamics, marked by gendered participation and unity across ethnic and class lines, add layers of complexity to an event that has been largely overlooked in traditional Greek scholarship, which has focused primarily on class-based interpretations of the events. During the Cold War, conservative Greek historians framed May 1936 as a failed communist insurrection, justifying state violence and reinforcing the legitimacy of the Metaxas dictatorship. ² Since the 1980s, a pro-left shift in scholarship has analyzed the event through social movement theories, exploring organizational coordination, strike committees, and unexpected sympathy from soldiers. However, these studies — focused primarily on Greek men — have marginalized the Jewish experience. ³

By that time, Jewish laborers and intellectuals had become critical architects of both local and national labor movements. Their role in organizational leadership and direct action was particularly pronounced in May 1936. Yet, Greek scholarship has typically reduced their significance to mere mentions of the two Jewish victims. How might a more comprehensive analysis of Jewish laborers’ contributions reshape our understanding of the May 1936 events and their place in the history of Greek labor movements? This study also integrates a gendered perspective, acknowledging the central role of Jewish and Greek women. Comprising the majority of Thessaloniki's tobacco workforce, they were indispensable to labor activism yet remain largely absent in historical accounts. What insights into labor resistance does a gendered analysis — focusing on Jewish women — offer? Moreover, the widespread mobilization of May 1936 has been framed as a symbol of working-class unity, yet this narrative often obscures the socioeconomic realities that fueled such action. The economic catastrophe of the 1920s and 1930s impacted all segments of Thessaloniki's population, fostering solidarity that transcended ethnic lines. How did these economic conditions — viewed through the perspectives of both Jewish bourgeoisie and laborers — shape participation in the movement?

The Jewish experience and perspectives surrounding the May 1936 events will be presented through the integration of primary sources and relevant theories. Primary source materials include real-time reports published in two Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) newspapers — Aksion (Action) and Mesajero (Messenger) — that will be analyzed alongside contemporaneous accounts from Greek newspapers including Makedonia (Macedonia), To Fos (The Light), Rizospastis (The Radical), Efimeris ton Valkanion (The Newspaper of the Balkans), and Tachidromos tis Voriou Elados (Messenger of Northern Greece). ⁴ These newspapers provide a crucial methodological lens, covering diverse political views from center to far left and right. While no single source is fully objective, their diversity helps identify consistent narratives. A comparative analysis will balance their limitations, offering a more nuanced historical interpretation. To challenge the predominantly Greek-centric discourse on the May events, this paper applies Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan's civil resistance model to examine the conditions for successful nonviolent struggles. ⁵ How did the interplay of gender, ethnicity, class, and politics shape Jewish and non-Jewish participants' strategies and effectiveness? To what extent did these dynamics align with or diverge from Chenoweth and Stephan's framework? This study explores the power dynamics, strategic adaptations, and collective mobilization that defined Jewish participation in the 1936 labor uprising.

In their groundbreaking study of over 300 conflicts from 1900 to 2006, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan demonstrated that nonviolent civil resistance campaigns were nearly twice as effective as violent movements in achieving their goals. Their framework underscores the crucial role of strategic planning, sustained campaigns, and disciplined coordination in the success of nonviolent struggles. Applying this model, this section explores how Jewish labor activists — both men and women — played pivotal roles in a broader campaign whose roots can be traced back to a few weeks before the bloody episodes of May 9, specifically to early April 1936. Their actions embodied the principles of preparation, unity, and nonviolent discipline, all of which Chenoweth and Stephan identify as essential for effective civil resistance.

Early 1936 saw the Salonikian labor movement at one of its most vulnerable points. The movement had been fractured by long-standing ideological disputes over the fundamental role of trade unions — whether they should focus solely on professional and economic matters or embrace political aspirations as well. This internal debate led to organizational splintering, with multiple competing unions emerging within the same crafts and professions. The fragmentation manifested most visibly in the creation of four distinct labor federations, undermining the movement's collective bargaining power and unity of purpose. This organizational fragmentation was particularly evident in the tobacco industry, where workers in Thessaloniki and other Greek cities were divided among multiple competing unions, each claiming to represent the workers’ interests. Against this backdrop of disunity, early April 1936 marked the beginning of a historic transformation. Specifically, on April 5, 1936, Thessaloniki bore witness to a pivotal event in the annals of Greek tobacco labor. Local Greek and Ladino newspapers heralded this change with the headline: ‘The First Pan-Tobacco Workers' Unity Conference [hereinafter: the Conference]’. ⁶ The Conference brought together 60 representatives from 24 tobacco trade unions across Greece. The attendees were primarily communists along with a small contingent of Salonikian reformists (three members only); the United [Reformist] Federation of Tobacco Workers and Stevedores of Greece (hereinafter: United [Reformist] Federation) was notably absent. Nevertheless, in his welcome speech, Kostas Theos, a parliament member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), expressed hope that ‘the congress would [find ways to] lay solid foundations for the unity of the tobacco workers’. ⁷ His call reflected a strategic goal already championed by the KKE. This push for a Pan-Hellenic unified front had been reaffirmed as a central objective during the party's 6th Congress in December 1935, underscoring its importance as both a strategic vision and an operational necessity. ⁸

Another strong voice for overcoming the decade-long schism and forging unity was Haim Yehuda, one of the few attendees from social-democratic circles. Initially, as a socialist, he supported the 1927 split, leaving the Tobacco Workers' [Communist] Federation to help establish the United [Reformist] Federation. By 1936, however, Yehuda recognized that division harmed workers and saw cooperation with communists as essential for advancing tobacco laborers' interests. ⁹ To form a basis for cooperation between communists and reformists, the Conference resolved to establish the Pan-Hellenic Tobacco Workers' Federation (hereinafter: the Pan-Hellenic Federation). According to its statute, and in an attempt to attract reformists from the United [Reformist] Federation, the new organization declared that it ‘would not be affiliated with any of the existing federations’, ¹⁰ thus establishing itself as a non-partisan association that could bridge ideological divides. The Executive Committee of the new league comprised eight members, among them Haim Yehuda and Roza Regina. The committee extended an invitation to the United [Reformist] Federation to join the new league, signaling a commitment to unity. In mid-April 1936, the United [Reformist] Federation merged with the Pan-Hellenic Federation. A new joint executive committee was formed, comprising 10 members: seven from the Pan-Hellenic Federation and three from the United [Reformist] Federation.

While contemporary newspapers and Greek historiography emphasized this significant organizational unification, they tended to overlook a critical aspect that had the potential of weakening the broader cohesion within the tobacco labor movement: the continuous exploitation of women, who formed the majority of workers on the shop floor. In the mid-1930s Thessaloniki, women made up 70% of the city's 12,000-strong tobacco workforce. ¹¹ Despite their majority representation, their specific needs received scant attention. During the three-day Conference in early April, Roza Regina, a Jewish communist activist in her thirties, stood as the sole female speaker and the only one to address the gender-biased conditions on the shop floor. Women ‘were receiving the most demeaning daily wages’. ¹² This inequality had become institutionalized since the establishment of the first tobacco factories, where owners reduced production costs by employing cheaper female labor. By the mid-1930s, women's daily wages (25–35 drachmas) were about 50% less than those of male laborers, who were receiving 65 drachmas per day while performing the same work in the same floor shops. ¹³ Female tobacco workers faced near-impossible living conditions: with essential goods like sugar, butter, and soap costing between 24 and 80 drachmas, a woman's daily earnings could scarcely cover even a single necessity. Even male workers earning the ‘better’ wage of 65 drachmas struggled desperately and had to work over 27 days a month just to keep their families at subsistence level. ¹⁴ In an industry already plagued by mechanization, seasonal employment, and the merchants' push for cheaper tobacco, these poverty wages, combined with the absence of public welfare, trapped both women and men in a crushing cycle of deprivation. ¹⁵

Addressing gender wage disparities could have alleviated the injustice Regina highlighted. However, Sidiropoulos, a Salonikian communist activist who took part in the Conference, dismissed this option, stating that ‘the Organized Committee does not deal with equal daily wages to all [tobacco] workers, but in determining minimum and maximum levels’. ¹⁶ Regina's speech failed to change the gender status quo. Wage disparities remained stark, with the Conference calling for daily pay of 105–135 drachmas for men but only 60 for women. ¹⁷ This imbalance likely stemmed from the prevailing view of men as sole breadwinners, yet the decision to raise women's wages suggests an acknowledgment — however limited — of their need to meet basic living costs. The movement's gender bias was further evident in the composition of the Pan-Hellenic Tobacco Workers' Federation's leadership, where Roza Regina stood as the sole female voice among nine male committee members. Nevertheless, Regina's presence and vocal advocacy for the rights of women workers played a crucial role in fostering the kind of bottom-up solidarity that Chenoweth and Stephan identify as essential for maximizing movement participation and effectiveness.

Bottom-up solidarity among grassroots tobacco workers was not the only factor that could have influenced the struggle's effectiveness. Likewise, top-down solidarity within the Pan-Hellenic Federation also shaped its course. Soon after its establishment, the Pan-Hellenic Federation faced critical decisions that challenged its organizational consolidation. Its first challenge emerged during the initial days of the tobacco strike. The Conference's resolutions on industrial relations, formally submitted on April 21, were dismissed by the Salonikian merchants as ‘exaggerated’, setting the stage for an organized, nonviolent campaign.

By that time, in addition to the Pan-Hellenic Federation, another organization had taken shape: strike committees in tobacco factories across Greece. These committees played a crucial role in orchestrating the strike, ensuring discipline and strategic direction on the shop floor. On April 29, at precisely 9:30 a.m., following the approval of the Pan-Hellenic Federation, strike committees issued coordinated declarations in every tobacco factory, prompting supervisors to swiftly clear workplaces. Within 72 h, the work stoppage expanded nationwide, bringing the entire Greek tobacco industry to a halt by May 2. ¹⁸ In the early days of the dispute, the combination of mass protests and a harsh crackdown by tobacco merchants and state authorities mirrored past labor unrest in Thessaloniki's tobacco industry. On May 3, 1936, ‘The Salonica Cigarette Company’, ¹⁹ managed by Raphael Varsano, a prosperous Jewish merchant, ²⁰ was among several factories that reopened with the support of the gendarmerie. Authorities violently dispersed strikers' guards at warehouse gates, replacing them with troops to protect incoming strikebreakers. ²¹ The employment of strikebreakers, derogatorily labeled ‘yellow workers’, faced fierce labor opposition. During the spring 1914 strike, Jewish female workers tore off the headscarves of ‘yellow’ Muslim women workers, sparking riots that led to their expulsion from packing warehouses. ²² The use of such tactics to suppress labor dissent further inflamed grassroots tobacco workers. While fellow trade unions expressed solidarity, the tobacco workers faced a major obstacle in escalating the protest: the hesitant leadership of the Pan-Hellenic Federation.

In one of its initial announcements ‘To All Working People’, ²³ the Executive Committee vehemently condemned the state's oppressive tactics. Under the guise of ‘safeguarding tobacco merchant companies… and the national economy’, local authorities prohibited labor gatherings, occupied tobacco trade union offices, and declared ‘readiness for war’, vowing to ‘drown the protest in blood’. Despite these grave condemnations and the defiant tone of its telegrams, the Executive Committee's official decision remained cautious; it prioritized a peaceful resolution, opting to send a formal protest to the government. ²⁴ The huge gap between the Executive Committee's fiery rhetoric and its measured operational response was the result of bargaining and compromise — dynamics that had enabled the establishment of the Pan-Hellenic Federation in the first place. Its Executive Committee, shaped by this balancing act, was divided between those favoring negotiation and those pushing for radicalization. This climate of ideological compromise was part of a broader trend in the Greek labor movement of the 1930s. In 1935, the KKE shifted toward a multi-party, multi-class united front, seeking alliances between communist and social-democratic parties in order to challenge the right-wing establishment. This strategy of coalition building culminated in the February 1936 pact between the KKE's Stelios Sklavainas and Liberal leader Themistoklis Sofoulis, where communist support for Sofoulis' premiership was exchanged for promises such as abolishing the Idionymon law and reducing bread prices. ²⁵ Given this pact (which was never implemented), the KKE, seeking to maintain its ties with the Liberals and the Agrarian Party, worked to restrain the volatile frustrations of Salonikian tobacco workers through its communist cadres in the Pan-Hellenic Federation. Accordingly, the Executive Committee adhered to the party line. A three-member delegation of the Pan-Hellenic Federation convened in Athens, hoping to discuss tobacco labor demands with the government ²⁶

The dynamics of bargaining and compromise extended beyond the tobacco sector, shaping the entire Salonikian labor movement — from the shop floor to local labor federations. On May 1, 1936, Thessaloniki witnessed a citywide 24-h shutdown as all laborers and employees joined a sympathy strike. Unlike previous years, when internal divisions fractured the Greek labor movement — leading to separate labor federation commemorations and fragmented strikes — May 1, 1936, stood out for its remarkable unity. ²⁷ This rare intra-class solidarity stemmed primarily from initiatives by Thessaloniki's two central labor federations: the United Worker Center of Thessaloniki, composed of communist trade unions, and the Pan-Employees Center of Thessaloniki, controlled by social democrats. In mid-April 1936, they formed a Unity Committee ²⁸ which, on the eve of Labor Day, urged ‘all laborers and all employees of all … organizations' to convene directly at the Bechtsinari gardens at 09:00 A.M’. ²⁹ Among the attendees were Jewish communist laborers proudly brandishing signs inscribed in Ladino. ³⁰ While ‘Long live the worker’ echoed as a globally recognized rallying cry, the other two slogans — ‘Long live unity’ and ‘[Full] Equality for [all] [ethnic/religious Macedonian and Thracian] minorities’ — had been central to the KKE's agenda since its 6th Congress in December 1935. In its broader pursuit of a democratic-antifascist front, the KKE championed intra-class struggle, seeking to unite diverse communities across ethnic and religious backgrounds. ³¹

This surge of labor unity soon sparked a broader solidarity movement. On May 4, thousands of tobacco workers and their families marched to the telegram office to deliver their protest message. Clashes erupted as gendarmes tried to block them, but the workers eventually broke through. In the struggle, tobacco worker Sophia Constandinou sustained serious injuries, becoming the first casualty of the May events. ³² On the same date, in response to the violence, workers from electricity factories and railways, along with shoemakers, ironworkers, textile workers, and others, joined the strike. By then, 10,000 laborers had halted work. Thessaloniki's longshoremen — many of them Jewish — collected 2000 drachmas for the ‘strike struggle of the tobacco workers’. ³³ Similar acts of solidarity, including fundraising efforts and sympathetic labor strikes, emerged throughout Greece.

While Thessaloniki's working class presented a united front in supporting the tobacco laborers, the Pan-Hellenic Federation's leadership — shaped by the KKE's restrained policy and their own stance — remained hesitant to channel this grassroots momentum into a broader escalation. When the Executive Committee reconvened the following day, the violent telegram incident tested its ideological cohesion. Merkatas, the substitute secretary and a communist activist, believed that ‘the strike [in Thessaloniki] should remain passive, and if martial law were declared, we should avoid clashes’. ³⁴ However, there was strong opposition. Isaac Levi, a labor activist in the tobacco industry of Kavalla since the 1920s and a dedicated socialist adviser for the Salonikian reformist fraction until May 1936, ³⁵ expressed the acute disagreement of the three reformist members. Levi insisted that a ‘more lively tone must be given to the struggle’, advocating a shift from dialogue and negotiation to more aggressive tactics. ³⁶ Regina, breaking with the majority of the communist Executive Committee, sided with the three reformists against the KKE's negotiation strategy. Rejecting the ‘passive stance’, she insisted on ‘taking more active measures, because this is how we will pursue our demands’. ³⁷ She not only called for action but actively joined the grassroots street struggles with great fervor.

On May 8, the tenth day of the strike, after news of the failed Athens negotiations reached Thessaloniki, ³⁸ 6000 tobacco workers spontaneously gathered around the ‘pan-Tobacco Workers' [Communist] Union of Thessaloniki’. ³⁹ During their march to the governorate, female laborers emerged as a formidable force, with Regina and Anastasia Karanikolas — a 23-year-old KKE activist who would die the next day — leading a confrontation with the gendarmerie. ⁴⁰ The women organized coordinated attacks using bricks and wooden objects, prompting officers to respond with rifle butts, punches, and kicks. ⁴¹ The violent response of the gendarmerie led to mass detentions and hundreds of casualties, setting the stage for the May 9 Massacre.

Whereas in the beginning of May 1936, the nonviolent campaign was led by tobacco labor activists, in the following days, as the labor unrest escalated, others from both within and outside the working class joined in, turning the campaign into a widespread mass protest. In its new, broader phase, the Executive Committee lost control of the events, and the city descended into semi-anarchy. This section will examine the events surrounding the May 9 Massacre, alongside other critical components and key insights identified by Chenoweth and Stephan for the success of nonviolent campaigns, including diversity of participation, the large number of participants, and the shift in loyalty among the security forces. The Jewish perspective in this context allows for the presentation of these new bottom-up activists, rescuing some of them from anonymity and explaining the various factors behind both the inter-class solidarity and the eventual failure of the mass demonstration movement.

Early in the morning of May 9, Thessaloniki came to a standstill as laborers and employees from various industries, as well as the middle class itself, went on strike. Bus drivers, electricity workers, bakers, typographers, businessmen, shopkeepers, restaurant staff, and student associations all joined in, disrupting public transport, electric power, the bread supply, and even suspending the publication of Greek and Ladino newspapers. The widespread support extended beyond the laborers; white-collar workers and the middle class had begun their activities a few days earlier. On May 5, Thessaloniki shopkeepers, white-collar workers, and merchants shut down their businesses. ⁴² The next day, 80 shopkeepers sent a protest telegram to the government, expressing their moral support of the tobacco workers, asserting that ‘only privileged individuals living in luxury and prosperity [i.e., the great tobacco merchants] may not fully comprehend [the arduous struggle for] life and survival’. ⁴³

The solidarity movement forged an inter-class alliance that fostered an atmosphere of insurrection, captured most profoundly in Mesajero, a bourgeois Jewish newspaper. Its major headline on May 6 proclaimed ‘Wake up, wake up, Deborah’. Drawn from the Old Testament, this stirring call is part of the Song of Deborah, a poetic account by the female prophetess and judge describing Israel's victory over the Canaanites. ⁴⁴ A central theme of the song is solidarity — or the lack thereof — among the tribes of Israel. Deborah admonishes the tribes solely concerned with their own well-being while exalting those who rallied to defend their brethren. By using this citation from a revered Biblical figure, Mesajero aimed to rouse its Jewish bourgeois readers to stand in solidarity with the laborers, evoking the unifying, justice-seeking message of Deborah's song. These messages of sympathy spread across different cities in Greece, leading to waves of labor strikes starting May 1, 1936. Beyond momentary acts of solidarity, the massive labor protests emerged from long-standing grievances, including widespread poverty, authoritarian pro-capitalist governance, and brutal gendarmerie repression. ⁴⁵ However, Thessaloniki was different. During the first 10 days of May 1936, Thessaloniki became a center not only of labor unrest but of a broader popular revolt. This unprecedented episode of massive civilian protest was about more than sympathy for the tobacco laborers; it reflected deep frustrations with the entrenched inequalities perpetuated by the Athenian capitalists, political elites, and senior bureaucrats of ‘Old Greece’ (the pre-1912 national territory) against ‘New Greece’ (the post-1912 territories). To maintain their dominance in the broader Greek state, Athenian elites prioritized the development of ‘Old Greece’, leaving Thessaloniki to languish in underdevelopment. Consequently, while Piraeus evolved into the national port, Thessaloniki deteriorated from a prominent Balkan port city before 1912 to a minor trading center constrained within the Greek state. ⁴⁶ At the beginning of 1930, Maurice Raphael, a local Jewish maritime entrepreneur in Thessaloniki, was in despair. ‘The situation in Salonica is in general getting worse from day to day. [Our ship chandlery] business this year [is] not only at a standstill, but what is worse we are living on our own capital’. ⁴⁷ The port's decline had devastating effects. As the Makedonia newspaper observed, ‘This port which had given life and bread to hundreds of [Jewish and Greek] families of stevedores, porters, coal laborers… today [i.e., 1933] …veteran laborers are starving’. ⁴⁸ The decline of Thessaloniki's port fueled migration from the periphery to the core. Between 1928 and 1940, the Athens-Piraeus area experienced a 40% population growth, primarily due to internal migration, while Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, grew by only 18%, mainly through natural increase. In addition to internal migration, Thessaloniki witnessed external emigration, including Jewish maritime entrepreneurs and longshoremen who left Greece for Mandatory Palestine, establishing themselves in Haifa's burgeoning waterfront. ⁴⁹

Ultimately, the economic decline and social destitution fueled deep-seated tensions that shaped Thessaloniki's distinct response during the early protests of May 1936 — an unprecedented movement that transcended class and ethnic boundaries. However, this broad yet fragile coalition failed to establish a unified, top-down leadership that could sustain the movement beyond spontaneous resistance. The Unity Committee, composed of the United Worker Center of Thessaloniki and the Pan-Employees Center of Thessaloniki, attempted to expand its base of support. On May 8, following the declaration by the General Confederation of Greek Workers of a 24-h, state-wide strike, the Unity Committee convened to coordinate strategy for the upcoming 24-h sympathy strike and the peaceful demonstration planned for May 9. ⁵⁰ However, state brutality quickly shattered these plans, stripping the Unity Committee of control over the unfolding events. Meanwhile, the divided Executive Committee, which continued to advocate a more conciliatory stance, remained absent from the field. With no central leadership guiding the protests, the events on May 9 escalated spontaneously, driven by grassroots momentum — ultimately setting the stage for even sharper confrontations.

The local 24-h general strike in Thessaloniki was met with brutal resistance from both the gendarmerie and military forces, starting on May 9 and continuing in the following days. On May 9, within 4 h alone, between 10:00 am and 02:00 pm, the city tallied 12 fatalities, along with 32 seriously injured, three of whom were Jews, and hundreds with minor injuries.

The initial attack by the gendarmerie on Thessaloniki strikers began around 10:30 am and led to street barricades and clashes. As strikers gathered outside the governorate to denounce this brutality, Colonel Ntakos, the chief of the Salonikian gendarmerie, ordered the troops to open fire on the marching demonstrators. At the intersection of Syngrou street and Ptolemeon, 25-year-old KKE member Tassos Toussis was killed, becoming the strike's first victim. The widely published image of his mother, Katina, mourning over his dead body became a powerful symbol of resistance, intensifying the outrage against the regime. ⁵¹ Around midday, thousands of demonstrators marched from the governorate toward Vardar Square. Among them was Salvator Masarano, a 25-year-old KKE cadre and former exile, leading the march alongside 23-year-old Giannis Panopoulos, a tobacco worker and cadre of the cobblers' union, and member of the Federation of Communist Youth of Greece. Midway, Masarano left to inform the wife of Yom-Tov Into Senor, a 23-year-old nickel plater, that her husband had been fatally shot in the head. As Masarano prepared to return, he was ambushed near a tram line and killed. ⁵² Meanwhile, Panopoulos led the march to Venizelou street and Egnatia street, where gendarmes surrounded the crowd. Ignoring orders to disperse, protesters responded with cries of ‘Down with fascism!’ Ntakos gave the order to open fire, leaving the intersection stained with blood. ⁵³ The whereabouts of the Executive Committee during these deadly hours remain unknown. However, given their absence from the list of victims or the heavy casualties, it appears that even if they participated in the protests, they were not at the forefront.

The violent, unilateral response — using live ammunition against unarmed civilians — was not a spontaneous decision made by the chief of the gendarmerie, Ntakos, but a premeditated policy decision reached collectively in high-level meetings 48 h before May 9. During a brief visit on May 7, Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas discussed the tobacco strikers with Pallis, the governor-general. ⁵⁴ Before leaving for Athens, in a press conference summarizing his visit to a Balkan Conference held earlier in Belgrade, Metaxas emphasized that ‘the government will take all measures to ensure [absolute public] order’. ⁵⁵ As a graduate of the Military Academy in Berlin (1899–1903) and a retired senior officer, he supported imposing military order and discipline to address social unrest and disruptions. Given his anti-labor stance and the deteriorating situation, he authorized the local gendarmerie to use maximum force to suppress labor protests. ⁵⁶ However, the orgy of violence and arrests on May 9 triggered unprecedented public rage against the local security forces. To prevent Thessaloniki from descending into complete anarchy, Konstantinos Pallis, the governor-general of Macedonia, received approval from Prime Minister Metaxas to temporarily entrust the policing of Thessaloniki to Brigadier Zeppos, Commander of the 3rd Army Corps. ⁵⁷

While the Salonikian gendarmerie, from top to bottom, obeyed the extreme orders of crushing the mass protests by all means, even at the cost of bloodshed, the senior officers and ordinary soldiers of the 3rd Army Corps displayed a starkly different stance. This divide reflected deeper tensions between ‘Old Greece’ and ‘New Greece’. The local gendarmerie, composed largely of civil servants from southern Greece, viewed Thessaloniki's population — especially its diverse working class — with suspicion and contempt. Perceiving Macedonian cities as politically unreliable due to the strong presence of communism, these officers acted less as enforcers of the law and more as conquerors, meting out repression with unchecked brutality. Their violent crackdown on May 9 was not just a response to the protest but an assertion of Athenian elite authority over a region they saw as defiant and subordinate. ⁵⁸ In stark contrast, the soldiers of the 3rd Army Corps — many of whom came from working-class backgrounds — maintained close ties with local unions and federations, fostering a sense of camaraderie with the Salonikian people. ⁵⁹ On May 9, during the bloodshed, they not only refused to carry out violent repression but also directly confronted the gendarmerie. Their defiance signaled not only solidarity with the strikers but also a rejection of the hierarchical, militarized order that the gendarmerie sought to impose.

This defiance extended beyond the day of the massacre. During the funeral ceremonies on May 10th, Lieutenant Marinakis, tasked with maintaining public order on Egnatia street, addressed the mourners. His words carried a rare mix of authority and empathy: ‘I assure you that the army stands with you’ — a statement that went beyond mere sympathy to signal outright refusal to suppress the labor protests. ⁶⁰ The scale of public mourning was unprecedented: approximately 100,000 people — more than a third of the city's 278,000 residents — flooded the streets leading to the Evangelistria cemetery near Aristotle University at 9:30 a.m. Many mourners, wearing black armbands, carried banners demanding ‘revenge’, ‘down with the government’, ‘let Pallis go’, ‘death to the murderers’, and ‘freedom for the people’. After the ceremonies in the Greek cemetery, a crowd of 15,000 proceeded to the adjacent Jewish cemetery, where both communities joined in singing the national anthem and ‘The Internationale’. Though specific details about the Jewish activists and their speeches are lacking, the unified display of grief and resistance at both cemeteries underscored the deep bonds between Greek and Jewish workers in their struggle. ⁶¹

However, while ordinary soldiers resisted repression, the army's leadership remained aligned with the state. Because of the 3rd Army Corps' refusal to be used as an instrument of repression, its commander, Brigadier Zeppos, who had sided with Metaxas' May 7 orders, ⁶² lacked sufficient forces to quell the protests on May 9 and 10, risking a potential revolution. ⁶³ He was compelled to await reinforcements from southern Greece. These arrived on May 10, as the funerals concluded, and the repression resumed. A military regime was imposed. By May 11, the city was forced back to normal operations: railway, tram, and bakery workers were ordered to return to work, and the merchants were urged to reopen businesses by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Thessaloniki. Workers' assemblies were permitted only to announce the end of the strikes. ⁶⁴

In the aftermath of the violent crackdown, the Executive Committee reemerged to ratify a labor agreement signed on May 11 in Athens between the tobacco merchants and top labor representatives — the United [Communist] General Confederation of Greek Workers and the [Reformist] General Confederation of Greek Workers. ⁶⁵ The agreement only partially met labor demands, improving daily wages for men while excluding women. However, signing it became a tactical necessity within the broader strategy of forming alliances with bourgeois parties — alliances the KKE hoped would eventually lead to an anti-fascist democratic government. The agreement sparked tension within the Executive Committee, as the tobacco strike remained ongoing. The three reformist members, including Levi, who had previously backed escalation, now claimed they could not oppose decisions made by the higher union leadership. While Communist faction members also reversed their stance, they too were bound by the Athens labor representatives' consensus. As a result, on May 12, the Executive Committee agreed to end the strike on May 14, provided those arrested be released and pensions granted to the families of those killed or injured in the May 9 Massacre. ⁶⁶

Despite the formal ratification of the labor agreement, its legitimacy was contested at the grassroots level, particularly among the tobacco workers, who felt betrayed by union leadership. A rare voice of opposition surfaced in the Jewish press on May 14, 1936, encapsulating this frustration in the evocative headline: ‘They rise up against us to destroy us’. ⁶⁷ The phrase, drawn from the Passover Haggadah (= book) — a ritual text recounting Jewish endurance in the face of historical persecution — infused the labor dispute with profound symbolic weight. By invoking a narrative of existential struggle, the writer not only conveyed the intensity of workers' disillusionment but also framed their plight as one of systemic oppression, where exploitation mirrored deeper patterns of dispossession. The article expressed outrage at the government's favoritism toward merchants, denouncing them as those who ‘exploit the laborers' work and sweat to build palaces, while [the tobacco workers] are left with no place of residence’. This critique extended beyond economic grievances, portraying the agreement as a continuation of entrenched class hierarchies that left workers — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — marginalized and powerless.

The writer's rhetorical question — whether an agreement that failed to secure genuine improvements should be abandoned altogether — soon proved justified. With the strike called off and no immediate repercussions threatening them, the tobacco companies reneged on their commitments: they refused to raise daily wages, declared a lockout, and suspended work across numerous firms in Thessaloniki, Kavala, and Kozani. Attempts at general work stoppages in Macedonia's tobacco industry failed from the outset, as the coalition between social democrats and communists collapsed. At that time, the Executive Committee lost a crucial component: Lolos and Levi, representatives of the social-democratic faction, resigned. Their departure stemmed from an unwillingness to reignite a labor struggle that, after the bloodshed of May 9, had evolved from a professional dispute into a nationwide political agitation against the regime's legitimacy, with the premier being labeled a murderer. ⁶⁸

A second event symbolizing the Executive Committee's disintegration was the imprisonment of Roza Regina, the only member to be jailed. In early June 1936, amid allegations of orchestrating the May protests and involvement in communist activities, Regina and 23 labor activists — including tram and tobacco workers, Rizospastis journalists, and others — were confined aboard a ship in the Thessaloniki port, destined for exile. ⁶⁹

Among its repressive measures, the government, despite earlier promises, banned any form of aid to the injured or the families of the deceased. Governor-General Pallis, for instance, refused to allow fundraising for victims. ⁷⁰ Similarly, minutes from the local Jewish council meetings on May 25 and 31, 1936, made no mention of the events or the victims' plight. A Rizospastis report, published a week after the bloodshed, highlighted the desperate situation of grieving families left without support. In a tin house in Regie Vardar, a poor Jewish neighborhood, ⁷¹ a journalist met the young widow of Yom-Tov Into Senor. Her three-year-old child desperately cried out his father's name, ‘Into-Into-Int’. The widow tried in vain to calm him with the false promise, ‘Into is coming this evening’. ⁷² Similar scenes of grief and desperation unfolded among other Jewish families in Regie Vardar. With no public assistance and the collapse of labor organizations in the tobacco industry, rank-and-file workers took the lead. At the end of May 1936, ‘Workers' Aid’, a department of the local labor movement supporting imprisoned workers, ⁷³ organized a mass donation effort. All laborers contributed a day's wages to aid the injured and the families of the deceased. Within 10 days, Greek workers raised 290,000 drachmas: 30,000 allocated for legal aid for 22 imprisoned laborers, 3,000 for those exiled, and the remainder given to the families of the fallen. ⁷⁴ At the end of June 1936, the victims' mothers — including Riketa Senor, Alexandra Karanikolas, Eleni Tousi, and L. Masarano — signed a thank-you letter to ‘the people of Greece’ for their donations. They condemned the state's indifference, noting that it ‘murdered our people [but also] did not care about us and did not even send us a word of comfort’. ⁷⁵ Despite the official fundraising ban, contributions were reported in real time in the press, suggesting the government tolerated these efforts in order to prevent renewed tobacco protests in the short term.

With the establishment of the Fourth of August regime, Greece fell under an authoritarian, anti-communist nationalist dictatorship that brutally suppressed the labor movement. Draconian laws were enacted, trade unions disbanded, and labor leaders jailed. State forces crushed any attempts at strikes or protests. However, despite its terror tactics, the regime did not fully unleash its repressive power on the instigators of the May 1936 events. As mentioned earlier, Regina was sentenced to exile on a Greek island. The exact duration of her exile remains uncertain, but it was relatively brief. By November 1939, about three and a half years after her deportation, she was already married to Michalis Gazes, a 34-year-old senior KKE parliament member. ⁷⁶ This transition from exile to freedom suggests the regime's calculated leniency toward the accused. The Fourth of August regime sought to project an image of restoration of order and stability rather than outright criminalizing the labor movement — a contrast to the intensified repression that followed in later years.

As this study demonstrates through the lens of previously marginalized Jewish activists, the May 1936 Events in Thessaloniki exemplify a rich tapestry of nonviolent strategy shaped by diverse identities, perspectives, and forms of resistance. While in their early stages in April 1936, the events were a typical labor conflict between tobacco workers and industrialists, they soon evolved beyond class-based struggles. Large-scale, sustained, and diverse participation across ethnic, gender, and class lines became a hallmark of the May Events. A second hallmark was the ability to invent new forms of struggle beyond the initial tobacco labor strike, such as paralyzing public transportation and disrupting the electricity supply, which led to the shutdown of the entire city on May 9 and 10. The violent response of the state apparatus, including the imprisonment of labor activists, did not halt the protest; instead, it expanded solidarity. A third hallmark was the shift of loyalties among soldiers and officers of the 3rd Army Corps, who defied orders to suppress the protests because their comrades, neighbors, and brothers were taking part. However, despite these hallmarks, the movement ultimately fell short. The shift of loyalties among security forces was limited, as the local gendarmes and military troops arriving from ‘Old Greece’ remained loyal to the Athenian economic and bureaucratic elites, who supported the Metaxas government. Local economic elites also withheld their support, avoiding participation in the resistance. Thus, the civil protest failed to maintain lasting coalitions among diverse groups and as a result could not dismantle the foundations that sustained the regime's power.

In addition, by focusing on the underrepresented roles and perspectives of Jewish activists in the Executive Committee, this study reveals fragile coalitions and internal disputes not only between communist and reformist labor leaders but also within each ideological faction. While the communist activist Regina supported the reformist line of Isaac Levi, advocating for more aggressive tactics and decentralized decision-making, other members of the communist faction, aligned with the KKE's strategy of pursuing a multi-party united front, sought to contain the protests and negotiate settlements. As a result, rather than leading the protest, the Executive Committee was primarily occupied with internal debates over strategy and objectives. Ultimately, by losing control of the events, the grassroots activists — who had taken the lead — paid in blood. The weakness of the local labor leaders also contributed to their inability to transform the tobacco protest into a sustained general civil resistance. The hegemony of ‘Old Greece’ over ‘New Greece’ was also evident in the resolution of the conflict. The labor agreement of May 11, which ended the strike, was not negotiated by the Executive Committee in Thessaloniki but was instead dictated by the central labor leadership in Athens. By prioritizing strategic alliances with bourgeois parties over the immediate demands of the strikers, the United [Communist] General Confederation of Greek Workers and the [Reformist] General Confederation of Greek Workers sacrificed local labor interests in favor of broader political aspirations. This intervention reinforced the dominance of the ‘Old Greece’ political and economic elites, further marginalizing Thessaloniki's labor movement and exposing the limited autonomy of local leadership.

The most potent tool employed against the civil protest in Thessaloniki was state repression, which manifested in various forms. Tactics included intimidation and imprisonment of labor activists, as well as withholding economic support from victims' families. This repression not only sapped the momentum of the protest but also accelerated plans for a coup, leading to the replacement of democracy with the Fourth of August regime. While the May Events ended in defeat, they marked a pivotal moment for Greek society. By challenging the established order, they became a source of inspiration for subsequent resistance movements, drawing strength from the sacrifices of Thessaloniki's diverse participants in May 1936.