Salonica Terminus: Travels Into the Balkan Nightmare

An exquisitely perceptive dissection of the Balkan predicament. While handling extremely difficult material, the author achieves a rare blend of compelling style, thought-provoking observations, humanist humour in the midst of one of the grimest human socio-political contexts in the world. This is no mere journalistic writing - it's almost a new genre. I would read any book that Fred Reed produces, regardless of my personal interests.

BOOK REVIEW SALONICA TERMINUS Travels into the Balkan Nightmare Talonbooks, Burnaby, British Columbia, 1996 BY: FRED REED There have been a number of books written over the past few years by North American and European scholars and journalists on the subject of Salonica and the Balkans. These books, replete with scholarly research, first hand interviews and expert analysis, have elucidated the political and historical reality of the Balkan nations. What these authors have also accomplished is to shed a light onto the real history of the area, placing into perspective the "history made to order" by regimes to serve their nationalistic sentiments. Such history, or rather propaganda, as most of us that have received our primary and secondary education in one of these countries may recall, tend to "colour" history to fit the given nationalistic circumstances. Fred Reed, a Canadian journalist and an ardent international political analyst, has lived in Greece for many years and has traveled in the Balkan landscape (Albania, Kosova, Macedonia and Bulgaria), discovering, chronicling and analyzing the pathos of nationalism in this "powder keg" of historical antithesis. Uninhibited by the "baggage" of being labeled as an ally or agent of another Balkan country, he has produced facts, figures and his own well researched and thought out analysis that attempts to portray the true history of the region, free of the nationalist undertones and propaganda-laden pseudo-rhetoric so prevalent in recognized and established states, and also in those nationalistic entities "In-waiting", hopping to be recognized some day by the U.S. and Europe. Reed's journey starts and ends in Salonica, the city that has stood through the centuries as the most coveted prize in the Balkans for successive empires since its establishment in the Hellenistic era. Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires regarded Salonica as their important city, lending to it strategic and economic importance in the Balkan peninsula as a crossroads between east and west. Salonica was known as the "Jerusalem of the north" during the 16th to the late 19th centuries, when the Iberian Jews, expelled by Ferdinand and Issabella of Spain in 1492, were welcomed by the Ottoman rulers because of their skills, knowledge in trade, medicine and diplomacy. Many of them settled in Salonica and together with Jews who had settled there since antiquity, turned the city into a vibrant economic and cultural centre. After 500 years of growth and prosperity, the Salonican Jews were once again forcefully removed to Hitler's "Final Solution" in 1943, their final voyage starting at the now eerie and abandoned Salonica (railway) terminus. Salonica was an important port city, serving as the merchant centre for the European trade to the east and has continued to maintain the interest of not only the European powers, but also the interest of the land-locked Slavs, the Bulgars and the Russians. Throughout its