Research shows many Greeks are ‘racist and ignorant’
I read with interest the article titled «Nearly half Greece approves composite name for FYROM» in your May 31 edition which included the paragraph: «Who of the following would you not want as neighbors?» As an American and a Jew living in Greece, I find the article confirms my impressions of many Greeks as racist and ignorant. Frankly, the list of undesirables is even longer than the one used by Nazis to ship people to concentration camps. No Greek understands that I am a Jew, unless I tell him. This is because their knowledge of Jews is close to nil. Perhaps one-quarter of Greece would not like me as a neighbor but then they wouldn’t know. It is interesting that Slavs are not mentioned as undesirable neighbors. In my travels and work around the Balkans, I found citizens from the former Yugoslavia to be more broad-minded than Greeks. Perhaps this is because they belong to multiethnic societies and are more in touch with reality. Maybe the day will come when some Greek foundation does DNA tests and finds that Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian, Serb, Turk and Gypsy DNA is all the same! Keep up the great journalism. K. BERKOWITZ, Thessaloniki
