Greek Jews Slam Appointment of Far Right Health Minister
Makis Voridis, a longtime member of ultranationalist parties, was appointed health minister in Greece.
Monday’s appointment, part of a widespread government reshuffle, was met with disappointment by members of the Greek Jewish community.
“No Jewish person can be happy about the appointment of a man who was, until two years ago, a head of the extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic LAOS party,” said Victor Eliezer, the secretary general of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece.
Voridis, 49, after being elected to the European Parliament, formed an alliance with the head of France’s National Front party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was a guest at his wedding. He then merged his party with LAOS, a populist, nationalistic party founded by a politician known for his anti-Semitic views, George Karatzaferis.
Two years ago, Voridis was among several LAOS members who joined the conservative New Democracy party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras after LAOS failed to qualify for Parliament amid the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. Samaras has been accused of pandering to the far right in a bid to stem the loss of votes to Golden Dawn, which emerged as the third-largest party in Greece.
Samaras maintains that those who joined New Democracy have committed to abide by party policy, which condemns anti-Semitism and racism.
Voridis has since written to the Jewish community, expressing his opposition to Holocaust denial and his commitment to “putting an end to anti-Semitic, racist prejudice which is an outright violation of human dignity.”
Eliezer called it a “step in the right direction,” but said the Jewish community would like to see him and the other former LAOS members completely renounce their past views. In the reshuffle, Voridis replaces another former LAOS member, Adonis Georgiadis.
Voridis had risen to prominence as the head of a student group at Athens University that fellow students recount as painting swastikas on the walls and greeting each other with “Heil Hitler.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
