Julia Tellides discovered the rich Jewish heritage of Thessaloniki two years ago on a Harvard Summer School Study Abroad program.

“It was the first time I heard about there being a large Jewish community anywhere in Greece,” said the graduating senior, a joint history and classics concentrator. “I thought, why have I never heard about this before? If anyone should know about this history, it’s me.”

Tellides, who grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, with a Greek father and Jewish mother, went on to devote her senior thesis to the city’s politically active Jewish residents during a period of upheaval in the early 20th century. Once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish population in Europe, Thessaloniki (traditionally known as Salonica or Salonika) proved a gold mine of Jewish culture and resistance, with Tellides surfacing new insights on the community’s struggle for survival.

“For an undergraduate to have gone into such depth, and with such originality, is remarkable,” said Tellides’ thesis adviser Derek Penslar, the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies.

Greece’s second-largest city, situated 300 miles north of Athens on the Aegean Sea, once served as an economic and cultural crossroads. “It was one of the most important ports in the Ottoman Empire,” Tellides explained. It was also a melting pot where Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted in relative peace.