Moses Elisaf

Elisaf was born in Ioannina in 1954 and graduated from the University of Athens in 1979.[2] His parents were Holocaust survivors who managed to escape the roundup during which most of Ioannina's Jews were deported to Auschwitz; only 9% of the community survived. After liberation, many of the survivors suffered discrimination because they had been involved in communist resistance groups.[3][4] Like most of the other Jews in Ioannina, Elisaf considers himself secular and does not observe Jewish religious law.[3] Elisaf is a pathologist, a professor of internal medicine at Ioannina Medical School, and director of the Lipids, Atherosclerosis, Obesity and Diabetes Department.[5][3] Between 1993 and 1994, he worked at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. He has several relatives living in Israel.[3]

He has been the president of the Romaniote Jewish community of Ioannina for more than a decade, and previously served as the president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece.[5][6] Elisaf has also served on the city council and as the president of a cultural center.[3] Running as an independent politician, he obtained 50.33% of the vote on the second round of the elections for mayor of Ioannina in June 2019.[5][6] Elisaf says that he is a centrist and aims to build consensus around policies for the city's development, such as improving infrastructure and public services.[3] During the campaign, political opponents claimed that he was a Mossad agent. Elisaf called the claims antisemitic and said that antisemitism in Greece is not serious.[3] Elisaf is the first Jewish mayor in the history of Greece.[5][6]

• History of the Jews in Greece

• Official website (in Greek)
• Meet Moses Elisaf, The First Jewish Mayor In Greece, The Cradle Of Democracy, The Forward, July 2019