The Jews of Greece were originally mostly Romaniote Jews who spoke a Greek dialect but with the mass arrival of Sephardim from Spain, many of these became assimilated into the newly dominant Sephardic culture and Ladino language among the Jewish community. Jews had been the majority in Thessaloniki for centuries,Gilles Veinstein, Salonique 1850–1918, la "ville des Juifs" et le réveil des Balkans, pp. 42–45 and remained so at the end of Ottoman rule on the eve of the Balkan Wars,Glenny, Misha (2000). The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804–1999. p. 236: "The Jews of Salonika, for the moment still the majority population, were hoping that the peace negotiations .... Of all the allies, Greece had suffered the least casualties, human and material, during the First Balkan War... although this majority was lost as the Jewish community declined from 90,000 down to 56,000 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, including anti-Jewish (and anti-Ladino) discrimination, land confiscations, the Great Fire of Thessaloniki and the reconstruction afterwards which displaced the Jewish community.Glenny, Misha. The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804–1999. pp. 348–349 The Jewish communities of Athens, the islands and Epirus were integrated into Greek public life, while the picture was more complicated in the traditionally Ladino-speaking Thessaloniki community. Although the Greek Jewish community was used to Jewish-Christian tensions that often had origins in the economic rivalries, they were completely unprepared for the forms of anti-Semitism which had matured in Germany.Glenny, Misha. The Balkans. p. 512
