The Jewish community of Alexandroupolis was one of the first of the city and followed the entire course of the city’s history. The Jews of Alexandroupolis were Sephardic Jews and came mostly from Edirne, Thessaloniki, Istanbul, Sofia and other places. They lived in the centre of the city and when the Synagogue was built in 1903, on Mazaraki Street, the Jewish community was gathered around it.
Their presence in the city suddenly stopped on the night of March 3, 1943 when along with every Jew of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia were arrested by the German-Bulgarian army and sent to Nazi concentration camps where they were brutally killed. Only two families that had fled the city before the arrest of the rest of the Jewish community survived and returned to Alexandroupolis.
In the city they worked as fabric and glass merchants and some as moneychangers. They lived around the Synagogue which was the religious and cultural centre of their community located on Mazaraki Street.