Dodecanese over the islands. As a legacy of its former status as a jurisdiction separate from Greece, it is still considered a separate "entity" for amateur radio purposes, essentially maintaining its status as an independent country "on the air." Amateur Radio call signs in the Dodecanese begin with the prefix SV5 instead of SV for Greece. The 70th anniversary of the incorporation of the Dodecanese within Greece was marked in 2017, with the Greek Parliament holding a special celebratory session for the event. Today, Rhodes and the Dodecanese are popular travel destinations. The Dodecanese Prefecture was one of the prefectures of
Dodecanese During World War II, Italy joined the Axis Powers, which used the Dodecanese as a naval staging area for their invasion of Crete in 1941. After the surrender of Italy in September 1943, the islands briefly became a battleground between the Germans and Allied forces, including the Italians. The Germans prevailed in the Dodecanese Campaign, and although they were driven out of mainland Greece in 1944, the Dodecanese remained occupied until the end of the war in 1945, during which time nearly the entire Jewish population of 6,000 was deported and killed. Only 1,200 of these Ladino-speaking Jews survived by