The Jews Of Rhodes

Rhodes and the Holocaust is the story of La Juderia, the Jewish community that once lived and flourished on Rhodes Island, the largest of the twelve Dodecanese islands in the Mediterranean Sea near the coast of Turkey. While the focus of the accounts of the Holocaust has for the most part been on the Jewish populations of Eastern and Middle Europe, little seems to be known of the events that affected those communities in Greece and the surrounding Aegean Islands during that time. The population of this group was almost annihilated, reduced from a thriving community of over 80,000, to less than a 1,000 survivors, who were left to tell their stories. Among the victims of Rhodes Island were the grandmother and aunt of the author, who were killed by falling bombs, and his grandfather, who was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. This history tells of the deceit and inhuman treatment the entire Jewish community of Rhodes experienced during their deportation and eventual liberation by the Russian Army. The heart-wrenching story of the Rhodes Jewish community is told through the experiences of a thirteen-year-old boy, taken by the Nazis to Auschwitz along with his father and his eleven-year-old sister.; Most of all, Rhodes and the Holocaust makes known the story of that communitys existence and struggle for survival.

Franco was born in 1875 in Rhodes and died in 1953 in Rhodesia; he wrote these memoirs in 1947, in French, and published them in the Belgian Congo in 1952. He served as president of the Jewish community of Rhodes and Cos between 1925-36. The memoirs describe events in the community between 1936-44. The first signs of trouble for the Jews in these Italian-controlled territories appeared in 1936. In September 1938 the racial laws against the Jews were promulgated in Italy, including restrictions on the Jews of the islands, and rescinding of their Italian citizenship; these were followed by an order of expulsion. Franco travelled to Italy and then to France, where he appealed to the Alliance Israélite Universelle to assist in having the order revoked. It was revoked, but between 1938-43 ca. 2,250 Jews emigrated. There were 1,767 Jews in the islands when the Germans occupied them in September 1943. In July 1944 most of the Jews were deported to Auschwitz or for forced labor. Only 151 survived. Pp. 72-118 contain lists of the Jews of Rhodes and Cos at the time of the German occupation, including those murdered by the Nazis and those who survived.

For the sizeable Jewish community living in Greece during the 1940s, German occupation of Greece posed a distinct threat. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered around ninety percent of the Jewish population through the course of the war. This new account presents cutting edge research on four elements of the Holocaust in Greece: the level of antisemitism and question of collaboration; the fate of Jewish property before, during, and after their deportation; how the few surviving Jews were treated following their return to Greece, especially in terms of justice and restitution; and the ways in which Jewish communities rebuilt themselves both in Greece and abroad. Taken together, these elements point to who was to blame for the disaster that befell Jewish communities in Greece, and show that the occupation authorities alone could not have carried out these actions to such magnitude without the active participation of Greek Christians.

Meze & salads -- Soups, stews & braises -- Fish -- Gratins, fritters & egg dishes -- Stuffed vegetables -- Meat & poultry -- Rice pilafs & noodles -- Savoury pastries & breads -- Sweet treats & beverages.

In Masters of Death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’s role in the Holocaust. These “special task forces,” organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943, often by shooting them into killing pits, as at Babi Yar. These massive crimes have been generally overlooked or underestimated by Holocaust historians, who have focused on the gas chambers. In this painstaking account, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes profiles the eastern campaign’s architects as well as its “ordinary” soldiers and policemen, and helps us understand how such men were conditioned to carry out mass murder. Marshaling a vast array of documents and the testimony of perpetrators and survivors, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and World War II.

Students and teachers of Yiddish studies will enjoy this innovative collection.

From the young age of 9 on the Aegean island of Rhodes, Clara Barki started writing to her uncle Ralph and aunty Rachel Capeluto in the far-away place known as Seattle, Wash. This smart and determined young woman, who was always at or near the top of her class, used the dying language of Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino, to report news of the relatives Ralph left behind on Rhodes and the happenings of her Sephardic Jewish community. But what started as friendly letters quickly turned to desperate pleas for help as life for the Jews of Rhodes deteriorated under the control of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who allied with Adolph Hitler. Forgotten and never thought of again, Clara's letters turned up more than 60 years after they were written and after she, Ralph and Rachel had passed away. Preserved and translated from Ladino into English, they paint a vivid and detailed 16-year story of how one family triumphed and survived after they became refugees and rode the roller coaster of successes and failures to legally win permission to immigrate to the United States. This compelling story of perseverance, determination, love and grit is brought to life in A Hug From Afar, a historical narrative nonfiction memoir that journalist Cynthia Flash Hemphill has edited and compiled based on the letters written by her mother Clara Barki (aka Barkey) from 1930 to 1946. "A Hug from Afar reads like a suspense novel-only it's a true story, and it feels as though it's your family caught up in a tale of hope and fear, frustration and happiness, family ties that reach across continents and over decades, and an American immigration bureaucracy working to make family reunification as difficult as possible, " Paul Burstein, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science, and Stroum Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies, University of Washington, wrote in a pre-publication commentary on the book. The book goes far beyond one family's story. It captures the history of the Sephardic Jews on the Island of Rhodes, descendants of Spanish Jews exiled during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. The book "gives voice to a now-lost Jewish community on the verge of annihilation, to a Jewish family seeking asylum, and to one young woman who initiated a thread of correspondence with relatives in the United States that would ultimately solidify her family's escape from the Nazis," writes Devin E. Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, University of Washington, in a detailed and compelling foreword to the book. "The story itself is not only captivating and powerful on its own, but is also of great historical and cultural significance," Naar writes. "Too seldom do we have access to the perspectives of women in history, even fewer with regard to young women, and very few when it comes to the Sephardic Jewish world. While we know of Anne Frank and her diary, we have almost no sources composed by Sephardic Jewish girls or young women describing their experiences regarding the rise of fascism and the onset of the Second World War." The book uses 16 years worth of letters and official documents to take the reader through a detailed journey of exile, community annihilation, dashed hopes, and real-life drama seen through the eyes of a young woman forced to grow up too quickly as she desperately worked to save her family from Hitler's efforts to destroy the Jews. As she put this book together, Flash Hemphill reflected on the many themes it offers. "It touches on the Holocaust and includes two surviving and aging family members who are still alive and well today," she said. "It centers on the topic of immigration, a hot subject today as our country debates this important issue. And it raises the question about how family histories will be preserved in the future, now that we have moved away from formal, hand-written letters to the instant and quickly discarded forms of today's communication - e-mail, texts and tweets."