Charles Michael Professor in Jewish History and Culture, Stanford University
September 17, 2015
4:15pm - 6:00pm
Hoffmann Room, Adolphus Busch Hall
The Jewish Community of the island of Rhodes followed a unique trajectory in the 20th century. Rhodes Jewry was the only community in the Levantine Judeo-Spanish world that did not become part of a successor state of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. Instead it was incorporated into a colonial Empire when Italy conquered the island in 1912. The Jews of Rhodes reoriented themselves politically, culturally and socially towards Italy in the following decades. The German army invaded the island in 1943. The Jewish community was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and perished there. A far-flung diaspora of Jews originating from Rhodes and their descendants has constructed a distinctive memory of the mother community that was destroyed in the Holocaust.
