Sephardic victims
memorialized at Auschwitz
Rachel Amado Bortnick
Between 20 March and 28 April of 1943,
thirteen transports brought 32,953 Jews from Salonica, Greece, to
Auschwitz. By August 18 of the same
year 48,533 people from that city had come to this camp of misery and death,
marking the end of the largest Jewish community in the Balkans, known as “the Mother of Israel”.. In
all, 54,533 Jews from Greece, including from the Aegean islands, were deported
to Auschwitz, few survived.1 These were Sephardic Jews,
descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492; their language was
Judeo-Spanish (also called Ladino), and therefore, in the concentration camps
they could understand neither their German tormentors, nor the Yiddish-speaking
fellow prisoners. Thousands more
Sephardic Jews from various European countries died in Auschwitz as well. The Holocaust destroyed all the Jewish
centers of Greece, Thrace, Macedonia, and the Aegean islands, where the daily
Jewish language was Ladino.
On March 24, 2003, coincidentally the 60th anniversary
to the day of the arrival of the second transport from Salonica, Ladino was
heard once again within the gates of Auschwitz, as more than 150 Sepharadim
arrived from France, the United States, Turkey, Greece, and Israel, to attend,
along with other Jews and non-Jews, a special unveiling ceremony of a plaque in
Ladino at the Memorial Monument of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The event was the final achievement of
JEAA (Judéo-Espagnol A Auschwitz) an organization based in Paris, France,
formed three years ago with the specific objective of installing a plaque in
Ladino at this monument, where memorial inscriptions in twenty other languages
already existed on the plaques, large granite flagstone laid like a row of
tombstones in front of the massive dark
sculpture.
The permanent
monument was installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1967. The omission of the Sephardic language
had not come to anyone’s attention until March, 2000, when Professor Haim Vidal
Sephiha, Holocaust Survivor and Professor Emeritus Chair of Judeo-Spanish at the
Sorbonne, came back to Auschwitz, “this land of nightmares”, for the first time
in 55 years to, to record a program for French radio on the Holocaust. Outrage added to his pain when he
observed the omission of the language of his own family and people. Within a few months, JEAA was
organized, with Professor Sephiha as President, and co-founder Dr. Michel Azaria
as vice-President. JEAA launched an international petition, which was signed by
individuals and organizations in 48 countries. In September, 2001, Dr. Azaria presented
a memorandum to the International Auschwitz Council, which eventually decided to
permit the installation of the additional plaque. Jerzy Wroblewski, Director of the State
Museum of Auschwitz , collaborated with Dr. Azaria to finalize the date and
organization of the unveiling ceremony.
Most of the people that came for the occasion were from
France. Only fourteen of us came
from the United States - from Chicago, New York, Washington, and I alone from
Dallas. Stella Levi was with us
from New York. She had made her
only previous journey to Auschwitz in 1944, deported with her parents and sister
from her native island of Rhodes.
Her parents killed immediately upon arrival, she and her sister had spent
five hellish months at Auschwitz-Birkenau before being sent to other camps. Sephardic folk singer and song-writer
Flory Jagoda was also in our group.
Ms. Jagoda, a native of Sarajevo, Bosnia, had come to the United States
just before war with her parents, but her relatives in her hometown perished in
the Shoah. (60,000 Jews were killed
in the former Yugoslavia.)
In the days before the ceremony, we were in Krakow, the nearest
city to Auschwitz, together with Professor Sephiha, Michel Azaria, and others,
including two more Survivors: Ya’akov Handeli2, a native of Salonica,
who came from Israel, and Marceline Loridan-Ivens3, from Paris. Iakov
Benmayor, Vice-President of the Jewish Community of Salonica, and Child of a
Survivor, was there as well. . At
the ceremony, Mr. Benmayor gave the only allocution entirely in Ladino. Twenty-four people came from Turkey,
some of them reporters for the Istanbul Jewish weekly, Shalom. It was like a Sephardic convention, with
planned cultural programs. Most
importantly, chatting together in Ladino made us feel like one family.
On the morning of the ceremony we went on buses to Auschwitz,
about an hour and a half away from Krakow,
picking up on the way 147 additional people who had arrived on a
JEAA-chartered plane from Paris, among whom were high school students, a group
of French Children of Holocaust Survivors, and Serge and Beate Klarsfeld (the
famous “Nazi Hunters”.) In groups
we toured the camps of Auschwitz I and the much larger Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
five kilometers apart. We had
professional guides, and the images of what we saw are indelible in our minds
and souls, but it was the memories that our Survivors shared with us - specific
horrors and degradations in specific places - that intensified the emotions we
felt.
We gathered for the ceremony in front of the Memorial Monument,
located at the end of the main road from the entrance. The first plaque on the
left was covered with a blue cloth.
This was where the English plaque used to be; it had now been installed
at the other side of the extended platform, appropriately apart from the others,
as was explained, because English was not one of the languages spoken by the
victims. The inscriptions in the
languages on the plaques were translations of the English text, which reads:
Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to
humanity, where the Nazis murdered one and a half million men, women, and
children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe - Auschwitz-Birkenau
1940-1945.
The crowd grew with journalists, photographers and film-makers,
invited dignitaries, and people who
happened to be at the camp.
The multi-lingual and emotionally-charged ceremony, presided over
by Michel Azaria, began at four o’clock that chilly afternoon. Jerzy Wroblewski, Director of the
State Museum of Auschwitz, gave the welcoming greeting in English. Simone Veil, Holocaust Survivor,
president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, former President of the European
Parliament, and member of the French Conseil Constitutionnel (equivalent
to the U.S. Supreme Court), gave the opening speech in French. Haim Vidal Sephiha spoke next, recalling
with great emotion and eloquence how this day had come about, and about his love
for the language of his ancestors; Iakov Benmayor emphasized how of all the
calamities that had befallen the Jews, and Sephardic Jews in particular, the
Holocaust was the most devastating.
Shevah WEISS, Israel ambassador in Poland; Siria Lopez, Consul General of the
United States in Krakow; Michel Raineri, French Consul General in Krakow; Stefan
Wilkanowicz, Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Council -- each in
turn gave respect to the victims, appreciated JEAA and expressed pleasure that the plaque in
Judeo-Spanish had become a reality.
Jo Wasjblatt, Survivor, chanted the memorial prayer El
Maleh Rahamim and Raphy Marcianio, Director of the Paris Jewish
Community Center, recited the Kaddish. (They replaced Sephardic Rabbi
Daniel Farhi of Paris, who was unable to attend.) Flory Jagoda sang a moving rendition of
Arvoles Yoran por Luvias , a
song popular among the Sepharadim in the camps particularly because of its
refrain “En tierras ajenas yo me vo murir” (In strange lands I shall
die.).
Then came the highlight: in complete silence and anticipation Elie
Perahya, from the Jewish community of Turkey, and Serge Klarsfeld pulled up the
blue cloth, photographers rushing to record the moment. The text was revealed,
and, as all the other plaques, it was inscribed in capital letters:
KE ESTE LUGAR, ANDE LOS NAZIS
EKSTERMINARON UN MILYON
I
MEDYO DE OMBRES,
DE MUJERES I DE KRIATURAS,
LA MAS PARTE DJUDYOS
DE
VARYOS PAYIZES DE LA EVROPA,
SEA PARA SYEMPRE,
PARA LA UMANIDAD,
UN
GRITO DE DEZESPERO
I UNAS SINYALES
AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU
1940 -
1945
N.B.
1
The figures were taken from the book, The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel
Bennahmias, Sonder-komando, by Rebecca Camhi Fromer. (1993: University of Alabama
Press.)
2
Ya’akov Handeli has written his
memoirs in a book, A Greek Jew from Salonica Remembers, with an
Introduction by Elie Wiesel, published recently in English by Hertzl Press, New
York.
3
Ms. Loridan-Ivens has made a film, to be released soon, on the return of a
Survivor to Auschwitz. Its title,
“La Petite Prairie aux Bouleaux”
refers to the grove of birch trees from which the Birkenau gets its
name.