This book is neither an academic monograph nor a novel, or a biography. Rather, it is the story of the Jewish community (Juderia) on the Italian (now Greek) island of Rhodes, that had existed there for ages until it was destroyed by the German occupation forces in July 1944. The Jewish community in Rhodes were Judeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardic Italian Jews, who referred to themselves as Rhodeslis. On 23 July 1944, its 1,700 members were transported to the port of Piraeus, passed through the prison of Haidari, and ended up in the Nazi’s Auschwitz extermination camp. Most of the community’s members were murdered. One of the very few survivors was Stella Levi. She was 92 years old when writer Michael Frank met her at Casa Italiana of the Department of Italian Studies at New York University in February 2015. Over the next six years, the author would spend “100 Saturdays” talking with Stella about her childhood, her youth, the everyday life in the Juderia, and about her survival in Auschwitz. This book is the result of this series of talks. It is a vivid and moving testament to life in the Juderia.

            At first, Stella does  not want to talk about the issue of Auschwitz. Why not?

“Because I don’t want to be that person.”

She has never wanted to be a performing survivor, a storyteller of the Holocaust, ossified, with no new thoughts pr perspectives, or with this event placed so central, too central, in a long, layered life. (p. 8)

Rhodes became Italian, first, in 1912 because of the Italo-Turkish war, and again in 1923 with the Second Treaty of Lausanne. In fact, since ancient times, Italy had no connection to the Island. Then, it became part of Italy’s attempt to emulate other European nations in having colonies, which would lead them to Libya and Ethiopia. With the Italians came improvements of the island’s infrastructure and modern health care. Afterwards, in 1938, however, the Italians followed the example of Nazi Germany by promulgating racial laws.

Under the racial laws her [Stella’s] father was constrained to sell his wood and coal business to a new—Italian—owner, effectively becoming the man’s employee. They did less and less business and took in less and less money. The family’s finances began to undergo an alarming downturn. (p. 75)

Stella was forced to leave school; she was 15 years old at that time.

“Quite honestly, I am what I am from the racial laws. Being kicked out of school was the greatest possible humiliation. This experience formed me, you might say malformed me.” (p. 86)

In September 1943, Rhodes came under German administration. In the spring of 1944, the British bombed the island. The members of the Juderia were rounded up on 19 July 1944 via being ordered to report themselves at an airfield. The Italians had prepared this German action by preparing list of the Jews living on Rhodes. The deportees arrived at Auschwitz on 16 August 1944 (p.127). “Speaking in Judeo-Spanish, they [prisoners at the ramp] whispered, ‘Give the babies to the old people.’ ‘But why,” Stella asked one of them, ‘when the old people are so tired?’” (p. 128). They wanted to give their mothers a chance to live, because old people and young children were murdered in the gas chambers right away. Stella’s parents and others did not survive this “selection,” while Stella, sister Renée and Cousin Sara were registered as prisoners. Stella got a tattoo with the number A24409. On the third day, she was transferred to Birkenau. She was in a group of five: sisters, cousin, and two acquaintances. Slowly, they began to understand that their parents and relatives had been murdered on arrival already.

“Very early on, almost from the beginning, something curious happened. I detached myself from the Stella who was in Auschwitz. It was as if everything that was happening to her was happening to a different Stella, not the Stella I was, not the Stella from Rhodes, the Stella I knew. I watched this person, this other Stella, as she walked through this desert, but I was not this person. There was no other way.” (p. 132) The five young women survived a second selection in October 1944, for which they had to stand naked in front of a man. Afterwards, they were sent to the Kaufering sub-camp of Dachau. “Inmates died here, but they were not death camps so much as work camps” (p. 142) to help assembling German fighter aircraft. “As they were stepping onto the train, a German guard said to Madame Katz, ‘You may allow yourselves to hope now.’” (ibid.). Later, three of them were sent on to Türkheim (including Stella). With the Americans near already, the women were sent on a foot march to Allach. At that time, Stella was very ill with pleuritis. Renée saved her life by preventing Stella from resigning and letting her sister continue the march alone. She “pushed her forward, step by step, until three days later they reached their destination at Allach. Renée, Stella tells me, never again spoke about what she’d done. Not then, or afterward” (p. 151). They were also reunited with the other women of their group. At Allach, they woke up one morning to discover that all the German guards had left the camp.