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79 years ago in July, a once thriving community of Jews was rounded up and deported from the islands by Nazis and their collaborators and sent to Auschwitz where the majority were killed on arrival in mid-August in what has become known as the Holocaust or Shoah. Rhodes and Kos had been home to Jews since biblical times. By the early 20th century, the community numbered around 4,000, although at the time of the deportation their number had been halved through emigration. Today there are still physical signs of the Jewish community, and evidence of their lives can be found in the Dodecanesian archives. What story does this evidence tell about everyday Jewish life in Rhodes and Kos? How did the survivors of the Nazi camps recall their pre-Holocaust life? What did their relations to Italians, Greeks and Turks look like? How did the Jewish community fit in the wider world of the Mediterranean? These are some of the questions a panel of expert scholars will explore in the workshops.
This interdisciplinary public event is organised by Prof. Anthony McElligott, emeritus professor of history, University of Limerick in collaboration with the Jewish Community of Rhodes, the Hellenic State Archives of the Dodecanese, the Department of Anthropology, University of the Aegean, and the Department of Geography, Aix-Marseille University.
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