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September 26, 2003/Elul 29 5764, Vol. 56, No. 1
Views and voices recall Greek past
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
I remember my grandmother sitting in front of an open window with swirls of blue-black smoke curling above her head. She would puff on her Pall Mall, then neatly split a roasted and salted pumpkin seed between her teeth. Smoking, chewing on the pepitas, as she called them, she would speak to my sister and me, in the soft cadences of Ladino.
She might mix in a bit of English, the language of her adopted country or a few words of French, the language of her youth, with the ancient Spanish. That only added to the exotic appeal. Though we didn't understand much, we were entranced by the foreignness of it all, especially with the words that probably would feel as different in our mouths as the crunchy seeds in the dish on the sill.
And so, we grew up fascinated with the East, of faraway places like Salonika, a city in northern Greece, where the people ate strange foods and smoked strong cigarettes and softened consonants and elided vowels to make music in our ears. And so, I had always wanted to go there.
This summer I did.
We arrived, my husband and I, with little more than a couple of family names and a bit of family lore. My grandmother, we had been told, had come from a well-to-do family of rabbis. She had been educated at the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools and spoke Ladino and French. She came to the United States in the early part of the 20th century, a young girl alone. There she met and married my grandfather, a tall, handsome man, a Turk who worked as a fruit and vegetable peddler in New York City, and together they had six children, the eldest being my mother. The remainder of the family, left behind in what is now Greece and was once Turkey, perished in the Holocaust.
My grandmother's story, I am soon to learn, is not unique. In 1942, there were 78,000 Jews in Greece, 50,000 in Salonika; after the war that number had been diminished by 97 percent. Most of the Jews were Sephardic, of Spanish Jewish origin, many descendants of the Jews expelled from the Catholic Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, just as Christopher Columbus was making his way to America. The Jews, valued for their business acumen and commercial enterprise, were welcomed by the Ottoman Turks to Salonika, and other cities in the region. Jews have lived in Greece since ancient times, we learn during a visit to the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki (Salonika). Those early Jews, called Romaniotes, settled in the Ionian Islands, Athens and the center of Greece.
Other Ashkenazi Jews also immigrated to Greece in later years, but it was the influx of 20,000 Sephardic Jews (from the Hebrew Sefarad or Spain) to Salonika at the end of the 15th century that determined to a large extent the character of Greek Jewry. From the beginning, the tolerance of the Ottoman regime allowed Jewish life to flourish while integrating the new immigrants fully. Salonika is a port, located on the Thermaic Gulf, and trade was a significant part of its economy.
Jews soon dominated the shipping industry, while establishing themselves in a number of other commercial areas including textiles and printing as well as entering the professions of law and medicine. Ladino became the language of commerce, and the port was closed for the Sabbath. Salonika became known as "Madre of Israel," mother of Israel, for its strong Jewish presence. Jews lived throughout the city, from its hilly ramparts, to its seaside environs.
At its height, Salonika boasted more than 60 synagogues, scattered throughout the city, each constituting its own community with particular rituals and customs. Rabbinic discourse flourished, and the emphasis on learning and scholarship permeated Jewish life. The first Jewish newspaper, "El Lunar," was published in 1864 in Ladino; during the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century, we learn, 35 of the 73 newspapers published in Salonika are in Ladino. And numerous Jewish texts were published by the city's Jewish-owned printing presses.
Even when Salonika was annexed by the Greek state in 1912, the Jewish influence persisted. It was only in the ensuing years that the Jewish population dipped below the 50 percent mark and that economic adversity and political repression began to undermine the position of the Jews.
And so, we surmise, my grandmother was one of those who chose to leave her homeland, making her way to the United States where she had an aunt and uncle and various cousins. Others left for new lives in France, Italy and Israel and others remained behind.
Erika Perahia Zemour, the director of the Jewish museum in Salonika, is the daughter of parents who stayed, two of the now less than 50 Holocaust survivors in Salonika. She greets us at the beautiful new historical preserve, provides some background about the history of the Jews in Salonika, tells us a bit of her story and leaves us to wander. The exhibits are compelling, incorporating pictures, objects and words to convey the vast richness of Jewish life in the city, both the height of its grandeur and the depth of its loss.
Photographs capture the city of old, black and white scenes of the port, of the cemetery, destroyed by the Nazis, of rabbis in traditional Sephardic dress, of imposing synagogues and Jewish schools. There are wedding photos and graduation photos, portraits of venerable residents and snapshots of children in Purim costume. There is a wonderful collection of Judaica - an eye-catching black challah cover embroidered in gold, clogs made for the mikvah inlaid with mother of pearl, beautiful hand-lettered ketubot (religious marriage licenses) and a haggadah opened to the page which reads in Ladino, "Este anio aqui siervos. A el anio el vienen en Tierra de Israeal hijos foros," which translates, "This year we are served here. Next year as strong sons in the land of Israel."
But, as Zemour soberly reminds, 45,659 Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau within two years after the German occupation in 1941; a mere 1,500 returned.
We meet a few other Jews from the area at the museum. One gentleman assures me that my grandmother's maiden name - Gattegno - was indeed a common surname and in fact, was the name of a Jewish school. Zemour tells us that the community, now with only some 1,000 Jews, supports a Jewish elementary school and summer camp, a community center, two synagogues, a mikvah used for weddings and an old age home. There are clubs and activities for Jewish youth and adults, and there has been a resurgence of interest in Sephardic language and culture. At the Ladino Society, closed during the summer months, as are most of the Jewish organizations, members work at recovering their facility in the ancient language.
"We never spoke Ladino growing up," Zemour recalls of her childhood after the Shoah. "But now we are."
During our few days in Salonika, we walk the streets, admiring the Moorish architecture with its arches and domes and rounded windows looking out to the sea. We eat our fill of juicy, ripe tomatoes, crisp cucumbers and tiny pepper rings. We bite into traditional Bourikas, spinach filling encased in flaky pastry, and munch on roasted corn hot off the grill and sesame crusted pretzels sold on the street corners. And we strain as we walk along the waterfront, to catch even a few words of Ladino from the passerbys.
There are none.
Zemour describes the "experience of the void" and writes of what it is like to "die in one's own language."
Indeed.
I look out the window of my hotel at the waterfront below and wonder if this was how my grandmother felt when gazing out her window and speaking to us softly in that melodious tongue.
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