All roads lead to Rhodes

VIC ALHADEFF

This particular family reunion brought together members from all five continents to a place where the Jewish community had been decimated and where hundreds of this family’s members were murdered.

In reuniting on the Greek Island of Rhodes, it affirmed not only the family’s survival, but its exponential growth and emphasises the survival of the Jewish people.

There were 97 members of my family who converged on Rhodes in the Aegean Sea from centres ranging from Miami, Israel, Johannesburg and London to Los Angeles, Sydney, Seattle and Washington, DC.

The date – July 21. It was on this date in 1944 that 1 673 Rhodes Jews were marched from the Aviation Palace, where they had been incarcerated by German troops, to the harbour and placed on three dilapidated petrol-tankers.

In inhumane conditions, they were transported over the next 24 days to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where all but 151 were murdered by the Nazis.

During the reunion, we attended a solemn ceremony to mark their deportation with senior echelons of Rhodes’ civil society participating. Among them were the mayor, Fotis Chatzidiakos, the Chief of Police, a minister of the Greek Orthodox Church and a senior officer of the Rhodes Coastal Guard. Also, there was Israel’s Ambassador to Athens, Irit Ben-Abba, and leaders of the Greek Jewish community.

Yet, while the commemoration of the darkest chapter of our history necessarily informed the reunion, it did not exclusively provide its rationale.

That underpinning derived also from the rich history of Rhodes’ Jewry dating back 2 000 years and personalised by an extensive walking tour of the Jewish Quarter. We had an eye-opening introduction to the island’s extraordinary archives, housing a minefield of minutiae and detailing the story of its Jewish community, which reached 5 000 at its peak.

While walking the streets, we had a profound awareness that our family had done just that, swam at those beaches, strolled along these same cobbled alleyways and participated in services in the 400-year-old synagogue.

And it derived emotionally and powerfully from our sojourn to the Agla Hotel – site of the expansive family home – providing a moving moment of reflection that it was right here that our parents, our grandparents and for many among us, our great-grandparents, lived and flourished. It was from those four walls, they went out into the world and ultimately paved the way for all of us.

The fact that the reunion drew participants ranging in age from two months to 89 years, born in places as diverse as Peru and Libya, Jerusalem and Zaire, Cairo and Zimbabwe, underscored the poignancy of the three-day gathering.

It even included a public proposal of marriage – which, for the record, was accepted amid impromptu shrieks of joy.

Activities included previously-untold reminiscences about the family’s forebears, nostalgic reflections of the eight original Menasce siblings, a Greek cooking class, Ladino songs, yoga sessions and an early-morning jog along the beachfront.

They included a comprehensive presentation on the history of the island’s Jewish community and how the Holocaust impacted the Jews of Greece.

And they included a meeting with the mayor at which we proposed to inaugurate an annual march through the streets of Rhodes along the route the Jews were forced to take when being deported in 1944. This walk would culminate at the elegant Holocaust memorial in the Square of The Jewish Martyrs.

The march would take place every July 21 and would become an annual fixture on the island’s civic calendar. He committed to consider the proposal.

All told, a palpably enriching experience. A powerful pointer to the abiding imperative to pause, reflect on the past and integrate it into the present and the future. And an indelible reminder of the value of family.