The Holocaust devastated so many Jewish communities, through both their living inhabitants and often their living memory as well. In most locales that hosted Jews prior to the murder of their Jewish populations, much of their history was lost with the deaths of the communities. In much of Europe, the decades after the war were an extension of the murder, through the destruction of the memory of their Jews, at times under government direction, and at others mostly by apathy. An archive that I recently acquired of correspondence written in Ladino in the interwar period is an example of one man’s foresight and intense efforts before the Holocaust of documenting one community’s history and records.
Rabbi Dr. Isaac Samuel Emmanuel was born in Salonica in 1899, his mother passing away in labor. Active in community affairs and organizations, he was a founder of the local Mizrahi and Chibat Zion movements. Emmanuel received ordination at the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary in the 1920s, after which he received a doctorate at Lucerne University. From 1936, he served as rabbi of the Sephardic congregation in Curacao, a Dutch Caribbean Island, with an old and storied Jewish community. He later served as rabbi in Panama, Brazil, and finally in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he passed away in 1972.
In this correspondence written by Emmanuel and family members in Salonica and Curacao, familial matters are interspersed with much important historical material and records. Emmanuel would go on to write Histoire de l’industrie des Israelites de Salonique (1935); Gedolei Saloniki le-Dorotam (1936), 500 epitaphs of the Jewish cemetery of Salonika with biographical notes; Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao (1957); and Maẓẓevot Saloniki (2 vols., 1963–68). Emmanuel meticulously recorded all the old tombstones in Salonica as well as Curacao’s cemeteries, completing his efforts in Salonica just before the devastation brought on by the Nazis. Over 90% of Salonica’s Jews, numbering some 50,000 Jews, were murdered by the Nazis, the majority upon their arrival in the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.
Following the war, Salonica’s few survivors mostly dispersed and only a small remnant remained. “The cemetery was ultimately destroyed in December 1942 by the municipality of Thessaloniki as part of the Holocaust in Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece. The headstones were used as building materials around the city, including for Greek Orthodox churches, while the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was built on the grounds. The Jewish community never received compensation for the expropriation of the land, valued at 1.5 billion drachmas in 1943.”
