Des Sépharades aux Juifs grecs. Histoire, mémoire et identité

Dr. Odette Varon-Vassard, Jewisch Museum of Greece

The fruit of many years of research, Dr. Varon-Vassard’s book revisits and reconstructs the history of the Sephardi Jews from Spain who settled in the Ottoman Empire after 1492. As Salonica and a few other Ottoman cities in the region became important centers of Sephardi Jewry, the identity of those Jews was constantly renegotiated. Spanish Jews subsequently became Sephardim in exile, Ottoman Jews and then citizens of the states that succeeded the Ottoman Empire.

Responding to the comments provided by the discussants Dr. Dimitrios Varvaritis and Lida Maria Dodou (University of Vienna), the author will present her work for the first time in Vienna. She will trace the process of Sephardi identity transformation along the centuries, until WWII, the memories of engagement in the Resistance and fight for survival in hiding for the minority and the memory of deportation and extermination for the majority - a memory that remained repressed for a long time to reemerge in Greece only recently, during the last quarter of a century.

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