Academic book review: The lost world of Rhodes, by Nathan Shachar

There is a special fascination of the South-Eastern European areas, often praised as paradises and melting pots of multicultural worlds and at the first layer view the things are always so: where else can you find such a wide diversity of cultures, languages and histories, all brought together in the same pot? On the other hand, the multiculturalism is rather the consequence of various policies and historical occurrences, political abuses and accidents of all sorts.

The lost worlds of Rhodes is from this point of view an interesting read. Constructed with the acribic fervour of the historian and with the final touch of the curious journalist, it succeed to bring back to life an unknown world of ethnic identities and diversities, mostly centered around the fate - tragic, as always - of the Jewish communities. 

Literary fantasies and raw realities

The book reviews mostly the last two centuries, but with a long view on the variety of historical traces left by different empires and reigns. The fascination with the Mediterranean spaces is long and will hardly cease to exist, but through the literature, mostly travel books, it created a certain parallel world, not necessarily fit to the immediate reality: 'their penchant for regarding the most quotidian phenomena as echoes and reflections of eternal Attic, Etruscan and Minoic harmonies, bred a seductive illusion of a Mediterranean firmly moulded to its glorious past; of a world when the gestures, habits and arts of present-day farmers, water carriers and politicians were taken straight from a schoolboy lexicon of mythical, architectural and poetic references. Such a mindset may become quite a drag of understanding, once you start to wonder about how these societies now spread out over the classical map really function'. (pp.6-7) 

The big sin of many literary descriptions is the avoidance of everything that must trouble the beautiful aesthetic balance - 'there are times when the studied avoidance of brute realities becomes bad taste' (p.7). One example given by the author is Durrell who avoided to mention anything about the Jewish heritage because, he assumes 'it would have ruined the setting for his light hearted aquarello musings' (p. 8)

Under the cultures

France has written a long 'love story' with the minorities from the South-Eastern part of Europe, especially with the Jewish communities. Through Alliance Israelite Universelle, the young Jews were learned not only a language, but also a mental system that intermediate the transfer of modern ideas about citizenship and secularism. Many Jews will be tempted and will either abandon their cultures, mostly moulded after the Sephardi society patterns, or Rhodes altogether, looking for a wider horizon outside. The Zionist ideas did not enter this world before WWI, except Bulgarian and Salonika. However, it seems that the French influences were rather superficial when it was about real support for the French policies and this is mostly available when we think about the failed colonial policies in North of Africa where Paris left almost intact educational systems and the hope of the French citizenship, but without a real 'patriotic' attachment to the political France. 

Regardless of the historical circumstances, the Sephardi world of Rhodes, created following the expulsion from Spain in 1492, indicated serious convulsions and predicted geopolitical resettlements. 

And then, there were the Italians and the Germans coming up, that put an end to the diversity through cultural assimilation and racial policies. 

Although a Holocaust memorial of the old Juderia (the Jewish quarter) was inaugurated in the summer of 2002, the full history of the Jewish community in Rhodes is still to be written. The coming of nearly 10,000 Germans brought the murder of 1,769 Jews. Some of them already left, for Latin America, USA, Africa - in Congo, for instance, they contributed to the consolidation of the state - or Israel. Only 160 survived and most of them left the country shortly after. At a certain point, I was expecting more about the fate of Sephardi Jews in Rhodes, maybe a dedicated full chapter.

Layers of memory

What is interesting from the point of view of the methodology is the mix between journalistic tools and investigations and numerous personal observations following visits on place, and the historical references. It seems to be the best recommendation for reading correctly the different memory layers of the coexistence: 'Each location had its very own background noise of recent and distant memories, suspicions and passions, its own parochial blend of prejudice and tolerance, reason and unreason'. (p. 184)

The travel memoir and historical scholarly observations alternate, but not always the dosage is the right one which might make the reader confused between subjective assumptions and doct references. But this confusion can be the result of the profile of the place as such: 'Inter-ethnic routines in multifaceted cultural settings are always less clear-cut than the categories of social history will reveal'. (p. 185)

The methodological choice is interesting and looks as the only available option, but can be dangerous for the exquisiteness of the historical discourse. Valuable is the repertoire of personal interviews made with former inhabitants of the Juderia, nowadays spread from all over the world. 

Despite some ups and downs, the books is an interesting read for the Jewish historian and the historian interested in the modern history of South-Eastern Europe, as well as in minority issues. 

For me, it created an interest for further investigations of the topic and the book has a long list of bibliographical recommendations that will help me further.