The light of the Aegean spreads over Rhodes with the same clarity that once illuminated the narrow streets of its Jewish quarter, Juderia. Where the stones still remember the voices, the songs, the prayers, the celebrations of a community that lived for half a millennium on the island before being violently extinguished, in a journey of death. And yet, memory resists. Sometimes, for history to be reborn, one voice is enough - the voice of a woman who lived, survived, and after decades of silence, spoke.
On 8.11.2025, in the hall of a central hotel, which hosted the event of the Jewish Community of Rhodes for the presentation of Michael Frank's book "One Hundred Sabbaths" (Ikaros Publications, translated by Spyros Koulouris), memories and emotions were awakened as the life of Holocaust survivor Stella Levi began to unfold. The testimony of a life, the narrative of a woman who carries more than a century behind her and continues to illuminate the darkness of History with the sobriety of memory and her mental strength.
The book was “born” from a chance encounter in New York. There, author Michael Frank met Stella Levi - then 92 years old, now 103 - at a lecture at New York University’s Casa Italiana. A simple conversation, a smile, and then an invitation: to help her edit a speech about life in the Jewish Quarter of Rhodes. Neither of them could have imagined that this would be the first of a hundred Saturdays they would spend together.
Through these hundred Saturdays, Stella unfolds her life as a fairy tale and testimony at once: from the sunny island of her childhood paradise, to the nightmares of the concentration camps, and then to New York, as one of only 150 surviving Jews of Rhodes. A modern-day Scheherazade of Greenwich Village, who narrates not to earn her own living, but to give life to the memory of others.
Juderia and the palimpsest of memory
Assistant Professor of History of Jewish Communities at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, George Antoniou, opened the event with words full of enthusiasm about “one of the most impressive and influential books” he read this year and highlighted the delicate balance between historical truth and emotional memory: “This book, like good literature, reconstructs the past through fragments, to ultimately arrive at an approach that manages not only not to betray the historical past but also to highlight it in a multi-layered and deeper way than the transcription of an oral history. On a first level, it is the history of Juderia. "As much as it is this, it is also a gendered story of a Jewish girl's coming of age, of dilemmas, dreams, flirtations, the battle between tradition and introversion, the roles of the good daughter but also of independence," she said characteristically, recalling that Juderia was not just a place, but a way of life, a complex of voices and experiences. And that Frank's book manages to resurrect not only the space, but also the mental landscape of an era that was extinguished in the most violent way.
Postwar, Stella Levi vehemently refuses to confine herself to the image of a Holocaust victim. As the assistant professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki characteristically stated, "realizing the trap of her confinement to the Stella of the Holocaust, without ideas and perspectives. There is no doubt that the narrative of the camps is a compromise between herself and the author. In order to tell him what she wants, she is forced to tell him what she does not want. She herself wants to talk about what Stella was ultimately. She was not the Stella of the camps...".
The female voice and the act of memory
Dr. Xenia Eleftheriou, scientific director of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, focused on the voice of the woman that permeates the work - a voice that simultaneously becomes testimony, resistance and an act of self-determination: "An important element of the book is the testimony of a female voice, a female victim of the Holocaust who integrates the book into gender studies. The role of women in the local community of Rhodes is highlighted, the importance of women's education and the formation of a feminist model through the figure of Stella's liberal sister, Felice. Stella, as an emancipated woman, opposes the traditional mentality of arranged marriage and the preparation of a dowry, showing the ability of women to challenge stereotypes and claim rights and autonomy in the 20th century," she emphasized. "One Hundred Saturdays," noted Dr. Eleftheriou, "is not just the micro-history of an entire Jewish family of Rhodes or yet another testimony. It is a resurrection of the community of Rhodes, a journey through memory and time, a memorial service for those who were lost and a tribute to human dignity, survival, solidarity and the continuation of historical, religious and social tradition through the actions of Stella Levi and her relatives. Saturday, a day of light and rest, reminds us that as long as we remember, the Rhodes of the Sephardim lives in the collective memory and in our hearts."
The power of storytelling and the responsibility of memory
Journalist and author Kostas Stoforos focused on the structure and style of the book, but also on the miracle of human memory that, even after a hundred years of life, keeps the essence of life pure: "The book with short chapters - perhaps corresponding to Saturdays - unfolds the whole story in an extraordinary way. You feel as if all this, beautiful and horrible, comes to life before your eyes. And you are impressed by what the memory of this woman who is now over 100 years old and has never stopped feeling exiled since that July 1944."
In closing, Stoforos read an excerpt from the book's epilogue, which summarizes the entire spirit of the work and the author's relationship with the witness: "I did my best to investigate the factual basis of Stella's memories. The majority of them seem to align with historical data. When there is uncertainty or discrepancy, I have chosen to remain faithful to Stella, because I have learned to trust the emotional and psychological truth of her experiences and because she has remembered and chosen to speak about these experiences. Memory is not history. It is the perception of a person in a particular life of what they have experienced, and this book is offered with this idea and in this spirit."
Memory as redemption
As the event came to a close, the room seemed to pulsate with a silence that was not just emotion, but respect. "One Hundred Saturdays" is not just a book of testimony. It is a dialogue between two souls, two eras, two worlds - the one that was lost and the one that insists on remembering.
Stella Levi, at 103 years old, continues to live in New York. From Greenwich Village, where every Saturday she told Michael Frank the stories of Rhodes, she sends a message beyond time and death: that memory, when told with honesty and love, can become light.
And perhaps, indeed, this is the secret of The Hundred Saturdays: that in the narrative the soul survives. As long as one listens, as long as one remembers, Scheherazade of Rhodes continues to speak.
The last time Stella Levi visited Rhodes was in 2019. She wishes to return to Rhodes for the "last journey" so that her body can return to the land of her birth, according to the director of the Jewish Community of Rhodes and her close friend Carmen Cohen.