Reflections on the Juderia: Remembering, Memory-Making, and History in the “Lost World” of Jewish Rhodes

Focusing on survivor interviews and testimonies, this chapter offers a critical reflection on how narratives of Jewish life in the Juderia of Rhodes before its destruction in July 1944 at the hands of the Nazis have contributed to the creation of nostalgia for a “lost world.” It argues that this spatially bounded nostalgia is the result of both suggested and constructed memory that frequently skew the everyday lived experience of Jews and their relationship to the Italian administration of the island. Its counterfoil can be found in archival sources that present a world of social tensions, material struggles, and discrimination.