Un grito en el silencio: La poesía sobre el Holocausto en lengua sefardí: Estudio y antología (review)

In Un grito en el silencio, Shmuel Refael, child of Greek survivors of the Holocaust, writes, "My destiny and the history of the Holocaust seem to be intermingled … forever" (11). Refael's life was not an easy one, for he lived the tragedy suffered by his own parents and the Sephardic communities of the old Ottoman Empire. He had firsthand knowledge of the oral and written narratives and poems created both by survivors and those who were safe mainly in Palestine. He strongly felt their fate and was overwhelmed by their haunting testimonies. Throughout the work we see a connection between the experiences of the survivors and the emotional struggle of their children and of those who came later and wrote about it.

Though the story of the Ashkenazim and the Holocaust is well known and countless works have been published in many languages, Shmuel Refael rightfully remarks,

The Holocaust always was for me natural and evident … unlike the lack of knowledge among the people who surrounded me [in my infancy in Israel] … for them the descendents of the "Oriental" or "Sephardim" were not considered part of the national narrative of the Holocaust. This intent to deprive me from an inherited characteristic of my own identity … or from the community of the Sephardim and their glorious history, did not give me peace for many years.

(11)

What disturbs Refael, as it does this reviewer, is the realization of the strong desire by the survivors to obliterate from their minds an important yet horrifying personal experience, which was vividly, as if with strangled cries, conveyed to us. Their silence was the result of suffering the catastrophe as if in isolation for many years. Their voices were frozen and could not express the horrors they witnessed.¹ Refael questions why the works of the Judeo-Spanish authors, who were inspired by the experiences of the Sephardim, traumatic as they were, were not included in anthologies in Israel or abroad (18–19).²

All this is the nucleus of Shmuel Refael's work. His mission is to be the voice of those who perished in the death camps, of the survivors, many of whom are still haunted by their experiences, and of the poets who expressed the unquenchable memories of the ordeal. Refael asks the excruciating question as to why 160,000 of his Sephardic brethren came to be swept up in this horror.

Refael embarked on a long and traumatic investigation. The thoroughness of his research shines through. The poetry is strong, engrossing, and very personalized. His anthology is a compelling collection of 108 poems and one biographical narrative by 42 authors, and some previously unpublished poems that he obtained from survivors, mainly those from Salonika. The introduction and the first two sections of the book deal with a comprehensive study of the place of the Sephardim vis-à-vis the Ashkenazim in Israel and the literary production in Judeo-Spanish as opposed to that in Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages. The corpus of poetry and commentaries were composed orally in labor camps and in death camps. Later these creative works were collected by researchers or appeared in obscure journals and newspapers. Some were published in sophisticated monumental writings. All described the horrors in the camps, the deep sense of despair over seeing their lost communities, great centers of Judaism devoid of their people, their language, their way of life. Finally with the eventual affirmation, they proclaimed the survival of the Jewish people.

The collection is a valuable exposure of Sephardic sensibilities and responses to the catastrophe. A young Israeli, Nitsa Dori, in her poem, "No mos contés más de trenos" ["Do Not Tell Us Any More about Trains"], expresses her unwillingness to hear any more about the tragedy:³

Do not tell us any more about trainsnor about the camps,at least...