5/13/2023 0 Comments White Devil by Stella Purple![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() wartime policies Burns describes: like Anne Frank’s father Otto, Stella’s father applied to emigrate to America, where several of Stella’s older siblings resided and like the Franks, the Levis were denied entry into the country, the explanation being that their family of four was too large. and the Holocaust,” the new Ken Burns documentary, I recognized how Stella’s family story dovetailed with certain U.S. When, for instance, I recently happened on a painting that Matisse made of one of his odalisques in the south of France and noted the date-July, 1944, the same month that Stella and her entire community of 1,700-plus people were deported to Auschwitz, where ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival-it makes me think very differently about the artist sitting out the war in his cozy Mediterranean villa. And almost wherever I find myself, even in the most unrelated settings, I cannot help but refer back to Jewish Rhodes. While I don’t go as far as to pin a sprig of rue, another protection against evil doings, to my underwear, as people did in the Juderia, I do keep a small pot growing on my windowsill. ![]() After coming across a blue and white glass bead in a flea market in Istanbul some years ago, I identified it as a charm that protected against the oju malu (or evil eye, in Judeo Spanish, Stella’s mother tongue) and hooked it onto a chain I have not taken off my neck since. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |