From the Ottoman Turkish conquest of Rhodes in 1522 until the Holocaust, a vibrant Judeo-Spanish community flourished on this Mediterranean isle. Many books and articles richly chronicle the history of this relatively small community.¹ From antiquity, a Romaniote (Greek-speaking) Jewish community lived on Rhodes astride the major sea route that for millennia connected Europe to the Middle East. Journeying from Spain across the Mediterranean and to Persia a century before Marco Polo, during 1165–73, Benjamin of Tudela wrote of the 500-member Jewish community he found on Rhodes. Sephardic roots for Rhodes date to at least 1280, with the arrival of Spanish Jews fleeing persecution in Tarragona.

Surviving the anti-Semitic excesses erupting during ten centuries of Byzantine rule (e.g., forced conversions, baptisms, decrees forbidding Christian patronage of Jewish doctors, intermarriage punishable by death, bans of new synagogues), the Jews of Rhodes faced new challenges after 1309 when the Knights of the Order of St. John, Christian Crusaders, occupied the island. In 1480, the Knights, aided by the city’s Jewish population and other residents, repulsed a major Turkish assault. The Kahal Gadol, Rhodes’ principal synagogue, was destroyed during the siege and rebuilt with the Knights’ approval.² But the Knights’ appreciation was short-lived.

From the Ottoman Turkish conquest of Rhodes in 1522 until the Holocaust, a vibrant Judeo-Spanish community flourished on this Mediterranean isle.

They enslaved local Jews captured others through piracy and threatened deportation to Nice for any refusing conversion to Catholicism. Before the 1502 expulsion decree was fully executed, the community was saved by the death of the Knights’ Grand Master, Cardinal Pierre D’Aubusson. The Turkish conquest of 1522 followed, leading to the large Sephardic settlement that rejuvenated the community. The Turks relocated 150 Sephardic families from Salonica and provided economic incentives (e.g., mineral rights, tax exemptions) to attract other Sephardim to the island, largely from Turkey, but also from Jerusalem.³ In time, the Sephardic language (Judeo-Spanish) and minhag (customs) replaced that of Romaniote Jews who had lived there since the Roman era. For centuries, only Jews and Moslem Turks were permitted to live within the city walls, with Greeks outside and throughout the island.

By the 1700s, Rhodes became an important rabbinical center, home to the Israel dynasty of Grand Rabbis who flourished throughout the eastern Mediterranean for more than two centuries.⁴ In early 1840, the Jews of Rhodes were targeted by a blood libel. The Greeks accused the Jews of kidnapping a Christian boy to use his blood for ritual purposes. Numerous European consuls, led by Britain and Sweden, supported the blood libel and pressured the Ottoman governor to prosecute. A confession was forced from one tortured Jew, who implicated others, including Grand Rabbi Michael Yaacov Israel, leading to their arrest and torture. The community was blockaded and food cut off. After European Jewish leaders mounted a diplomatic effort and gained support from Austria’s Prince Metternich and other Western leaders, the Turkish Sultan issued a firman (official decree) clearing the Jews of the charges. A parallel blood libel erupted at the same time in Damascus, following a similar course of tortured confessions extracted with support from European consuls (led by the French consul) and local officials, and ultimately relief. The trauma of these blood libels prompted Western Jewry to form the Alliance Israélite Universelle and to protect and provide education for Jews in Moslem lands, readying them for emancipation.

In the early 1900s, Rhodesli émigrés, reaching beyond the economic limitations at home and encouraged by the Alliance Israélite schools established on Rhodes, founded colonies in Africa and the Americas.⁵ In 1912, the Italians occupied Rhodes to impede Turkish supply lines while Italy wrested control of Libya from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. The Jewish community of Rhodes thrived under Italian rule. Arriving Sephardim from mainland Turkey and Greece partially replaced the many who left for Africa (e.g., Congo, Rhodesia) and the Americas. In the 1920s, Italy’s King Victor Emanuel II knighted Reuben Eliyahu Israel, the seventh generation of his family to serve as Grand Rabbi of Rhodes, but the position of the island’s Jews suddenly deteriorated in the late 1930s, as Mussolini aligned with Hitler, and Italy enacted anti-Semitic laws. In 1938, fascist Governor De Vecchi abruptly closed the rabbinical academy that was established a decade earlier with Italian government support. A benevolent military ruler eventually succeeded the overtly anti-Semitic governor, affording fairer treatment. But after Italy was defeated by the Allies and joined them, Germany occupied the Dodecanese isles of Rhodes and Cos and deported virtually the entire Jewish community in the summer of 1944. More than 90 percent perished, most on arrival at Auschwitz, and many later at other concentration camps. Turkish consul Selahattin Ülkümen, risking personal harm to his family, and despite his government’s anti-Jewish practices at that time, saved a few dozen Jews from the deportation by expansively arguing that they were Turkish nationals.⁶ After the war, efforts to rebuild the community largely failed as most of the few survivors joined Rhodeslis communities in the Americas and Africa, and later Belgium. Only a few Jews live on Rhodes today, but many visit.

While growing up in our Sephardic community (primarily Rhodesli) in 1960s Atlanta, I often heard an Ashkenazic friend say, “All you Sephards are related.” My Ashkenazic wife has long echoed that theme. For Rhodeslis, this is not far from the truth. As an island community of no more than several thousand Jews, marriages between cousins and among the same families were especially common. Only after many years of genealogy research did I discover that I am related to many of my Hebrew school classmates and share relatives with most of the rest.

The Rhodes Jewish Museum <www.rhodesjewishmu seum.org>, operated by the Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation, founded by Aron Hasson, provides easy access to much genealogical data, making it a logical starting point for research. A key feature is its list of 1,167 graves in the Jewish cemetery, including surname and personal name, Hebrew year of death, and gravestone location (row and number) <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/cemetery.htm>. The list includes related family names for each person, with no indication whether it is part of the person’s name or signifies a spouse or parent, as is often the case. The list contains errors, some apparent when comparing a gravestone inscription. The site includes images of almost 800 gravestones with plans to add more. Burials cover the period from 1850 until the Germans deported the Jewish community in July 1944. Fewer than 20 of these listed stones predate 1870.

Cemetery Lists

Using the cemetery list and identifying parents from gravestone inscriptions, researchers can trace some families back two centuries. On occasion, gravestones include data for earlier generations and also icons/symbols or inscriptions showing a person’s occupation. Also, inscriptions often reveal if one died in childhood, the prime of life, or at an advanced age, and was survived by a spouse or children (e.g., “the orphans are crying”). The online list closely parallels a handwritten list at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) <http://sites.huji.ac.il/ archives/>. Images appear also for 30 “ancient” tombstones from 1593 to 1871 with inscription translations. Five are from the 1600s (1655–71), nine each from the 1700s (1727–99) and early 1800s (1806–47), and six from 1854–71. About 200 recently discovered gravestones are not listed, including some predating 1850. Also, the cemetery has a section with the unlisted graves of rabbis. This cemetery is not the original site for most graves. Fascist Governor De Vecchi expropriated the previous cemetery and many gravestones for his personal use as building materials. The community was forced to relocate graves to the present site. The current cemetery is the original site only for burials from just prior to the start of the war.

The cemetery list suggests that most Rhodeslis bear only a few surnames. Fifteen account for two-thirds of the graves: Alhadeff, Amato, Benatar, Capelluto (Capelouto), Codron, Co(h)en, Franco, Hanan, Hasson, Israel, (A)levy, Menascé (Menashe), Scemaria (Shemaria), Soriano, Tarica. Enchanted by the inscriptions on the online gravestones, Sara Mages translated virtually all 800 of the readable ones. Requests for translations can be directed to Dr. Robert (Bob) Rubin, <bob_rubin@hotmail.com>, a Rhodesli descendant who procured Ms. Mages’ assistance. Requesters should identify their relationship to the person whose stone translation is sought.

The Rhodes Jewish Museum site includes an alphabetized list of Jews deported from Rhodes and nearby Cos to Auschwitz <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/victims.txt> and an image of the memorial plaque that lists names of the families deported and dedication plaques in the Kahal Shalom Synagogue providing additional genealogical data. Also included are dozens of photographs of Rhodeslis families and community members in Rhodes and its Diaspora (Congo, Rho­desia/Zimbabwe, Egypt, and the American cities of Atlanta, Montgomery, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and New York).

The Kahal Shalom page <www.rhodesjewishmuseum .org/kahal.htm> for the Rhodes Jewish Museum shows many plaques visitors see on entering the city’s one remaining synagogue built in 1577. The plaques bear the names and genealogical details for various community members and families, including Touriel, Notrica, Mallel, Menashe, Alhadeff, Codron, and Franco. Separate pages show photographs of Rhodesli families from a century ago <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/family.htm> and Diaspora communities throughout Africa and the United States in the early 1900s <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/emigrate.htm>. Ketubbot and several other archival items are displayed at <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/ document. htm>.

The Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation has collected more than 100 documents for its archives on the Jewish families of Rhodes, offered for $20 each to Rhodeslis descendants seeking information on their family history. Some are described at <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/ resources.htm>.

Censuses

Perhaps the most important genealogical tools for reconstructing Rhodeslis family histories are two censuses taken of the Jewish community during Italian rule, in the mid-1920s to early 1930s and again in 1938–39. The Mussolini regime ordered the later census as a prelude to deporting the Jews in violation of the Treaty of Lausanne, but then deferred deportation. Many emigrated anyway, primarily to Africa (e.g., Morocco, Congo) and some to the Americas, in anticipation of the canceled deportation, thereby escaping the catastrophic transport of the remaining Jews to Auschwitz in 1944 and many later to other concentration camps.

On the eve of the war, the Jewish community probably numbered fewer than 3,000, well below its peak of around 5,000 earlier in the century. The census commencing in the 1920s likely includes more people than the later census, partly because the earlier one also lists many who had emigrated to the Americas or Africa and their children born abroad.⁷

Based on a sampling of almost 2,600 entries, mostly from the 1920s census, about half of the Rhodeslis have birthdates in the 1800s, 30 percent born before 1890, about 10 percent born before 1870, 5 percent before 1860, more than 50 before 1850, and a dozen from the 1830s. For the vast majority, census entries include year and place of birth, the name of a man’s wife, name and death status of deceased husband, and personal and family names of parents and whether living. With parent data provided for Rhodeslis born in the 1840s and 1850s, researchers can trace families back two centuries and often link different branches of a family. Entries for the 1938–39 census often include marriage date and place and street address, enabling researchers to pinpoint where a family lived. The 1920s census also includes data for children born to Rhodeslis abroad, which is often imprecise or inaccurate.

Census pages may be requested from Carmen Cohen <jcrhodes@otenet.gr>, director of the Rhodes Jewish Community office <www.jewishrhodes.org>.

Administrative Committee of the Jewish Community of

Rhodes

5 Polydorou Street, Rhodes, Greece 85100

telephone: 30-22410-22364, 30-22410-70964

library: 30-22410-76265

fax: 30-22410-73039

e-mail: info@jewishrhodes.org

Probably because of limited office staffing, census rec­ords are more readily available to visitors to the Rhodes Jewish Community than by long-distance requests. Census data is available to family members also from Dr. Rubin at <bob_rubin@hotmail.com>. Alternatively, I can provide some data for requests directed to me at <lbtept@aol.com>, though much less than Dr. Rubin can furnish. Each request should identify one’s relationship to the person whose census data is sought.

The Rhodes Jewish Community’s website features an interactive guestbook <www.jewishrhodes.org/?page_id= 15> enabling Rhodeslis to find one another and exchange information. Testimonies and poetry from survivors of the Rhodes Shoah <www.jewishrhodes.org/?page_id =12> also are included, as are Ladino songs.

Civil and Municipal Records

Visitors to Rhodes have sometimes obtained data from its civil or municipal records at City Hall, such as marriage and death certificates or similar documents, especially from 1928 until the Shoah. Having spent two months on Rhodes on a genealogical journey, Dr. Rubin reports that few rec­ords are available for 1912–27, so there is little (perhaps five percent) prospect of obtaining a requested record for that period, possibly because the necessary searches are not conducted. He suggests that anyone requesting civil records provide the registrar an identification of the record (e.g., marriage license/registration, death certificate), the exact or approximate year of the event, your exact relationship to the person whose record is requested, and your full name and identification, such as a copy of your driver’s license. Aside from visiting Rhodes, it may be possible to obtain records by written requests directed to:

Yakoumakis Kostas

Registrar, Town Hall of Rhodes

Island of Rhodes, Greece

Fax: (00) (30) 241 46250

Requesters should state that records are sought for a member of the Jewish (Hebrew, Israelite) community and provide the Italian variant of the name. Here are some examples of the Italian form, with equivalents, using a mixture of personal names and surnames:

Giulia Arughetti = Julia Arogeti

Giacobbe Capelluto = Jacob Capelouto

Miru Capuia = Miriam Capouya

Gioia Coen = Joya Cohen

Maurizio/Mosé/Musani Eschenazi = Moshe/Morris Eskenazi

Jeuda/Leone Gattegno = Leon Gateño

Isacco Maio = Isaac Mayo

Giuseppe Menascé = Joseph Menashe

Raffaele Russo = Raphael/Ralph Rousso

Ieusciua Sciarcon = Joshua (Yehoshua) Charhon/Sha-

hon

Mordocheo Scemaria = Mordechai Shemaria

Beniamino Turiel = Benjamin Tourial/Touriel

Additional given names include Abramo (Avram/ Abraham), Eliau (Eli/Elie), Ghidalia (Gedalia), Vittorio (Victor/Haim), Giacomo (Jacques/Jack), Giamila/Amelia (Emily), and Roscia (Rosa).

As a practical matter, the prospect of obtaining records through written requests is far less than for visitors to Rhodes. Limiting a request to perhaps three individuals might enhance the likelihood of obtaining records.

Aside from Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony, two principal genealogical sources on the Shoah victims of Rhodes and its satellite isle of Cos are books by Hizkia Franco and Lilianna Picciotto Fargion.⁸ Unlike the alphabetized lists at the Rhodes Jewish Museum and other sites <www.jewish rhodes.org/?page_id=21> and <www.sefarad.org/diaspora/ rhodes/martyrs.html>, Franco lists the names of the 1,673 Jews deported from Rhodes and 94 from Cos in an order that facilitates identification of family groups. Typically, the father is listed first, followed by the wife under her maiden name, and then their children. Franco details whether one survived, and also identifies the families and household heads for the 60 Jews who escaped deportation (54 from Rhodes and 6 from Cos).

Franco separately lists the 163 survivors (151 from Rhodes and 12 from Cos) of the death camps. He also identifies the 34 Jews of Rhodes who died during the Allied bombardments of early 1944. Picciotto Fargion provides additional details for each person, often date and place of death or liberation and sometimes a place or date of birth. Organized alphabetically rather than by family unit, her entries commonly identify a Shoah victim’s parents and spouse. Such details are critical for distinguishing among several people sharing the same name, such as the eight deportees named Moshe Hasson or the six who each shared the names Esther, Joseph, or Moshe Alhadeff. For Rhodeslis victims at Ebensee and Mauthausen, see <www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=vcsr&GSvcid =38323>.

Many other books and articles on the Jews of Rhodes (e.g., Angel, Alhadeff, Amato-Levy, Fintz Menascé, Galante, Kerem, Levy, Rahmani, Varon) and their Diaspora (e.g., Alhadeff, Beton, Cohen and Rousso, Kerem, Kramer, Stampfer) are rich sources of information.⁹ An index of the many surnames in Avram Galante’s volume 7 on the Jews of Rhodes appears at <www.sephardicstudies.org/ ent­rance.html>. Sephardic periodicals, such as ETSI <www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321/review.html>, Los Muestros <http://74.52.200.226/~sefarad/lm/index. html>, LASHON, and the recently discontinued La Lettre Sepharade (France) <www.sefarad.org/hosted/francais/lls/ index. html>, and its American edition have also published articles of interest.

Websites

Various websites feature Rhodeslis Diaspora communities and families, such as Zimbabwe <www.zjc.org.il/ showpage.php>; Congo <www.sefarad.org/diaspora/congo/ cimetiere/index.html>; Buenos Aires (Argentina) <www. chalom.org.ar/templo/casamientos/> and <www.rodas.com. ar/>; Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) <www.sinagogabethel.com. br>; Atlanta <www.orveshalom.org/>; Seattle <www. ezrabessaroth.net/>; and Portland, Oregon <http://ahavatha chim.com/index.htm>. Burials for Brotherhood League of Rhodes at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, New York, appear at <www.mounthebroncemetery.com/>. The Rhodesli community of Los Angeles and the Sephardic Hebrew Center in Ladera Heights merged in the late 1900s into the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel <www.sephardictem ple.org/amado_hall.shtml>. In 2001, the Sephardic congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, Etz Ahayem, established in 1912, merged with a conservative Ashkenazic congregation to form Agudath Israel/Etz Ahayem Synagogue <www. agudathmontgomery.com/default.asp>.

The Zimbabwe site includes profiles and histories for various Rhodeslis families who settled in British Rhodesia (e.g., Alhadeff, Benatar, Hanan, Hasson, Leon, Mayo, Menashe) and cemetery data with links to gravestone images. It also includes at <www.zjc.org.il/PDF_files/75_Anniversary.pdf> a 44-page profile of the Sephard Hebrew Congregation of Zimbabwe, including the history of the Jews of Rhodes and excerpts from Rebecca Amato Levy’s book I Remember Rhodes, listing 48 Sephardic families with the longest ties to Rhodes and the families who settled there in the early 1900s. The Congo site includes cemetery photographs, gravestone images, and burials lists for Elisabethville (Lubumbashi). There is also a Rhodesli community in Cape Town, South Africa, the Sephardic Hebrew Congregation <www.jewishgen.org/safrica/synagogues/54/index. htm>.

The Chalom Synagogue site <www.chalom.org.ar/temp lo/casamientos/> in Buenos Aires lists surnames and wedding dates from 1937–96 for this largely Rhodeslis community. The genealogy page for the Rodas site <www.rodas.com.ar/english/genealogy/cemla.htm> has begun adding immigrant arrival data for Rhodeslis settling in Argentina, including age, ship, originating port, destination, nationality, and birthplace. There are hundreds of entries for the four surnames listed thus far—Alhadeff, Benhabib, Benveniste, Berro.

The Rhodes Jewish Museum site <www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/ssb/plothdr.htm> links to the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood showing burials and gravestone images in Seattle and burials for the Congregation Ahavath Ahim in Portland, Oregon. The late Miriam Cohen (neé Franco), assisted by her Rousso nieces, prepared an annotated photographic record of gravestones for the Sephardim in Montgomery, extending her work recording the city’s Jewish history. Burials for Atlanta’s Sephardim, largely Rhodeslis, appear in the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry <www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/>. The Ellis Island site lists many Rhodeslis immigrants to the United States. Vic Chylinski’s “Born Rhodes” list <http://jomodad.com/rhodeslies/> includes much of that data and also for many who remained on Rhodes or emigrated elsewhere.

Rabbi Dov Cohen <dkcohen@bezeqint.net>of the Ben Zvi Institute <www. ybz.org.il/?ArticleID=235> has found and deciphered a treasure trove of genealogical information on Rhodeslis from rabbinical sources (published and unpublished): wills; eulogies; Ottoman era tax records; prayer book inscriptions; manuscripts; Ladino newspaper announcements of engagements, weddings, and deaths; 19th-century letters; and other archival sources spanning several centuries. One online contemporaneous source identifying many Rhodelis from and after the late 1800s is the Bulletin of the Alliance Israélite Universelle <http://jic.tau.ac.il> with over 80 “hits” for “Rhodes. The microfilmed archives for the AIU school(s) in Rhodes for 1886–1934 are accessible at the CAHJP.¹⁰ Among contemporary sources are Sephardic genealogy websites, e.g., Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture <www.sephardicstudies.org/>, Les Fleurs de l’Orient <www. farhi.org>, Sephardic SIG <www.jewishgen.org/ Sephardic/>, and family sites: <www.geocities.com/nissimchilibi/>, <http://pages.ca. inter.net/~norkay/>, and <www.abouav.com/aboab/ Aboab_Family_Tree.html>.

Mathilde Tagger’s index to Moshe David Gaon’s Oriental Jews in Erets Yisrael—An Index of 2,882 Sephardic Souls is downloadable at the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture (FASSAC) website <www.sephardicstudies.org/gaon.html>. A search­able database at the Sephardic SIG site for JewishGen <www. sephardicgen.com/databases/gaonSrchFrm.html> contains 36 entries for Rhodes, concerning several centuries of rabbis and other public figures from or associated with Rhodes—writers, educators, merchants, philanthropists, and even a composer/musician. The FASSAC site <www. sephardicstudies.org/entrance.html> also provides listings, again compiled by Mathilde Tagger, from the 1839 Montefiore census for the Sephardim of Jerusalem, Hebron, and other communities in Eretz Israel, including more than a few from Rhodes. Sephardic SIG provides a searchable database for these census entries at <www. sephardicgen.com/databases/montefioriSrchFrm.html>. Se­phardic SIG’s multiple databases are also searchable jointly at <www.sephardicgen.com/databases/indexSrch Frm.html>.

The Jews of Rhodes are featured in multimedia in Diane Perelsztejn’s 1995 Belgian film, Rhodes Forever/Rhodes Nostalgi <www.ecofilms.gr/popup2005en.asp?Year=2007 &reqid=TR-07> distributed by the Rhodes Jewish Community and most recently in the YouTube presentation by Stanford University history Professor Aron Rodrique on Rhodes: Island of Memory <www.youtube.com/watch?v= CLNabJg_Z0>.

Genetic analyses provide new opportunities for linking Rhodeslis families and branches, through the Sephardic Heritage Project <www.familytreedna.com/public/Se phardic%5FHeritage/> and <www.farhi.org/files/Avotaynu _Sephardic_DNA_Study.pdf>, family proj­ects (e.g., Rousso, Codron), and the ongoing Jews of Rhodes Project <www.familytreedna.com/project-join-request.aspx?group= Rhodes_Island&projecttype=DG>. Dr. Rubin, coordinator for the Jews of Rhodes DNA project, reports that, among people with the same surname, Y-DNA matches appear among the Alhadeff, Benveniste, Hanan, Hazan, Israel, Mayo (DeMayo), Menashe, Pizante, and Russo families. Also, mitochondrial DNA match for at least five groups of people, including some with matriarchal ancestors in the Israel, Nahmias, and Piha families. I was excited to learn that the DNA for my Papouchado-Capelluto-Alhadeff-Franco maternal line matches a Mayo with matriarchal ancestors (Mizrahi-Alhadeff-Turiel) not yet traceable to mine. The project’s preliminary results and a broader list of all Rhodeslis surnames appear at <www.familytreedna. com/public/RHODES%20ISLAND%20SEPHARD IC%20PROJECT/default.aspx>. With results for 34 Y-DNA samples and 24 mtDNA samples providing a high percentage of matches, the project has enjoyed a great start. Its genealogical promise should expand as more people enter the study, filling gaps left by missing records and faded memories.

Notes

1. Rhodes was an important regional center for smaller Jewish communities nearby on mainland Turkey (e.g., Bodrum, Fethiye, Milas) and in the Aegean Sea. Far larger communities existed in Izmir (Smyrna), Istanbul, Salonica, and Edirne (Adrinople).
2. The Kahal Gadol survived until destroyed during British aerial raids in early 1944.
3. Joseph Hacker, “The Sürgün System and Jewish Society in the Ottoman Empire during the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,” pp. 1–65 in Ottoman and Turkish Jewry: Community and Leadership, Aron Rodrique, ed., Indiana University Turkish Studies, Bloomington, Ind. 1992, pp. 27–30; Haim Beinart, Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, Carta–The Israel Map and Publishing Co., Jerusalem, 1992, p. 89.
4. Simon Markus, Toldoth ha-baranim lemishpahath Yisrael mi-Rodos, Jerusalem, R. Mass, 1935; Leon Taranto, “The Israel Family, A Rabbinical Family 1670–1932,” La Lettre Sépharade, vol. 20, pp. 13–17, 2005; Raphael Benghiat, Our Israel & Capelouto Heritage, Montfavier, France, 2007 (revised 25 Nov. 2008).
5. Wartime Turkey imposed the Varlik Vergisi, a confiscatory capitalization tax on minorities. Unable to pay, many Jews were conscripted for forced labor camps.
6. Selahattin Ülkümen was the first Moslem to be honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile.
7. By 1912, my father, his ten siblings and their parents, all born on Rhodes, had settled in America. Yet the mid-1920s census for Rhodes lists them all.
8. Hiskia M. Franco, The Jewish Martyrs of Rhodes and Cos, Harper Collins Publishers, Harare, Zimbabwe, 1994; Liliana Picciotto Fargion, Il Libro Della Memoria Gli Ebrei Deportati Dall’Italia, 1943–1945, Mursia, Milano, 1991 and 2002.
9. Books:

Gini Alhadeff, The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family, Pantheon Books, New York, 1997;

Vittorio Alhadeff, Le Chene de Rhodes: Saga D’Une Grande Famille Sépharade, Paris-Méditerranée, Paris, 1998 [La Cita En Buenos Aires: Saga de Una Familia Sefardi, Argentina]

Rebecca Amato Levy, I Remember Rhodes, Sepher-Hermon Press, New York, 1987

Marc D. Angel, The Jews of Rhodes: The History of a Sephardic Community, Sepher-Hermon Press, New York, 1978

Marc D. Angel, Voices in Exile: A Study in Sephardic Intellectual History, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991

Sol Beton, ed., Sephardim: A History of Congregation Or Ve Shalom, Atlanta, 1981

Miriam Cohen, Jo Anne Rousso, eds., Congregation Etz Ahayem, Tree of Life, 1912–1982, Montgomery, AL, 1982

Avram Galante, Histoire des Juifs de Turquie (9 vol.), Isis Press, Istanbul, 1985

David Galante, Un día más de Vida (Rodas, Auswitch, Buenos Aires) [“A Day More of Life” (Rhodes, Auswitch, Buenos Aires)], 2007 www.undiamasdevida.com.ar/

William M. Kramer, ed., Sephardi Jews in the West Coast States: An Anthology (3 vol.), Western States Jewish Historical Association, 1996

Isaac Jack Levy, Jewish Rhodes: A Lost Culture, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, 1989

Esther Fintz Menascé, Gli Ebrei a Rodi: storia di un’antica communitale annientata dai nazisti, Milano, 1992

Moise Rahmani, Rhodes un Pan de Notre Mémoire, Editions Romillat, Paris, 2000

Moise Rahmani, Shalom Bwana, la saga des Juifs du Congo, Editions Romillat, Paris, <http://moise.sefarad.org/ouvrages/index2.php>

Joshua Stampfer, ed., The Sephardim: A Cultural Journey from Spain to the Pacific Coast, Institute for Judaic Studies, 1987

Laura Varon, The Juderia – A Holocaust Survivor’s Tribute to the Jewish Community of Rhodes, Praeger, Westport, CT, 1999.

Articles:

Marcelo Benveniste, “Origen: La Isla de Rodas,” Boletin de Genealogia Judia, no. 3, p. 8, Sociedad Argentina de Genealogica Judia, 1997

“Mi Investigacion Genealogica en la Isla de Rodas,” Toldot, no. 11, pp. 16–17, 2002

Yitzchak Kerem, “The Settlement of Rhodian and Other Sephardic Jews in Montgomery and Atlanta in the Twentieth Century,” American Jewish History, Dec. 1997, pp. 373–91 <www.sephardicstudies.org/atlanta.html>

Yitzchak Kerem, “The Migration of Rhodian Jews to Africa and the Americas from 1900–1914: The Beginning of New Sephardic Diasporic Communities,” pp. 321–34 in Patterns of Migration, 1850–1914, Newman A., Massil S.W., eds., London, 1996 www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/047/ page24.html

Leon Taranto, “Izmir and Rhodes: Taranto Family Origins, Archives, and Links to other Sephardim,” ETSI, vol. 15, pp. 3–9, Dec. 2001

———, “Sources for Ottoman Sephardic Genealogy: Turkey and Rhodes,” AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXI, No. 3, 2005

Roland Taranto, “Les Noms de Famille Juifs à Rhodes,” ETSI, vol. 8, no. 31, 2005

“The Road from Rhodes: Sephardim come to Montgomery,” Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life <www. isjl.org/history/archive/ al/montgomery.html>.

10. Mathilde A. Tagger & Yitzchak Kerem, Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Genealogical Sources in Israel, Avotaynu, Bergenfield NJ, 2006, p. 61. Tagger & Kerem, at p. 177, also list four Rhodesli ketubot (marriage contracts) at the Library of the Ben Zvi Institute for the Amato, Capelluto, Ferrera, Hunio, Merjan, and Tarika families, going back to 1806 and identifying the fathers of the bride and groom. The Jewish National University Library’s collection includes seven ketubbot from Rhodes, shown at <http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/ketubbot/html/country_list_textual.htm> with full bibliographic records, including names of the bride, groom, witnesses, and families.

Researching Judeo-Spanish communities of the Ottoman Empire, Leon Taranto has identified more than 5,600 relatives linked to another 27,000 Sephardim. He has developed a 16-generation tree of more than 3,100 people for the Israel dynasty of Chief Rabbis that served the eastern Mediterranean from 1714 to 1932.  He has published articles on Sephardic genealogy in AVOTAYNU, ETSI, La Lettre Sepharade (U.S.), and Sharsheret Hadorot, and presented at four IAJGS conferences and on the cable television program “Tracing Your Family Roots.”