UI Press | Translated and with Commentaries by Isaac Jack Lévy | And the World Stood Silent: Sephardic Poetry of the Holocaust

And the World Stood Silent

Sephardic Poetry of the Holocaust

“A deeply moving tribute to the memory of the 160,000 Sephardic victims of this monumental tragedy....[A] graphic picture of the anguish, doubts, fears, and, finally, a rationale for the long night of the Holocaust, with an affirmation of ultimate survival of the Jewish people.”--Maggi Salgado Gordon, Hispania

Of the 6,000,000 Jews who perished in the Holocaust, at least 160,000 were Sephardim: descendants of Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. Although the horror of the camps was recorded by members of the Sephardic community, their suffering at the hands of Nazi Germany remained virtually unknown to the rest of the world. With this collection, their long silence is broken. And the World Stood Silent gathers the Sephardim's French, Greek, Italian, and Judeo-Spanish poems, accompanied by English translations, about their long journey to the concentration and extermination camps. Isaac Jack Lévy also surveys the 2,000-year history of the Sephardim and discusses their poetry in relation to major religious, historical, and philosophical questions. Wrenchingly conveying the pathos and suffering of the Jewish community during World War II, And the World Stood Silent is invaluable as a historical account and as a documentary source.