Między Zagładą a nadzieją. Odrodzenie poezji sefardyjskiej w tomiku Popiół i dym Avnera Pereza
Between the Holocaust and Hope: The Revival of SephardiC Poetry in Avner Perez`s Siniza i Fumo (As h and Smoke)

Summary/Abstract: This paper concerns Avner Perez’s Siniza i Fumo (1986), which is one of the first collections of poems published in Judeo-Spanish since the 1970s, after the long interruption caused by the Holocaust. The book not only commemorates the Jewish community of Salonica, exterminated in 1943 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and pays homage to its language and cultural legacy, but also ponders over the possibility of the survival of Ladino as a living language. The study analyses the internal dynamics of Siniza i Fumo, which presents “step by step” the way that the Jews from Salonica were forced to go through before being killed in gas chambers. After the images of extermination come the ones of hope, but it is only limited and conditional hope, concerning the revival of Judeo-Spanish language and literature. The paper also discusses Perez’s references to different sources of Sephardic literature such as the Bible (Lamentations) and Sephardic folk poetry.

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