Film: SALONIKA – CITY OF SILENCE by MAURICE AMARAGGI

A film about memory, to testify of the disappearance, the obliteration and the oblivion of an exception of humanist equilibrium in Ottoman Empire: Salonika, multi-cultural city.

With a Jewish majority for 500 years, the «Jerusalem of the Balkans» was the place of a massive deportation. The disappearance of this page of history, not in accordance with the nationalist ideologies current in the region ensued.

Born to Salonika, the director ties again the fragments of memories and nostalgia, to testify of the exceptional past of the city and also, by letting survivors recount the extermination and refuse the oblivion and the silence.

SALONIKA – CITY OF SILENCE
(Doc.,52 Min., 2006, DVD/Beta, Color)

• Written & Directed: Maurice Amaraggi
• Produced by: Nemo Films
• Co-Produced with: WIP Wallonie Image Production
• With the help of: The French Center of Cinema & Audiovisual in Belgium; the Foundation of the Memory of the Holocaust; The European Institute of Sephardic Jews; The Jewish Channel, The Netherlands
• Language: Greek narration with English subtitles; English narration with English subtitles; English narration with Dutch subtitles; English narration with French subtitles

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SINOPSIS

The object of this documentary is to expose the disappearance, the obliteration, and the omission of a culture. The disappearance of an equilibrium during the Ottoman Empire and the willful erasing of the non conformist history of a city which did not adhere to the nationalistic ideology that turned the Balkans upside down and continues to do so. Who still remembers Salonika, a multicultural city with a Jewish majority, for half a century? The ancient Jerusalem of the Balkans has become a forgotten city, a “judenfrei” city. The film is organized around a stroll of the actual city, highlighted by word of some survivors of the extermination camps of 1943 and by the director, born in Salonika, who is putting together the bits of memories and nostalgia, to witness the exceptional past of the city and to refuse the elimination and the silence which are like a second death, more definitive than the first.