In Search of Uncle Salomon – Devin Naar

«The story of my family from Salonika during the Holocaust–and how I figured it out»

Prof. Devin Naar, of the University of Washington’s Stroum Jewish Studies and History Departments, explains the twist of fate that led him to piece together his own family’s experience in the Holocaust.

His journey led him to the serious study of Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) and a new perspective on the stories that Jewish historians need to tell.

Devin E. Naar: Assistant Professor; Marsha & Jay Glazer Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies Modern Jewish History; Sephardic Jewry; Ottoman Empire and Greece; Transnational Studies; Urban History.

Education
Ph.D. Stanford University, 2011.

In Progress
A book manuscript based on “Jewish Salonica and the Making of the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans,’ 1890-1943,” winner of the 2011 Elizabeth Spilman Rosenfield Prize awarded annually to the best written dissertation in the Department of History at Stanford University.

“The Foundations of Salonican Jewish Historiography, 1892-1940,” an article under preparation for a special issue of the journal, Jewish History (abstract accepted).

Forthcoming
“Removing the ‘Shroud of Forgetfulness’: The Dispersal and Recovery of the Archives of the Jewish Communities of Greece,” in Eyal Ginio, ed., The Jews of Greece (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute) (in Hebrew translation).

Select Publications
“Sephardic Jews,” in Jeffrey Cole, ed., Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 329-333.

“Reformuler l’identité, réinventer la patrie. Juifs judéo-hispanophones en Amérique, entre Salonique et Sefarad,” in Esther Benbassa, ed., Itinéraires sépharades. Complexité et diversité des identités (Paris: l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010), 63-78.

“Between ‘New Greece’ and the ‘New World’: Salonican Jews en route to New York,” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 35, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 45-89.

“From the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans’ to the ‘Goldene Medina’: Jewish Immigration from Salonika to the United States,” American Jewish History 93, no. 4 (Dec. 2007): 435-473.

With Their Own Words: Glimpses of Jewish Life in Thessaloniki Before the Holocaust (Thessaloniki: The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, 2006). (48-page exhibition catalog in English and Greek).

“A Twentieth Century Diaspora: the Great Fire of 1917 and Jewish Emigration from Salonika,” Slideshow: Journal of the Center for Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 1-12.