Remembering a Life and a World

A few months before his death Andreas Sefiha - President of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki from 1993 to 2001 - decided to share the memories of his life: images of a cosmopolitan Thessaloniki, the plum liqueur of his Sephardic mother, the sound of wooden carriages rattling over the cobbled streets, walks through the bustling Modiano Market with his grandmother. Historical events and social changes which shaped the city from the late 19th century to the present day are recounted in parallel with the narrative of his forebears, while his own life is overshadowed by the tragic fate of the many thousands of Jews taken from Thessaloniki to their deaths in the concentration camps. Andreas himself survived the Holocaust, hiding from the Nazis with his family on a farm in Argos. He grew up in a world of constant change, and it was his involvement, over a period of thirty years, with the Jewish Community which provided him with a vision to work towards: restoring the Jewish Community to its rightful position not only in his beloved Salonica, but also on the much broader canvas of all the Jewish Communities of the diaspora.