Jonna Rock

The Film: A Sarajevo Jewish Story – film and discussion

Sarajevo-Sephardim are descendants of Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain. The fall of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires and the rise of nation-states led to an increase in exposure to Western-style modernization, but a distinct Sephardic identity survived. A once prosperous community was nearly destroyed in the Holocaust. This film is about Jews living in Sarajevo now and their reflections on changes in their community over time.

We will watch the film first and then have a live session where you can ask questions in English or Swedish!

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Jonna Rock is the author of ’Intergenerational Memory and Language of the Sarajevo Sephardim’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)–based on her doctoral thesis at the Humboldt University Berlin. Following the completion of her thesis, she explores interactions between Russian-speakers belonging to different groups in Berlin. She has also been working for the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre in Berlin as a researcher of the Centre’s new permanent exhibition on the rescue of European Jews during the Holocaust.

Foto: Fotostudio Charlottenburg