Public Virtual Yom HaShoah Program on FCTV Public Channel 13: Watch a Conversation with Michael Frank about his Award-Winning Holocaust Memoir "One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World"
Monday, April 17 at 8pm, broadcast on FCTV Public Channel 13 and streamed at fctv.org
Falmouth Jewish Congregation welcomes everyone from the community to view its program for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Monday, April 17 at 8pm on FCTV Public Channel 13 (fctv.org). This hour-long program features a conversation with Michael Frank, author of the award-winning One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World. This beautiful and affecting book tells the remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi, whose conversations with the writer Michael Frank over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale. One Hundred Saturdays was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for both Holocaust Memoir and Sephardic Culture categories and was the Recipient of the Jewish Book Council’s Natan Notable Book Award.
With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Over the course of six years of Saturday conversations, Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey—measured by both time and distance—of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival.
One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, but it is also an inspiring portrait of a remarkable individual who has remained curious about life and people throughout her now 99 years of life. It is also a moving account of a tender and transformative friendship that develops between storyteller and listener as they explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived. This Yom HaShoah, Falmouth Jewish Congregation offers this program to the public, inviting you to learn about the colorful and fascinating Jewish community of Rhodes, to get to know this special woman, and to hear the eloquent and thoughtful Michael Frank reflect on his years of Saturday encounters and the writing of his book.
Michael Frank is the author of What Is Missing, a novel, and The Mighty Franks, a memoir, which was awarded the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by The Telegraph and The New Statesman. His essays, articles, and short stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Yale Review, Salmagundi, The TLS, Tablet, and other publications. The recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives with his family in New York City and Camogli, Italy.
Read all about Michael Frank, this remarkable story of Stella Levi, watch a video and learn more at Frank's website: http://michaelfrank.com/.
Falmouth Jewish Congregation, an inclusive, egalitarian Reform congregation serving the Upper Cape and beyond, is located at 7 Hatchville Road, East Falmouth and is accessible and welcoming to all. For further information or to add your name to a public events list, please visit the website at www.falmouthjewish.org, visit our Facebook page, or call 508-540-0602.