The long life of Stella Levi, impossible to crush on the Holocaust

In the Jewish quarter of Rhodes (Juderia), where “everyone knew everything about everyone”, when a girl, almost always celibate, was distressed or depressed she was locked up at home for a week, with water and broth, in the company of an elderly healer , who prayed and waved a handful of mumya (said to be the ashes of Jewish saints brought from the Holy Land) over his head. This custom, called enserradurawas also practiced by the maternal grandmother of Stella Levi, daughter of Jeudà Levi and Maria Notrica, born in Rhodes in 1923, deported to Auschwitz and Dachau, survived the Holocaust, and lived in New York since the war, where she contributed to the founding of the Primo Levi Center (“He had given what he had to give. He was no longer writing because he had written down everything he had to say. He had gone to schools to talk to young people. He had been interviewed many times. He had finished his work here. He was ready to leave.”) This year, on April 24, a few days before his 100th birthday, he received the honor of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic conferred on him by President Mattarella: “I want to say that I accept this honor not as an individual, but in the name of all those, Jews like me, men, women and children, who have been discriminated against, in Italy and in the Italian territories by the racial laws wanted by fascism. In my eyes, it represents an historic assumption of responsibility by the country that gave citizenship to my family in the very year of my birth”.