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Joseph Levi, Yosef Alcana, and two other young men sit on a fence with a young child in a park.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 03697
Joseph Levi, Yosef Alcana, and two other young men sit on a fence with a young child in a park. Yosef and Joseph were both deported to Auschwitz. Alcana perished, but Levi, a champion boxer, survived and emigrated to Israel.

Joseph Levi, Yosef Alcana, and two other young men sit on a fence with a young child in a park.

Yosef and Joseph were both deported to Auschwitz. Alcana perished, but Levi, a champion boxer, survived and emigrated to Israel.

Date
1940 - 1944
Locale
Rhodes, [Dodecanese Islands] Italy
Variant Locale
Rhodos
Rodos
Rodi
Greece
Photo Designation
NAZI SATELLITE STATES -- Italy/The Vatican -- JEWS -- Daily Life/Families/Weddings
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Miru Alcana

About This Photograph

Biography
Miru Alcana is the daughter of Yohovet (b. 1884) and Abraham Alcana (b. 1874). Miru was born on May 24, 1915 to a family of Spanish-Jewish descent on the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea. She had four older siblings including a brother Yosef (Nissim), born 1912 and a sister Miriam, born 1907. Miriam was married to Celebi Hasson and had three children. The family had a huge extended family that also lived nearby. Since Rhodes had been occupied by Italy since 1912, Miru learned Italian as well as French and Hebrew at school. At home the Alcana family spoke Ladino, Judeo-Spanish and also knew Greek and Turkish. Miru attended a Jewish school and after finishing secondary school, she studied midwifery and regularly attended meetings of the Menorah Zionist organization. The Nazis occupied Rhodes in September 1943, and on July 20, 1944 the Alcana family, along with the other Jews on the island, was arrested. Three days later they were shipped by coal barge to Athens where they were incarcerated and then deported to Auschwitz. They arrived in Auschwitz in mid-August. Miru was the only one of 57 family members to survive Auschwitz and was one of only 151 Jews of Rhodes to survive the Holocaust. She immigrated to the United States in 1950.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Miru Alcana
 
Record last modified: 2003-02-21 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa28090