Ester Menascé Fintz was born on May 26, 1929 in Rhodes, the largest of the Aegean islands and at the time a possession of the Kingdom of Italy.

Her family, of ancient Sephardic origins, has among its members numerous notables of the Rhodian Jewish community including her paternal grandfather Michele Menascé who in 1936 was elected Councillor of the Jewish Community of Rhodes and who, only eight years later, he will be arrested and deported together with his wife Gioia Haim, his daughter’s family Norma Menascé and all the other members of the Community.

At one and a half years of age, Ester moved with her parents Vittorio Menascé and Sara Fintz to Milan, where on August 31, 1932 her sister Nora was born, to whom Ester would be deeply attached for her whole life.

The family of Vittorio Menascé will return again to Rhodes during the holidays to visit the relatives left on the island. The last time will be in the summer of 1938, just before the enactment of racist laws. The memories of these trips will remain indelible in her and the places, the faces, the objects, the lived episodes will accompany her for the whole life.

In 1942, following the bombing of Milan, Sara Fintz and her two daughters Ester and Nora were displaced in Maderno, on Lake Garda. Here they find other Jewish families, including that of Abner Hasson, also from Rhodes and who was later deported with his family to Auschwitz with the convoy departed from Milan Central Station on January 30, 1944.

After September 8, 1943, following the intensification of anti-Jewish persecution, the Menascé family was forced to hide and took refuge in Bosco Valtravaglia above Luino (Varese). Twice they try to escape to Switzerland. During the first attempt on December 2, 1943, the Menascé were rejected by the Swiss authorities, who considered Ester and Nora too small because the Nazis-Fascists can harm them and parents young enough to endure the living conditions in a concentration camp. On March 5, 1944 they tried to cross the Italian-Swiss border again and were finally welcomed in Switzerland, where they remained until the Liberation.

After the war Ester Menascé graduated in English and Comparative Literature in Milan and then studied in the United States of America at Columbia University in New York.

Back in Italy, for many years she was professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Milan. Her studies are directed towards Jewish topics and writers, dealing with themes in British and North American literature.

Deeply linked to the island of her birth, Ester Menascé wanted throughout her life to carry on the knowledge and study of Rhodes and its community. She is recognized as a tireless guardian of memory and a witness to Rhodian history.

Her writings include The Jews in Rhodes. History of an ancient community destroyed by the Nazis, which in 1992 was awarded the “Acqui History Award”, Darkness in the Island of the Sun. Rhodes 1943-1945, published in 2005 and 2014, and in English A History of Jewish Rhodes in 2014.

Even her sister Nora shows in her poems and stories a deep nostalgia for the “island of roses”. From her idea, a forest is established in Israel in memory of the destroyed Jewish community of Rhodes and Kos, which is inaugurated on October 16, 1996 in Kissalon, near Jerusalem, where his poem “La Juderia”, in Italian and in Hebrew, is placed on a plaque at the entrance of the forest.

Ester Menascé dies in Milan on May 4, 2022
To her memory we dedicate this project.

© CDEC Foundation

The photographs come from the private archive of Ester Menascé, donated by bequest to the CDEC Foundation with the bibliographic collection presented here.

Picture captions:
Pictures 1-2: Ester Menascé with her younger sister Nora
Picture 3: Ester Menascé with her parents in Rhodes in the summer of 1934
Picture 4: Ester Menascé receives the tribute as a member of the Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Paris in June 2002
Picture 5: Stone monument in the Memorial Forest in Kissalon (Israel) on which is placed the poem “Juderia” in the original in Italian and in the Hebrew translation of Gaio Sciloni
Picture 6: Ester Menascé (right) at the Forest Opening Ceremony October 16, 1996