Deportation and Murder of the Jews of Rhodes, 1944

Rhodes had been governed by Italy since 1912. After Italy’s armistice in September 1943, German forces occupied the Dodecanese and placed the island’s long-established Sephardic Jewish community under direct Nazi control. In July 1944, Jewish residents were ordered to report with their documents and valuables and were detained at the former Italian air-force headquarters.

On 23 July, more than 1,600 people were forced aboard overcrowded boats. After collecting deportees from Kos, the transport reached Piraeus and the Haidari transit camp before continuing in cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau, arriving on 16 August. The deportation destroyed a community that had maintained a continuous presence on Rhodes for centuries.

Uri Dushy’s The Girl in the Oil Painting places Dora Behar’s family within this final period of Jewish life on Rhodes. The novel’s portrait and harbour imagery connect the historical deportation to later generations trying to recover names, relationships and memories that persecution attempted to erase.