Bouena Sarfatty, married name Bouena Sarfatty Garfinkle (15 November 1916 – 23 July 1997) was a Jewish Greek World War II partisan, a writer of verse, and a renowned needleworker.

Life

She was born in

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

(then Salonica) in northern Greece. ''Free preview only'' As a young woman Sarfatty was well educated. She studied couture in

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

, and was fluent in French, Greek and

Ladino Ladino, derived from Latin, may refer to: * Judeo-Spanish language (ISO 639–3 lad), spoken by Sephardic Jews *Ladino people, a socio-ethnic category of Mestizo or Hispanicized people in Central America especially in Guatemala * Black ladinos, a ...

. She was part of the high society of Salonica, being presented as a debutante. After the Nazis invaded Salonica in 1941 she volunteered with the Red Cross, and also carried messages between young men in the labour camps and their families. She fell out with Vital Hasson, the leader of the Jewish collaborators. She was engaged to be married but her fiancé was shot on what was to be their wedding day after Hasson informed the Nazis that he had escaped from his labour group. Sarfatty was imprisoned by the Nazis in their Pablo Mela prison, but escaped with the help of a partisan disguised as a German officer: this partisan was later captured, tortured and killed. Sarfatty joined the partisans, adopting the name of Maria (Maritsa) Serafamidou, supposedly from

Komotini Komotini (, , ), is a city in the Modern regions of Greece, region of East Macedonia and Thrace, northeastern Greece and its capital. It is also the capital of the Rhodope (regional unit), Rhodope. It was the administrative centre of the Rhodope- ...

in Thrace. She worked with them during the rest of the war, and a film was later made, in Greece, about her achievements. In 1945 she returned to Salonica to work as a dietician for the refugee camps but also, under cover, to arrange transport to Palestine for Jewish survivors. In 1946 she married Max Garfinkle with whom she had worked in Salonica; after a short stay at his kibbutz in Israel they moved to

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Canada, in 1947. She died there on 23 July 1997, leaving a son and four grandchildren.

Legacy

In 2013 Renee Levine Melammed published ''An Ode to Salonica: the Ladino verses of Bouena Sarfatty'' (Indiana University Press: ), with translations of Sarfatty's 500 coplas or short verses reflecting Sephardic life in Salonica. Her collection of Sephardic music formed part of the topic of a PhD dissertation "The Ladino Song in the 20th Century: A Study of the Collections of Emily Sene and Bouena Sarfatty-Garfinkle" by Rivka Havassy at

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...

in 2007.

Ethnomusicologist Ethnomusicology is the multidisciplinary study of music in its cultural context. The discipline investigates social, cognitive, biological, comparative, and other dimensions. Ethnomusicologists study music as a reflection of culture and investiga ...

Judith R. Cohen used Sarfatty as a primary source for her research on Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) songs of the Sephardic refugee community in Montreal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarfatty, Bouena 1916 births 1997 deaths Jews from Thessaloniki Jewish women writers 20th-century Greek women writers 20th-century Greek women artists Jews in the Greek resistance Jewish female partisans Greek emigrants to Canada Judaeo-Spanish-language poets