Luna

The Life and Survival of an Invisible Woman from Saloniki

9789653087231

200 pages

Yad Vashem Publications

Hardback $31.99

Overview

Reconstructing the life and memory of a lost Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor from Salonika

This powerful historical biography brings to light the forgotten life of Luna, a poor, uneducated Jewish woman from Thessaloniki and a survivor of Auschwitz. Through her story, the book explores the Holocaust, postwar poverty, and the complexities of memory and survival in twentieth-century Europe.

Adopting a micro-historical approach, the narrative weaves together personal testimonies, archival documents, photographs, and private memories—shedding light on those often excluded from history. Rather than recounting a known historical context, it challenges collective narratives, revealing the tensions between individual experience and official memory.

Luna’s life becomes a lens through which we examine the long shadow of the Holocaust, the social dislocation of survivors, and the silences around poverty, gender, and trauma. By tracing her journey through neighborhoods, camps, and shifting societies, the book reconstructs not only a life, but an entire world that was lost during the Holocaust.
More than a biography, this is an act of remembrance—an attempt to rescue one woman from historical oblivion and, in doing so, reflect on what history chooses to see, and what it leaves behind.

Author Bio

Rika Benveniste is Professor of European Medieval History at the Department of History Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly, Greece. She was born in Salonika, studied History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed her doctoral studies in Medieval History at the Université de Sorbonne (Paris I, Panthéon). In her research, she deals with historical anthropology, the history of the West in the Middle Ages, Jewish history and historiography, and the history of the Holocaust. Professor Benveniste has been the Academic Head of the Project: “From Between the Wars to Reconstruction (1930-1960). The Experience of the Jews of Greece in Audio-Visual Testimony”. (Database of Greek-Jewish Survivors’ Testimonies, University of Thessaly). The Greek edition of her previous book, Those who Survived: The Resistance, Deportation, and Return of the Jews from Salonika in the 1940s (Yad Vashem 2022), received the National Book Award for Promoting Dialogue on Social Issues in 2015.