Book Review of
One Hundred Saturdays
Lynn's Review
One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank was published in 2022. It is nonfiction.
Michael Frank took his conversations with ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, and turned them into this book titled One Hundred Sundays.
Stella Levi did want to become a victim. She did not want to be defined as someone who survived the horrific events of WWII. Yet, how can they not define you and shape you into who you are?
I have read a lot of books, both fiction and nonfiction, on WWII. This book was written in such a way that it was a nice change from the others that I have read.
This book felt cozy to me, which probably sounds odd since it is about WWII. But this book is written like you are having a conversation. Like you really are sitting in Stells Levi’s living room as she gains your trust and shares her story.
This book is about far more than WWII and Stella Levi though. It is about a place and a culture that did not exist after the war.
Stell grew up in a Jewish community on the island of Rhodes. She was from Juderia of Rhodes, Greece. It was a place, generations before, where a group of Jews came after they were banished from Spain.
For years this group of Jews lived their life relatively secluded in Rhodes. That is until WWII when many of them left the island for the first time in their life.
When they were taken from the island and sent to Auschwitz no one knew what to do with this group of Judeo-Spanish speaking Italian Jews from Rhodes, Greece.
They were a small group, to begin with, but after the war, they were even smaller. Very few survived.
After the war, they scattered to different places around Europe, America, and the world. Never would they live in their small Jewish community again. Their lives and families were broken and destroyed by war, but so was their culture and the place they knew as home.
If you enjoy books about WWII and are looking for a book that is totally different from other books. I think you will enjoy this one. It is history made interesting because it is simply Stella Levi sharing her story and what a story she has to share.
I do hope that Michael Frank shares more of Stella’s story. This book gives you a glimpse of Stella’s life, but I would love to know more about Stella and her family.