"Tierra Prometida: Jews from Rhodes in the Belgian Congo and Southern Rhodesia, 1910s-1960s"

Between the 1910s and the 1960s, Jews from the island of Rhodes migrated to the Belgian Congo, particularly to the region of Katanga and its capital Elisabethville, and to Southern Rhodesia. The migration was due to economic reasons, and then to the impact of the 1938 Italian anti-Jewish laws. In the mid-1940s, also several Holocaust survivors from Rhodes settled in Congo, where a Jewish community continued to exist and thrive until the early 1960s. Basing on historical and literary sources, as well as on oral testimonies, this article explores the history of this little-known migration and the social and economic activities that the Jews of Rhodes conducted in central Africa. By doing so, it sheds light on the historical and memorial interconnections between colonialism and the Holocaust, Jewishness and whiteness.