Nissim Levis Panorama 1898-1944 (parallel text, Greek and English)

A touching photographic journey, captured in over 500 stereoscopic glass plates by the doctor and photographer Nissim Levis, a member of a prominent family in the Romaniote Jewish community of Ioannina, a city in north-western Greece. They were found by chance, in a historic corner of the city, in the possession of a street vendor who invited passers-by to examine them for a fee by looking into a wooden box.

A voyage in time that starts during the last fifteen years of Ottoman rule in Ioannina, with stops along the way for the city’s major historical events and for visits to some of the world’s most cosmopolitan locales of that period. Most of all, however, it is a small tribute to the memory of a group of individuals, the Romaniote Jews of Ioannina, who would otherwise have been remembered only as simple rows on the Holocaust Museum’s list of victims.

Not only do we see important historical events unfold over the years, but we also see the everyday life of residents from different ethnic and religious groups—Christians, Jews and Muslims. More than that, the rescued photographs contain valuable information on the diplomatic background and the battle leading to the liberation of Ioannina, and on the historical background and prevailing atmosphere in Europe and in Ioannina between the two World Wars.

266 duotones.

Alexander Moissis grew up in Greece, close to his father’s Romaniote Jewish and his mother’s Orthodox Christian families. He studied electrical engineering, computer science and management science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gaining four degrees before moving to Silicon Valley.  He lives in California, where he works in English, reads in French and multiplies in Greek. Difficult to describe in one word – rather like his great-grandmothers’ uncle, Nissim D. Levis.

Mark A. Mazower is a British historian and writer, specialising in modern Greece, 20th century Europe and international history. He is the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University, and is also currently the director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia.