Centropa Stories: Season 4 The destruction of a Sephardic Jewish community

narrated by
Edward Serotta

We begin our walking tour and podcast in Belgrade’s Kalemegdan, the ancient fortress peering out over the confluence of the Sava and Danube Rivers. In her book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, published in 1941, Dame Rebecca West provides us with a short history of Kalemegdan —from the Romans to the Ottomans to the Serbs—and actor Melanie Preston reads an excerpt for you. As we walk down into Dorcol, Stefan Sablic—cantor of the Belgrade synagogue, Ladino singer and musician—will accompany us.

narrated by
David Horovitch and Jilly Bond

Few Jews live in Dorcol today but this quiet corner of Belgrade still evokes its past, when Jewish shops stood cheek by jowl and families scurried off on Friday evenings to the synagogue. Ida Labudovic interviewed Vera Amar and Avram Mosic for us in 2002, and both describe what Dorcol was like in its last years. Jilly Bond, who reads Vera Amar, is a regular performer on BBC’s The Archers and has read more than 40 audiobooks. David Horovitch. With 100 screen credits to his name, David Horovitch has performed Shakespeare on stage and in film, was recently seen in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, and is currently starring in the HBO Max series House of the Dragons. Additional reading of Ernst Pavel’s memoir by  Mikael Gemeda-Breka of Carnegie Mellon University. Special thanks to Jaehee Cho of the Entertainment Technology Center of CMU and Tijana Zherajikj of Centropa.

narrated by
Sara Kestelman

Rachel Chanin interviewed Matilda Kalef-Cerge for us 2002, and we have remained in touch Matilda, who recalls both an idyllic childhood in a wealthy Sephardic family, and how she, her mother and sister managed to survive during the Holocaust. 

Read by Sara Kestelman, who has appeared in well over a hundred plays, is a veteran of Britain’s National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and has appeared in numerous theatre productions in London’s West End. Sara's film credits include Zardoz, Lisztomania and Lady Jane. On television she has appeared in Anna Karenina, Gentleman Jack and Holby City among others.whose screen and stage credits include the works of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Gorky and Marlowe, not to mention Star Wars. 

Excerpt from Leigh White’s The Long Balkan Night read by Nate Kelderman of Carnegie Mellon University.
 

narrated by
Jane Bertish

She was born with the name Ruchel Kalef. During the war, Father Andrej Tumpej gave her a name to hide behind: Breda. After the war, Ruchel decided, “He gave me more than a name. He gave me a life.” Thanks to Breda, Father Tumpej is now listed as a Righteous Among the Nations. Breda became one of Yugoslavia’s best known mezzo-sopranos. Jane Bertish has appeared on stage in London performing George Bernard Shaw and Tennessee Williams. Her television credits include Rosemary’s Baby and most recently, Ted Lasso.

narrated by
Allan Corduner

Kirkus Review called Götz and Meyer “brilliantly disturbing” and The Guardian called it “unimprovable.” In this short (168 page) stream of consciousness work of fiction, a school teacher in Belgrade muses—and practically hallucinates—as he wonders just what the two SS men who drove the infamous gas van talked about all day. The fact that both Breda and Matilda Kalef watched their father and grandmother being loaded into this van makes it all the more harrowing. We have chosen an excerpt from Götz and Meyer, which is read by Allan Corduner, an actor with more than 140 screen credits, including Tar, Defiance, The Woman in Gold, The Merchant of Venice and Operation Finale.