Professor Devin Naar Talks on His Role Collecting Family Histories
This evening we heard Prof. Devin Naar talk about the Seattle Sephardic legacy. Dr. Naar is collecting “Seattle Sephardic Treasures” lent or donated to the University of Washington for digitization, preservation and study. These letters, poems, photographs and books illuminate the history of the Sephardim who immigrated to Seattle, and expand the opportunity to understand how they came from living under the Ottomans to create a very new life in Seattle. As an academic, Dr. Naar made it very clear that the digital collection is available for view and study by all. He has already had queries from people in twenty countries, including scholars who have the opportunity to read the over 700 items he has in Ladino, the Jewish language of Sephardic Jews living under the Ottomans. That language, at least as an everyday spoken language, will soon be extinct.
It is unfortunate that my husband’s siblings do not understand that this is the customary, and expected, procedure at universities.
As Steve has written about on The Ave, his brother and sister want to restrict Steve from possibly writing about their father’s legacy in entering Buchenwald concentration camp days before Gen. Patton. They are willing to allow the photographs Dr. Robert Schwartz made under adverse conditions “rot” rather than allow Steve access to items of which he is part owner. They are willing to allow the death of survivors, both inmates and the American Army personnel who came to liberate the camp, without the opportunity for these survivors to recognize themselves or others, to obtain some little relief from their horrid memories and to add to the knowledge this collection should bring to future generations, including to Steve and my granddaughter. Soon, all of these survivors will be dead, just as the Ladino legacy of Professor Naar would perish without his efforts.