OUR Michel Vernand was born in Paris and descends from her father from the Jewish family of Thessaloniki, the Asael family and from her mother from an Ashkenazi family. She worked in the field of education as a philologist, then as a psychologist and leading creative writing workshops in a psychiatric institution. He collaborated with Stanislav Tomkevich in letter “Stolen Youth” Her book was published in 2022. “Shared Memories” (translation – editing: Antonis Kazakos, published by Epikentro).

L’Arabe du futur by Riad Sattouf, Murderous Persons by Amin Maalouf and Des Séfarades aux Juifs grecs by Odette Varon-Vassard.

While reading Lola Lafont’s Quand tu écouteras cette chanson, I came across the truth of Anne Frank, uncensored by the publisher of her famous diary.

“On Divination” by Cicero, which I read by accident. A real fighting machine against gullibility.

When I read, I don’t hear anything else, so all conditions are perfect.

To be honest, they don’t exist (at least I pushed them away…).

A strong emotion expressed in a quiet voice, whether it be a comic or tragic book.

They may question any overly indulgent version of national or family history. How to understand identity as open to others? Is the other so different?

They are 4 years old, they were photographed in Paris or Brest, they are Jews, and yet in this form they keep the memory of Thessaloniki, which the Asaels left in 1929. We children wore uniforms, and these photographs testify to the emotional connection, but also integration into the city, which, after the departure of the Azaels, became Greek again. Going to Thessaloniki for the first time in 1983, with a thought full of memories of my father’s childhood, as well as tragic stories about the displacement of the city’s Jews, who became smoke in the crematoria of Auschwitz, I did not find traces anywhere in Thessaloniki at that time of my own. Neither one nor the other. But fortunately things have changed since then.