Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads

Born in Salonika when it was still an Ottoman territory, Leon Sciaky was deeply committed to his hometown. Of Sephardic descent, his family had established themselves there as merchants after the Spanish expulsion, and they continued to speak Ladino at home into the twentieth century. In 1915, in the midst of the turbulence brought about by World War I, Sciaky’s family left for the United States and settled in upstate New York, where he worked as a history teacher.