Spotlight on Los Muestros (Our Own) - Joe Halio

As a way to help our community learn more about each other, we’re launching a new section called Spotlight on Los Muestros (our own in Ladino) where we’ll highlight a different member and their involvement in the Sephardic world. Special thanks to our very own Irving Barocas for conducting the interview. 

Dr. Joe Halio was raised in a Sephardic family from Salonica and Turkey. He is the grandson of Albert Torres, publisher of La Vara, the longest running Ladino newspaper in America, and son of Hank Halio, author of “Ladino Reveries.”

Irving Barocas: Hi, Joe, Thanks for joining me today. I understand that you wish to republish your father’s book, Ladino Reveries. Why?

Joe Halio: Yes, I’d like to update it and add some new material that has come to my attention. Also, I’ve been asked by many in the Sephardic community to do so.

Irv: What will the new edition be called?

Joe: I’m not sure yet. Likely “More Ladino Reveries”

Irv: Let’s go back. How did the first edition come about?

Joe: When my dad retired to Florida in the 1980s, the Sephardic retirees from up north found one another and started to reminisce about the early days on the Lower East Side and especially about Ladino. He eventually became the editor of the Newsletter of the Sephardic Social Club of Florida, and others in the Club started swapping stories of the “old days.” They particularly were interested in remembering the Ladino of their parents. “komo se dize…en muestra lengua.” (“How do you say…in our language?) So he started a column called Reveries in Ladino in the Club’s newsletter. Eventually, they became so popular that they became a regular column called Ladino Reveries in the Newsletter of the once active and well known Sephardic Home for the Aged in Brooklyn which had a mailing list of about 15,000 people.

Irv: But how did it become a book?

Joe: Bob Bedford, a member of the Brotherhood and a family friend, suggested it. Then my father and I, with the help of my two sisters, Stacey and Susan, put the articles together, edited them, and had them published through the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture (FASSC).

Irv: After reading it, I also started to think and remember all the wonderful traditions, foods, and Ladino language used in our community. Joe, you are a physician who practices geriatric medicine and you serve as an officer in a couple of hospital medical staff societies; where do you get the time to research and work on Sephardic culture?

Joe: I make time because I believe I have to carry on the work of my grandfather and father. I also have a particular love for the beautiful culture we share. We are a minority within a minority, and our voices are rarely heard. The rest of the Jewish world is finally beginning to take notice of us, and it is our job to educate them about who we are.

Irv: You have a long list of Sephardic organizations you’re involved in, including: the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, Friendship and Truth Society of Castoralis, Sephardic Foundation on Aging, and more. You even serve as a sort of unofficial historian for the Brotherhood at times. What was the first Sephardic organization you were involved in?

Joe: While in medical school, I received a scholarship from the Broome and Allen Boys Association, originally of the Lower East Side. After I graduated, I joined the group to pay it forward, and keep it alive by merging the Broome and Allen Boys into the American Sephardi Federation. Because of my involvement in muestra kultura, our culture, I am a Ladino speaker and have sometimes taught classes to help keep our language alive.

Irv: In addition to publishing a new edition to your Dad’s book, you recently re-published another book. Can you tell us a little about it?

Joe: It was a book by Dr. Albert Menache called Birkenau (Aushwitz ll): How 72,000 Greek Perished. It was the first book written about the daily lives of the victims in the death camps. Dr. Menache wrote it as a memoir in 1946 while in a displaced persons camp. It was not only a personal account, but also a dispassionate detailed eyewitness account of life in the camps.

Irv: What caused you to have such a great interest in him?

Joe: I met Dr. Menache when he was the physician of the Sephardic Home for the Aged. I often went there to visit my grandmother. I was young when I met him and he was already an older man. When he learned that I was going to study medicine, he took a liking to me. He called me all the time. I was fascinated by his story and taken by his bravery and leadership. His wife and daughter perished in the camps, so had suffered tremendous loss and did not have many people left in his personal life.

Yet after all that he went through, he summoned the courage to become president of the Jewish Community of Salonika after the war, helping those who survived the Holocaust to try to put their lives back together again. Several years later, he came to America with his second wife, also a survivor, and later became an American citizen working as a physician, and joined the Sephardic Brotherhood as an active member for many years. His book first, written in French, has been translated in Greek and is used as an educational text in Greek schools. I have now re-published it in 2020. The book is now available through the Sephardic Brotherhood.

Irv: How did Dr. Menache survive?

Joe: He had two skills the Nazis valued. First, he was a musician. The Nazis loved to be entertained with music while they committed their atrocities. He became a member of the camp orchestra. As the war was drawing to a close, he acknowledged he was a doctor, which the camp needed at the time and helped save him from being killed.

Irv: The two books are very different then?

Joe: Yes. My dad’s is one of warmth and nostalgia, while Dr. Menache’s book is a reminder to never forget the horrors that take place when there is hate and prejudice.