Through the lens of Nissim Levis
Nissim Levis was born in Ioannina in 1875, the fifth child of Davidjon and Hannoula.
He was educated in Lausanne, where he finished high school. He then studied at the Sorbonne medical school, graduating in 1899. He remained in Paris for another four years, working at the famous Armand-Trousseau children’s hospital. He adored cars and participated in international car races.
In 1904, Nissim returned to Ioannina, where he lived for the rest of his life, with his father’s family, without getting married and having children. He practiced medicine, honouring the traditional solidarity of the Jewish community of Ioannina, which comprised seven charitable associations.
As a physician, he not only treated patients free of charge one day a week, as other Jewish doctors did, but he provided his services at no cost whenever it was necessary, inspiring the love of all.
He loved the art of photography and took many photographs from the late 19th century until about 1930. His many portraits captured the faces of his beloved relatives at different times and stages of their lives.
He travelled extensively, both in Epirus and abroad, to Italy and France, either accompanied by or to meet his relatives, especially in Paris, where his older brother, Maurice, lived and worked. At the sunset of his life, in 1944, he shared the tragic fate of the Jews of Ioannina.
Τhe town and the community
In the early years of the 20th century, Ioannina was the administrative centre of the western extremity of the Ottoman state, a region replete with insecurity and political tensions. At the same time, it was the economic centre of a large rural region, facilitating trade with the rest of the world. From the aspect of production, the city stood out for its artistic metalwork and its tailoring, areas in which the majority of craftsmen were occupied. However, changes in consumer habits adversely affected the demand for local products.
The international economic crisis of 1906–07 pushed great numbers of people of Ioannina – and of many parts of the Balkans – to emigrate to America, mostly to United States. This halted the population growth that had began in the 19th century. This was less true for the city’s Jewish community, which, despite emigration, accounted for 14 percent of the population in 1913, compared to 10 percent in 1830. It was a Greek-speaking community with a history stretching back centuries, with special and rich cultural characteristics. It was mainly comprised of craftsmen and small-scale tradesmen, although after 1904 – when the Alliance Israélite Universelle school opened – several professions emerged.
The integration of Ioannina into the Greek state changed the makeup of the population and the economic role of the city. Several Jewish families moved to Athens and elsewhere. The size of the Jewish community, as well as the entire city, remained stable between the 1928 and 1940 censuses, when the men of Ioannina, Christians and Jews, were the first to be mobilised – due to the city’s proximity to the border – to serve on the Albanian front against the invading Italian forces.
In 1944, after the subsequent hardship of the occupation, the Jews of Ioannina were forcibly transported by the German authorities to Poland. Nine in ten would not return from the death camps.
Nissim Levis and “Amele Zion”
Nissim was actively involved in the Zionist movement and served as president of “Amele Zion”, the Zionist Federation of Epirus. Also involved were his brother Avramakis and his beloved niece Hiette (Avramakis’ daughter), who would marry the lawyer, Asher Moissis, a leading figure in Greek Jewry and the local Zionist movement.
In 1918, under Nissim’s leadership, “Amele Zion” submitted an official request to the Greek government to support the effort to form a Jewish state in Palestine. For this purpose, Nissim contacted Spyridonas Simos, Ioannina MP and Minister for Welfare (1917–1920), who assured him that Eleftherios Venizelos’ government would support the Zionist programme.
On 14 August 1922, “Amele Zion” and the Jewish Community of Ioannina held a thanksgiving ceremony at the synagogue on Max Nordau Street “on the occasion of the happy and historical event of the ratification by the League of Nations of the mandate on Palestine which is to be reconstituted as the National Jewish Home. The League of Nations had confirmed the mandate on 24 July 1922.
The thanksgiving ceremony was attended by the general commander of Epirus, commander of the Fifth Army Corps, prefect, mayor and other authorities, to whom the organisers sent letters of thanks. These letters bear Nisim Levis’ signature.
Nissim’s long-term engagement with Zionism is also evident from another unusual event: the Ioannis Metaxas regime of 1936 dissolved, among others, the” Keren Kayemet LeIsrael “ (Jewish National Fund) organisation. In 1939, the tax office imposed an “inheritance tax” on the disbanded organization, serving a seizure order on Nissim.
Τhe Levis family
Matathias David Levis was the head of the Talmudic school of Ioannina in the middle of the 19th century. With his wife, Sarah, they had three sons and two daughters. The eldest son was likely Bohor Samuel, who died in 1868. The other two were Menahem, who married Rachel Kalamaro, and Davidjon, who married Hannoula. The daughters were Hannah (Anneta), who married Samuel (Delos) Levis, Davidjon’s wife’s brother, and Fina, who married Judah ben Gavriel Judah Levis.
The next Levis generation was even bigger: during the 19th century, Menahem, Hanna and Davidjon had 20 children between then. The third generation, which was born in the late 19th or early 20th century, was almost twice the size. Including all the in-laws, the Levis family was the pole of Ioannina’s Jewish community. At the same time, it held a dominant position in the city’s social and economic life.
Menahem, apart from being a businessman, must have been a senior civil official, as demonstrated by the decorations on the sleeve of his uniform. The most prominent representatives of the non-Muslim communities participated in public life. The members of the Levis family were commended both by the Ottoman and the Greek states for their social and humanitarian deeds, such as preventing the execution of Greek prisoners.
The Levis family was not confined to the narrow world of Epirus. Its members often made pleasure trips to Europe. Some even studied, worked or lived permanently in Switzerland, Italy and France, while others continued and expanded their business activities in Epirus.
Davidjon Effendi Levis
As stated in his obituary, “amiable, gentle in character and always helpful” to his homeland and his coreligionists, Davidjon Effendi Levis “had all the natural and acquired” advantages for the general good, serving for many years as president of the Jewish Community of Ioannina and the city’s chamber of commerce. In the professional field, he was very successful in banking and commercial activity. By 1875, he was wealthy enough to finance the first archaeological excavation at Dodoni.
Of particular importance was his election, as the representative of the vilayet of Ioannina, to the Ottoman parliament in 1877. Thus, he not only represented his homeland, but all the Jews of the Empire, along with one coreligionist from Bosnia and two from Constantinople. During the short life of the parliament, he supported the privatization of semi-public land (erazi i-miriye) and denounced the flaws of the Ottoman financial system and the tax abuses of local leaders.
Davidjon Levis also served as a council member (mejlis) of the vilayet of Ioannina, a position of particular importance as the body was dealing with major local problems and included people of great wealth and/or influence. Davidjon’s medals include the Osmanlı Devlet Nisanı, Hilal Nisanı and Nisan-i Initiya (Ottoman Empire), the Silver Cross of the Redeemer (Greece), the Légion d’honneur Chevalier (France) and the Franz-Joseph-Orden Offizier (Austria-Hungary).
With his wife, Hannoula, they created a large family, with six children and many grandchildren, who lived in prosperity in two wonderful neighbouring residences. He died after a full life in 1913. His business was continued by his sons Matathias and Avramakis. Most of his descendants were exterminated in the death camps during the Second World War. Those who evaded death, continue to excel in Greece and abroad.
Nissim Levis’ Panorama
hote Stereo-Classeur” projector, which hit the market just before 1900. It resembled a piece of furniture, which included storage for the glass plates. Nissim Levis had such a device to show his photos.
After the violent displacement of the Jewish population (1944), almost all Jewish homes were plundered. The Levis house was also looted. The cabinet holding the Taxiphote projector also contained 500 glass plates. Stolen in one piece, fortunately they were not scattered.
In 1945, the projector and the plates came into the hands of a young man, who set up a mobile viewing “business” on the streets of Ioannina. For a fair price, customers could view the “panorama”, that is, the old stereoscopic slides of a rather unknown prosperous family. The way the Levis family had lived in the early 20th century seemed exotic in Ioannina 40 years later, so poor had the city become.
In spring 1945, when the transport situation allowed it, Hiette, a granddaughter of Davidjon Levis, and her husband, Asher Moissis, both Holocaust survivors, visited Ioannina, where they accidentally encountered the young man with the “panorama” and recognized the pictures. Immediately, they bought the projector and the slides. The family’s past once again took shape. The faces that were lost in the Holocaust re-emerged from the photographs. Another 50 glass plates of Nissim D. Levis were found in an antiques store in Athens in 1976 by the Ioanniote collector, Phillip Yovanis, who kindly passed them on to Nissim Levis’ descendants.
The thematic and chronological classification, as well as the identification of people and places, was a laborious work initiated by Davidjon’s great grandson, Raphael Moissis, and completed by his son Alexander with the creation of the book “The Nissim Levis Panorama”, which was awarded a destinction by the Academy of Athens.
Stereoscopy
At the end of the 19th century, photographic studios began operating in Ioannina to meet the demand from well-off families for sittings. A number of photographers who set up shop in the city would become renowned for their work, such as Giorgos Pantazidis (1864-1941) and Yiannis Manakis (1878-1954). Given this background, Nissim Levis was attracted to the magic of the stereoscopic lens while studying in France, a fascination that he would retain up to his final years.
Stereoscopic images were made using a special, two-lens camera. The product was two almost identical photographs, which, when placed side-by-side in the appropriate viewing device (stereoscope), appeared as one, producing the illusion of depth. Stereoscopy began to spread internationally in the 1850s and over the next 20 years it became known in the Ottoman empire and in Greece (the first known image dates from 1859). As a term, “stereoscope” entered the Greek dictionary in 1871, when a theatrical work of that name was also staged.
By the end of the 19th century, every European middle-class family had a hand stereoscope to view stereoscopic cards and a Taxiphote to view glass slides. Glass slides, even though they were more expensive, prevailed over the paper cards and later gelatin films because they were superior in terms of precision, detail and endurance.
The import of stereoscopes to Greece gradually ceased by 1938. Some years before, Nissim Levis had stopped using his stereoscopic camera. Stereoscopy would be revived in 1940, with the famous View-Master, but the taking of stereoscopic photos by amateurs had passed into the realm of history.
Exhibition Contibutors
All photographs and artifacts from the Photographic Archive and the Collections of the Jewish Museum of Greece, unless otherwise specified.
For the loan of authentic artifacts and photographs from their personal and family collections and for their fruitful and congenial cooperation, the Jewish Museum of Greece would like to kindly thank the following:
Alexander Moissis, California, U.S.A.
EXHIBITION CURATOR
Zanet Battinou
CURATΙΟΝ ΟF ARTΙFACTS
Mary Kapotsi
Christina Meri
RESEARCH – TEXTS
Evanghelos Hekimoglou
TEXT TRANSLATION
Damian Mac Con Uladh
TEXT EDITING
Alexandra Patrikiou
EXHIBITION DESIGN
Mary Kapotsi
Hayia Cohen
Christina Meri
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Hayia Cohen
TECHNICAL DESIGN
Mary Kapotsi
PRINTING
Stavros Belessakos, Photosynthesis
DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION OF DISPLAY CASES
Elias Papageorgiou & Ass. M+Y Glass Solutions
PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE
Leonidas Papadopoulos
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
Orietta Treveza
