Once thriving, now nearly gone—the Jewish community of Rhodesia leaves behind echoes of faith, culture, and courage.

In the heart of Southern Africa, far from Europe’s shtetls and Mediterranean shores, an unlikely chapter of Jewish history unfolded. Here, in Rhodesia’s sun-scorched plains, families who had fled pogroms, persecution, and war forged a community that was at once fragile and unshakable—its survival tested by fire, politics, and exile.

She survived the war, we inherited the silence. Writing her story helped me forgive what I never understood—until now.

I did not set out to write My Name Is Not Rifka as a path toward forgiveness. I began with a need to document my mother-in-law’s life, a Holocaust survivor whose refusal to talk about her wartime experience frustrated and bewildered me.