Ladino
[aka Judeo-Spanish, Sephardic, Hakitia]Classification: Indo-European
·at risk
Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (1930- ), who spoke Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian Colonel who helped him escape to a Partizan refuge after he ran away from the train taking Yugoslavian Jews to Nazi death camps. By speaking in Ladino to a Spanish-speaking US pilot in 1944 he was able to survive and lead the pilot, along with his American and British colleagues, to a safe Partizan airport. The film is available for sale here: https://sites.google.com/site/savedbylanguagedocumentary//purchase.