Flory Jagoda: Keeper of the Flame

For years, she remained silent. Then, she brought an ancient legacy to life.

On December 21^st, 1923, a child was born to an ambitious mother and an errant father in Sarajevo. Little did the infant girl know that she would become the bearer of her family’s ancient legacy, the “keeper of the flame” of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Sephardic Jewish community.

Flory Papo had family roots in the Bosnian village of Vlasenica, where her mother, Rosa Altarac, had grown up. Her ancestors had come from Sarajevo after settling there under the auspices of Sultan Bayazid II, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Bayazid welcomed the Jews into his lands after the Catholic rulers of the Iberian Peninsula expelled them. 

Centuries later, the Altarac family, descended from those Sephardic Jews, continued to preserve its Judæo-Iberian customs, music, and identity. They spoke Ladino, a mediæval Jewish language derived from Old Spanish. As Flory would recount in an interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “This was the language in the home. You passed the door, and you did not hear Serb or Croatian words. It was only in Ladino…” 

Growing up, Flory’s mother, Rosa Altarac, was surrounded by music. While she sang and played the guitar, her male relatives played tamburitzas, guitars, and violins, and her female relatives played panderetas, or tambourines. In Flory’s words, “there was no wedding, or bar mitzvah [coming-of-age ceremony], or festivity, where this Altarac family were not asked to come and do the music with my nona [grandmother].” 

Perpetually restless, Rosa was dissatisfied with the family’s rural existence. Eager to enter the urban world, she moved to Sarajevo, a prominent city, where she fell in love with a musician named Samuel Papo. Papo, however, was unreliable as a husband and father, and the couple divorced shortly after Flory’s birth. As a result, Flory’s biological father was absent from her life. “I, actually, was never supposed to ask about Samuel Papo. It was something you never asked, you never talked about. I never saw him. I don't even know what he looks like,” she explained.

In her early years, Flory lived with her maternal grandparents in Vlasenica. There, she developed a close bond with her nona, her grandmother, from whom she inherited the kantikas (songs), konsejas (stories), and gastronomiya (cuisine) of her ancestors. “I adored [my grandmother],” Flory recalled in her interview. “I think all the feeling that I have for this Sephardic culture, for stories, for songs, is all really a gift from her to me that I will have for the rest of my life.” The vibrant environment in which Flory was raised had a profound influence on her formative years, during which she absorbed her ancestors’ culture. 

Eventually, Flory’s mother married an urban merchant named Michael Kabilijo and moved with him to Zagreb, another major city. Flory joined her mother and stepfather as they started a new life together, though she continued to spend her summers with her grandparents in Vlasenica. Though she was not fond of her urban lifestyle in Zagreb, Flory soon received a gift that would have a profound impact on her. 

Flory’s stepfather warmly embraced his adoptive daughter and purchased an accordion for her, an instrument that would become Flory’s enduring companion. 

Flory took music lessons from a local teacher at a time when Zagreb’s Jews, Muslims, and Serbs lived in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941. Before long, the community of Zagreb ostracised Flory’s family, expelling Jewish children from schools and imposing countless restrictions on the lives of Jewish residents. The day after they arrived, Nazi authorities herded the Jews of Zagreb together and assigned them yellow badges marked with a Ž, which stood for Serbo-Croatian Židov ‘Jew.’ 

Armband issued by the Nazis denoting Serbo-Croatian Jews

One day, two officers knocked on the door to Flory’s house, demanding to know the whereabouts of the Kabilijo family. Flory recalls that her mother took out her pocketbook and handed it to her. A look of understanding flashed in Flory’s eyes when her mother instructed her, “Take this pocketbook to your mother.” 

“I took the pocketbook, started running down the street. I ran and ran,” Flory recounted. Eventually, Flory’s adoptive father, Michael, was released from custody. Upon his release, he wrote to a friend who lived in the Italian-occupied Croatian city of Split, asking him to help the family escape from Zagreb.

Decades later, Flory could still recall the Wednesday she arrived at her music teacher’s doorstep only to see two German soldiers lounging in the back of the room. The teacher froze upon seeing Flory’s badge, which identified her as a Jew. “Floritza, I can’t teach you anymore,” she said to the adolescent girl. “Don’t come back.”

Gradually, the Nazis deported Zagreb’s Jews to concentration camps and extermination centers. 

Determined to protect Flory, Flory’s mother and adoptive father sent the adolescent girl on a train to Split, fabricating a non-Jewish name for her. In her interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Flory recalled that her adoptive father instructed her to stay quiet and play her accordion during the train ride. As Flory played, passengers, including traveling soldiers and the train’s conductor, joined her. The conductor even forgot to ask for her identification. “[My accordion] really saved my life,” Flory recounted in her interview. “This harmonica [accordion] really came in so handy when I needed it so badly.”

Flory’s mother and adoptive father joined Flory in Split, whence the Italians sent them to the Croatian Island of Korčula along with other Jewish refugees. In Korčula, Flory gave accordion lessons and received gifts in the form of scarce foods from her students. 

One day, Flory’s adoptive father traveled to Italy to purchase a new accordion for Flory. Then, the Nazis invaded the island, and Flory and her mother were forced to flee. Along with other Jewish refugees, they hurriedly boarded a tugboat. Harsh weather, along with the pounding cacophony of distant explosions, haunted them for two days as they navigated to Italy by night. 

In Italy, Flory and her mother reunited with Michael. Describing their reunion in her interview, Flory was at a loss for words; she could only say that “It was so human and so unbelievable.” 

Flory found work with the United States Army and met a Jewish-American soldier named Harry Jagoda. The two married on June 24^th, 1945. Upon her marriage, Flory adopted her husband’s surname. It was by this surname that she would become known to the world.

Flory Jagoda’s relatives in Vlasenica perished in the Holocaust; only one of her uncles survived. Decades later, Jagoda returned to the village, where she learned of her family’s tragic fate. All her family members were interred near a small tree, which inspired Jagoda’s mournful song “Arvoliko” (arvoliko is the diminutive of arvole, which means ‘tree’ in Ladino). In the song, written in Ladino, Jagoda mourns her deceased relatives and reflects on the perpetuity of sorrow. “How many years must I wait,” laments Jagoda in the song, “to forget the sorrows of the war?” 

To forget, to forget,

to forget the pains of sorrow?

How many times can we travel 

in alien lands to find peace,

to find peace, to find peace, 

and to forget sorrows? 

A little tree on the mountain

is calling me to tell me the truth,

the truth, the truth,

to tell me the truth,

the truth, the truth,

to tell me the cruel truth.

Tree that inspired Flory Jagoda's emotive song "Arvoliko." It marks the burial place of her family members, who were murdered by the Nazis during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia.

At first, Jagoda tried to let her memories fade as she settled into her new life, teaching music and assuming the quotidian tasks of household life. “[Holocaust survivors] have one thing in common,” said Jagoda in her interview, “silence.” She described her melancholic memories as “almost like a wound that… you heal,” adding that “a lot of [Holocaust survivors] do not want to burden their families, especially their children, with sadness. They want to forget.”

Ultimately, though, Jagoda decided to continue her family’s cultural legacy. In her interview, she described how she harnessed music to honour the memories of her deceased relatives. “I went home, and I wrote songs. I just threw myself into music. And every song I have written about holidays… is all about them. So, they're with me. They're with me, they're with my children, and they're with my audiences, because they sing these songs. And it's for them. And every holiday, we're together.” 

Over time, Jagoda became one of the most prolific and influential composers of Sephardic music. Within the Jewish community, one of her most well-known songs is the Hanukkah classic “Ocho kandelikas” (‘Eight Little Candles’). Throughout her career, she recorded five albums, performed at synagogues, folk festivals, community centers, and universities, and became a National Heritage Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts. She also mentored Virginian folk musician Susan Gaeta, who founded the Sephardic music group Trio Sefardi. Gaeta, in turn, mentored another Virginian musician, Gina Sobel, who is also involved in efforts to preserve the Sephardic musical tradition. 

Though many of Jagoda’s songs are festive and celebrate life, some are triste and introspective. In 2003, Jagoda sang a visceral kantika, “Arvoles yoran por luvias” (‘Trees Cry for Rain’), at an event in which a memorial plaque was unveiled at Auschwitz, honouring the memories of the Sephardic Jews who perished there.

Flory Jagoda singing "Arvoles yoran por luvias" at an event in which a memorial plaque was unveiled at Auschwitz, honouring the memories of the Sephardic Jews who perished there.

One of Jagoda’s later albums, Arvoliko, is wistful and melancholic. In its songs, she recalls fondly the warmth of her grandmother’s affection, mourns loss and heartbreak, shares solemn, spiritual reflections, and laments the destruction of innocence. 

Flory Jagoda passed away in 2021. She devoted her life to preserving an ancient legacy that few people inherit. Through her life’s work, Jagoda emphasized the importance of remembrance. Her music, though rigorously faithful to the Sephardic tradition, transcends the circumstances of its conception and touches the human spirit. It illustrates the centripetal power of music and the universality of love, resilience, and hope.