Tag #125342 - Interview #77984 (Leontina Arditi)

When the Spanish Queen Isabel and the Spanish King Fernandez expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, some of them went to Western Europe, others to Russia [Editor's note: there was no significant Sephardi settlement on Russian territory.] and the remaining part to the Orient [also see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] [1]. The Turkish people, for example, are thankful up to the present day that Jews have come to them, because they were doctors and as a whole people with intelligent professions. As far as my kin is concerned, they were a part of one group of Jews who got to Italy this way. They lived in the Ardennes, one of the borders of what was then Italy. [Editor's note: this is only a supposition of Leontina Arditi, since the Ardennes are actually in Belgium, Luxemburg and France.] That's where my name comes from - Arditi. Italians gave a gun, ten she-goats and two or three sheep to each family and told them to protect the borders. 'Arditi' - 'Ardennes' - that's the most probable etymology of my family name. At the beginning, in the 16th and 17th century, these Jews expelled from Spain lived in lairs dug by themselves in the caves. They were mere nomads. They were religious, I suppose. I don't know anything else about them.

My kin that came from Italy and settled in Ruse, northeastern Bulgaria, was my father's family. All of them had a strong sense of humor. They played the guitar, the mandolin; they used to sing Italian songs and speak Ladino. They were dark, emotional and swarthy like the Spanish. In Ruse the Arditi family had a very severe argument. I don't know the reason, but it was about money, I suppose. That's why one part of the family ran away as far as Pazardzhik, southwestern Bulgaria. I'm from the Pazardzhik branch of Arditi, while my relative, Elias Canetti [2], my father's cousin, is from the Ruse branch.