Matilda Koen-Sarano

Matilda Koen-Sarano was born in 1939 in Milan

Koen-Sarano was born in Milan in 1939 to a Sephardic Jewish family from Turkey. During World War II the family hid in the Italian mountains from Nazi persecution. Her father, Alfredo Sarano, was secretary of the Jewish Community of Milan from 1945 to 1969.

She studied at the Jewish Community School of Milan and studied languages at Bocconi University. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem she earned a bachelor's degree in Italian literature, folklore and Ladino.

In 1960 she married Aaron Koen and moved to Israel, living in Jerusalem from 1962. She worked at the Foreign Ministry from 1974 to 1997. After a 1979 seminar for Ladino radio producers at Kol Israel, she began recording folk tales from Sephardic speakers and published her first collection in 1986.

She taught Ladino at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from 1996 and contributed in Ladino to Kol Israel. In 1992 she lit a torch on Independence Day as a representative of Sephardic Jewish culture. In 2017 she received a lifetime achievement award from the National Authority for Ladino Culture.

In 2012 she moved to a retirement home in Petah Tikva, where she continued her Ladino storytellers' circle. She died in 2024 and had 3 children.