Synagonistis: Greek Jews in the National Resistance
After the six-month war onthe Albanian front, in April 1941 Greece succumbed to the forces of the Wehrmacht and for the next three-and-a-half years experienced the darkest period of its modern history
Despite the unbearable terror, executions and the famine during the first winter of 1941–42 that decimated the population, especially in urban centres,
Greeks by the thousands were won over tothe idea of resistance. In 1943, Athens was gripped by strikes and demonstrations which were steeped in the blood of its residents, while from 1941 insurgent groups appeared in the countryside and in 1943–1944 they became real partisan armies that engaged in regular battles with the occupiers.The victims of struggle against the occupiers were many: more than 30,000 died in combat, were murdered or executed; more than 800 villages were burned in retaliation and the country’s infrastructure destroyed.
Greek Jews were not absent from this struggle, which embraced the whole country and its people. In the general patriotic upsurge during the occupation, the survival instinct blended with the desire for revenge. The deportations of thousands of co-religionists, relatives and friends – and the terrorism, humiliation and executions which preceded them – sparked the emergence of a dynamic resistance on the part of the Jews.
Έλληνες Εβραίοι στην Εθνική Αντίσταση
Although the available data is limited and fragmentary, it is estimated that about 650 Jewish men and women, from almost all the Jewish communities in the country, enlisted in the various resistance groups from the beginning of the occupation to the liberation or joined the partisans to escape the grasp of the Nazis. The exhibition “Synagonistis: Greek Jews in the National Resistance” aims to highlight this heroic, but also torn-out page of modern greek history. To narrate the tale of Greek Jewish resistance during World War II. To pay tribute to all those who refused to bear the Yellow Star, by naming them and presenting personal documents, photos, testimonies that underline their courage and self-sacrifice during the darkest times. Identifying the fallen resisters, one by one, is the minimum debt owed to those who chose the glorious death of a warrior mixed their blood with the ashes of the thousands of their coreligionists who were murdered by the Nazis.
JEWISH RESISTANCE IN OCCUPIED EUROPE
The widespread perception that the Jewish populations of Europe were led blindly and obediently like “sheep to the slaughter” to Hitler’s death camps does not accurately reflect historical reality.
The best proof that instead of submitting to the Nazis there was the option of going into battle were the estimated 30,000 Jews who fought in the partisan detachments of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece. In Yugoslavia, about 5.000 Jewish men and women, representing seven percent of the prewar Jewish population, enlisted in Tito’s National Liberation Front and National Liberation Army (Partisans). In Bulgaria, 460 Jews were involved in the country’s communist resistance and an estimated 125 were killed in battle. In several cases, mainly in eastern Europe, Jewish partisansserved in independent, homogeneous units and groupsembedded in partisan armies. The most famous case is that of the Polish Jewish Bielski brothers – Tuvia, Alexander, Asael and Aron – in Belarus, who, as partisan leaders, organised an entire camp that accommodated 1,240 persecuted Jews, partisans and civilian families in the Naliboki forest in northwestern Belarus. In France, as early as autumn 1941, the Communist Party (PCF) recruited many young Jews to groups that carried out bombings of German targets and killings of German soldiers, in the ranksof the FTP–MOI (Francs tireurs et partisans–Main–d’Oeuvre Immigrée), a special organisation that coordinated armed units in occupied cities (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse).
A distinct category of combatants involved those who took up arms at the very heart of the Nazi industrial extermination system. In the ghettos and camps, the very act of survival was deemed “resistance”. In eastern Europe, the ghettoisation and gradual mass extermination of populations triggered the resistance of the entrapped Jews. In eastern Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, the Jewish resistance organised riots in five large and 15 small ghettos, in five large camps and 18 forced labour camps. The vibrant Jewish resistance groups in Kovna(now Kaunas) in Lithuania, Białystok, Vilna (now Vilnius) and Minsk enabled the escape of thousands of their coreligionists to the forests.
The largest and most symbolic moment of the Jewish resistance in Nazi Europe is undoubtedly the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (19 April–16 May 1943). In January 1943, 750 young members of the Jewish Militant Organisation (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ZOB) and Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ZZW), revolted inside the Ghetto. About 13,000 Jews were killed in fierce battles, from 19th of April to 16th of May, in an unsurpassed example of valour and sacrifice.
The Greek resistance and the Jews, 1941–1944
Although the available data is limited and fragmentary, it is estimated that about 650 Jewish men and women, from almost all the Jewish communities in the country, enlisted in the various resistance groups from the beginning of the occupation to the liberation or joined the partisans to escape the grasp of the Nazis. The vast majority joined the National Liberation Front (EAM), which constituted the largest organisation in occupied Greece, its armed wing, the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), and its affiliated associations, EPON and National Solidarity.
The first armed action occurred in the areas first hit by the Nazi storm. From December 1942 to May 1943, about 250 Jews from Thessaloniki escaped to the resistance-held areas of central and western Macedonia. The Italian capitulation (8 September 1943) marked the second phase. Since early October 1943, hundreds of Jews from Trikala, Karditsa, Volos, Larissa and, later, Chalkida and Patras were dispersed under EAM protection to nearby villages. In Epirus, a few young men from Ioannina left the entrapped community to join the partisans, while many – mostly from Arta – joined Napoleon Zervas’ National Republican Greek League (EDES), which operated exclusively in Epirus.
In “Free Greece”, they were all utilised in a variety of ways: “Those who didn’t take up arms worked alongside villagers as liaisons, in the ancillary services of the [resistance] army. The most literate assumed secretarial duties in the National Solidarity organisation, which gathered and distributed food. Craftsmen made cloth, hats and boots in workshops. Women sewed those neat, dapper shirts made of silk parachutes, knitted woollen socks and caps for the boys at the ‘front’ and the young girls, being more educated, devoted themselves to cultural events and theatrical performances” (Iossif Matsas). Due to their educational level, many assumed key positions and offices in ELAS divisions, in ELAS Logistics Arm (Epimelitia tou Antarti, ETA) or in the health service.
From 1941 to 1944, at least 63 Jews were killed fighting as partisans or were executed for their participation in the resistance and a further 76 were executed in reprisal actions. Remembering their names is the respect dueto those who chose the glorious death of a combatant over the submission to the butchers of the children of Israel. A minimum debt owed to those who mixed their blood with the ashes of the thousands of their coreligionists who were murdered by the Nazis.
FROM THE GHETTOS OF THESSALONIKI TO THE PARTISANS
Of the 55,250 Thessaloniki Jews, about 400 managed to make their way to partisan-held territory in Greece. Apart from those who were already in other areas, a few dozen brave teams left the city’s ghetto in late March and headed westwards. Among them were siblings Moissis, Solomon, Yolanda and Dora Bourla, Dick Benveniste, Saltiel Gattegno, Isaak Emmanuel, Isaak Dassa, David Aaron, Moshe Belo, Mosheh Segora, Dinos and Salvator Ovadias, Solomon Saltiel, Dario Ouziel, Iakovos Koumeris, Flora Perachia, Matilda Massarano, Errikos Pipano and others. Around the same time, Yakov Sarfati and Menachem Stroumsa smuggled 114 men and women from German-occupied Veria. In mid-April, Iossif Matsas from Ioannina, a high-school teacher at Megali Vrysi in Kilkis, fled to the resistance hideouts on Mt Paiko. He was preceded by Isaak Moissis, who had escaped from forced labour in Tempe, encountered the partisans in February and became the first Jewish ELAS member in Vermio.
MountVermiobecame a concentration point. After countless battles and marches through successive German sweep operations, the partisans and about 250 Jews arrived at the hospitable villages of Grevena and Kozani. There, they were allocated battalions and went into battle. Under the nom-de-guerre “Kitsos”, Isaak Moissis became “kapetanios” (partisan leader) of a company in II Battalion of the 16th Regiment, where as many as half of the newcomers allocated. Daisy Karasso and Dora Bourla (“Tarzan”) became EPON activists in the villages of Nigrita and Veria respectively. Fani Florentin, who fled to Paiko with her husband Leon Matalon, became a nurse in the X Division: “She was indomitable. She inspired the laggards and the weak, offering them water from a large flask she was carrying along with the medical pack. Together with the captain, she was last in the convoy and helped all those who fell behind” (Iossif Matsas). At least 17 Jewish fighters were lost. The first was Stella Koen,who was killed fighting the Germans in Tachnista, Pieria, on 16 April 1943. Elias Nissim, veteran of Fort Roupel [a fortress on the Metaxas Line famous for its defence during the German invasion in April 1941], and Iossif Bensoussan were lost in the large sweep operations carried out by the Germans in July 1944. Markos Karasso, a graduate of the ELAS Officer Academy, was killed in the Battle of Muharrem Hani (6 August 1944) and 20-year-old Solomon (Sardos) Bourlas, who fought like a lion, fell in the last battle with the retreating Germans at Stavros in Veria (27 September 1944). Their actions were a fitting tribute to the memory of a community that had almost entirely vanished.
THESSALY: PARTISAN CRADLE
More than 100 Jews from Larissa, Volos, Trikala and Karditsa were active in the national-liberation struggle. Louiza Negrin was arrested and imprisoned by the Italians at a rally in Larissa in March 1943. Allegra Felous-Kapeta from Trikala, a member of the Communist Party since the interwar period, emerged as an EAM functionary in western Thessaly. David Levis from Volos was an EAM member and involved in matters of local administration in liberated areas, while the rescue of the Volos community was due to his efforts. The banker Eliezer (Lazaros) Azaria from Veria was in charge of ELAS Logistics Arm (ETA) in Thessaly and, later, a member of the Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA).
After the capitulation of the Italians, many of those who fled from the cities joined EPON and the I ELAS Division in Thessaly: From Trikala, there was Alvertos and Benjamin Negrin, Solon Levi and Elias and Louiza Felous; from Larissa, there was lieutenant Samuel Eskinatzis, served as company commander, Esdras Moissis and Iakov Felous. Along with Larissa natives Isaak and Alvertos Lazar, the siblings Mordochai and Alvertos Salem from Thessaloniki, also served in the 5th ELAS Regiment in Trikala. Fearless in battle, Benjamin Negrin (who used the nom-de-guerre Vaios) of the 1/38 Regiment, was seriously injured in a night attack on Paleomonastiroin Trikala (13 April 1944). He succumbed to his injuries in 1945. The first to be killed in action was Iakov Beracha from Trikala, on 7 November 1943 in the Battle of Mesochora.
Dozens of Jews from Volos fought with 54th ELAS Regiment which engaged in intense military action against the Germans in eastern Thessaly: Elias Kones, Alvertos Amon, Pepos Sakkis, Zakinos Mizan, Haim Mizrachis, Zacharias Toron, the siblings Salvator, Anna, Rachel, Rozita and Haim Koen, Raphael Frezis, Avraam Obadias, Moissis Mordos, Manolis Faradzis, Moissis Iesoulas, Zachos Levis, Elias Kapetas and others. Anna Koen and Elli Sakki were dedicated nurses to the regiment. Among the heroes were Savvas Iakovou (52nd Regiment) who was killed on 17 April 1944 at Rentina in Agrafa and 18-year-old Leon Sakkis. Serving in the 9th Company of the III/54 Battalion, he fell at the Battle of Karalar (Eleftherio) in Larissa (29 June 1944), while assisting a fallen comrade. In Thessaly, more than any other region, the fate of the Jews was intertwined with their heroic resistance. It was an experience that mitigated the extent of the Holocaust in the region.
JEWISH WARRIORS IN ROUMELI
Central Greeceor “Roumeli” was at the heart of “Free Greece”. It was where the ELAS General Headquarters was based, along with five guerrilla regiments and a vast organisational network. Over a period of 15 months, the Germans launched 20 anti-partisan operations using special mountain troops (1st Mountain Division, 4th Waffen SS Division, Brandenburg Division). The region from Parnitha to Karpenissi was marked by countless battles, civilian massacres and the destruction of villages.
The local ELAS units recorded high concentrations of Jews, mostly refugees from Athens who fled topartisan-controlled areas. They offered a huge amount in terms of bravery and quality. The Thessalonians Ido Shimsi (“Makabis”) and Alvertos Benroubi, a partisan medical officer and interpreter, held executive positions as quartermasters in the ELAS V Brigade and XIII Division, respectively. Loui Koen (“Kronos”) from Xanthi and David Brudo from Thessaloniki performed miracles as officers of ELAS Logistics Arm (ETA) in the Parnassida Battalion. Manolis Aruch and Alvertos Koen (“Vladimiros”) were renowned for their role as partisan medics in Fokida. “Vladimiros was all the time on foot, laughing. He only lost his laughter when he had to work on difficult cases, when he devoted himself entirely to saving the injured” (Dimitris Dimitriou-Nikiforos).
Among those who distinguished themselves were Salvator Bakolas (“Sotiris”), Yomtov Moshe and Rafael Maltis from Ioannina, Maslach Koen, Alvertos Valenstein from Athens EPON, the Athenian Iakovos Yussurum and the Thessalonian Tzako Karasso in the 36th Regiment and Loui Koen’s 16-year-old brother Yitschak (“Kronakos”). The reservist Lieutenant Johanas Hatzis (“Skoufas”) from Arta, along with Leon Meir, Moshe Koen, Aris Kazes (“Kolokotronis”), Viktor Bati, Slomo Matsil and an unidentified gunner named Kamon (or Kapon), fought in the II Battalion of the 34th Regiment. Almost all were injured in battle, while “Skoufas” fell in the great Battle of Amfissa (2 July 1944) as a platoon commander. Three other Jews made the supreme sacrifice: Rovertos Mitrani (“Ippokratis”), a medical student from Serres, David Koen from Preveza and David Rousso from Athens were killed along with 29 more partisans of the Parnassida Battalion in a German ambush at Ayia Triada, in Kaloskopi, Fokida (5 January 1944) . Their bones are now buried in the same place, mixed with those of their Christian comrades, a perennial reminder of a heroic and universal ideal.
COMBATANTS AND INTELLECTUALS IN EPIRUS
In Epirus, the dense German encampments, the difficulty of the terrain and cohesion between the communities meant that some Jews of Ioannina and Arta found themselves outside the encirclement in September 1943. The “undisciplined” youths Samuel Koen and Sion Bakolas from Ioannina took the bold decision to leave the city and, in October 1943, they became the first Jewish partisans in the area of Pogoni. Five months later, they were followed by nine escapees from Larissa camp: Moissis Migionis (Katsampas), Avraam (Ebby) Svolis, Yeshua Matsas, Michalis Valais, Michalis Koen, Iakov Gershon, Haim Matsas, Eliasaf Matsas and Solomon Matsas. All served in the 15th, 85th and 3/40th ELAS Regiments, from Zagorochoria (near the borderline) to Arta. The 20-year-old Iakovos Balestras, perhaps the only Corfiot Jew to make his way Epirus to fight the Germans, was also active in Zagorochoria.
Two doctors served in Napoleon Zervas’ National Republican Greek League/National Groups of Greek Guerrillas (EDES/EOEA): one was the military doctor Errikos Levi, from occupied Ioannina, who sent intelligence to the partisans until March 1944 when he was deported with the whole community, and Michalis Negrin, who managed to escape to the mountains and even assisted wounded Germans at the Battle of Menina (17 August 1944).
The Arta community also shone with exceptions. Among the few who took the decision to take to the mountains was Dr Lazaros Eliezer, who in late 1943, along with Ilias and Isaak Eliezer, joined the partisans in EAM-held Hosepsi. Eliezer offered medical services, while the following took part in battles with ELAS: Tzani Mizan, Samuel Soussis, Vital Megir, Iossif Vital, Tsantikos Sadik and Savvas Issis, who was executed after the war as a communist. Active in EDES in Arta was 16-year-old Emil Sambas, who “one evening rushed like lightning and tore down all the German notices up as far as the Nazi military headquarters”. Other EDES members were David Nachmias, who was part of Zervas’ personal guard, and David Hatzis and Daniel Ieremias, who were active in Tzoumerka in the band of partisan chieftain Spyros Kolonikis (“Karabinas”).
RESISTANCE PRESS IN THE MOUNTAINS
Just as powerful as bullets were the words of the partisans. Thousands of leaflets and hundreds of publications circulated illegally in villages and occupied towns. The strict censorship regime made it imperative to issue resistance newspapers, so printers waged their own battle to provide information and encouragement to the people.
Avraam Kalef-Ezra was born in 1913 in Ioannina. He went by his family’s nickname (Kalef-Ezra) instead of surname (Baruch) due to a bureaucratic error. Returning from the Albanian front, he worked on the Kiryx (Herald) newspaper in Ioannina. In 1942 he escaped under a false name, Ioannis Konstantinou, to the villages of Preveza and became one of the first EAM members. From early 1943 to the liberation, he printed and edited EAM newspapers, such as Drassi (Action) and Machitis (Fighter), which were based in Voulgareli, in the partisan-held part of Arta. His younger brother, Yeuda, ran the printing machine for the National Republican Greek League (EDES). The printing and distribution of propaganda materials was of great significance for the remote villages of Epirus. From the mountain, he repeatedly tried to convince the Ioannina community to escape from the city, and even got into conflict with Sabethai Kabelis, a community leader who was submissive to the Germans. The tragic fate of thecitizens of Ioannina, among whom was his mother, tormented him until his death in 1999.
Armando Bezes was born in 1915 in Thessaloniki to a family of printers. His father, Baruch Bezes, published religious books, popular novels and the satirical newspaper El Bourlon (The Coarse Joke). During the occupation, Armando took to the mountains, risking his life by carrying with him a manual printing press. Under the pseudonym “Antonis Bezezis”, he contributed to the struggle as a printer for EAM in Thessaly. His announcements and newspapers informed and inspired the villagers, who would wait anxiously for “Antonis”. With great risk, he transported the printing equipment and distributed publications and Rizospastis (the KKE newspaper) in a vast region, from Agrafa to Olympos. In one of his short memoirs he recalled: “Once we made two whole dug outs on Mt Olympos. We were alerted that a sweep operation was underway and we had to hide the printing machine on the mountain or underground.” He also worked in the printing press of the PEEA. After the liberation, he settled in Athens, where he continued working as a printer. He lost his entire family, with the exception of a sister, in the camps. In 1948 he printed a book by the Thessaloniki doctor Zak Matarasso, Ki omos olio tous den pethanan (Yet, not everyone died), the first account of the Holocaust in the Greek language.
THE TRAINBUSTERS OF OLYMPOS
One of the special partisan units was the elite “Engineers Company” of the ΙELAS Division, operating in the Mt Olympos region, under the command of Lieut. Antonis Angeloulis (“Vratsanos”). Among the 250 partisans of that special unit were two Jews: Vital Solomon Aelion from Thessaloniki and Esdras Beniamin Moissis from Larissa. Vital was the oldest and first to join. He was born in Thessaloniki in October 1917, fought in Albania with the 67th Infantry Regiment and, after the roundup of the Jews on Thessaloniki’s Eleftherias Square (11 July 1942), he was conscripted to work in a German labour camp at Karya in Pieria. He escaped and went into hiding until December 1942, when he joined the first ELAS group in southern Mt. Olympos. He was the first Jewish partisan in all of Greece. In January 1943 he joined the fledgling Olympos engineering unit. He became a platoon captain, member of the Communist Party (KKE) and responsible for collecting material dropped by the British and edited the small, handwritten newspaper of the company that was entitled To Akariaion (“The Instantaneous”), a name inspired by explosive fuses. Born in 1925, Esdras went into hiding with his family at Ambelonas, Larissa and decided to join up in April 1943. As he himself said: “I was 18 years old and I’d already seen enough. But from that point, I would experience plenty”.
From March 1943 to October 1944, the “Trainbusters of Olympos” became mythical. They carried out 96 attacks in the Tempi valley, blowing up trains, tens of kilometres of track and technical installations. At the same time, they were involved in fierce battles with the Germans in the villages of Rapsani, Pyrgetos, Kallipefki, Ambelonas (Kazaklar), Argyropouli (Karatzol) and others. The Germans suffered the loss of hundreds of men and tons of material.
On 6 May 1944, the battalion’s finest hour involved heavy fighting and the rescue of Jews. Ata place called “Karalakkas” in Olympos, Vital’s platoondecimated a German fighting unit that had come from Larissa, huntingthe families of Markos Ganis, Iossif Ovadia, Moissis Magrizos and Yehuda Koen who were hiding outside the village of Karya. Some of the young men from the pursued families joined the battle. The Greek losses were eight dead partisans and at least three dead Jews. Besides a triumph, the Battle of Karalakkas has been immortalised as one of the symbolic events in history of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Greece.
ZAK KOSTIS
The resistance activity of Zak Kostis reads like a novel. Born in Chalkida, Evia, in 1912 to Moschon and Hana Kostis, he was a law graduate and is the only Greek Jew who participated in the Apollon/Yvonni organisation, the largest intelligence and sabotage network in occupied Greece. Two German Jews, Petros (Peter) Mordos and Ulrich Wels, also acted as informers. From January 1943, Zak’s office at 43 Kolokotroni St was a key meeting place for the organisation in central Athens. As a member of the unit run by Gerasimos Paloumpis and the “ghost saboteur” Yiorgos Varnakiotis, Zak participated in many acts of sabotage at Piraeus port. Among the unit’s accomplishments was the blowing up of the Santa Fe cargo ship, nicknamed the “devil’s ship”, in Keratsini, the trooper B103 (21 June 1943), the tugboats Titan and Iraklis and the freighter K273.
Zak spent many hours at the Kolokotroni St “headquarters” until September 1943, when the address was betrayed to the German Ortskommandantur. “The Germans blocked the office on Kolokotroni St. All had left. Zak Kostis remained. He wasn’t afraid. He was arrested. The Germans were confronted with an unimaginable composure. The Germans got angry. They beat him and escorted him to the Gestapo in Piraeus, where he was interrogated extensively” (Ta Nea, 9 July 1946). His comrade Nikos Adam was executed, but he managed to escape. Soon, there were more reasons to go into hiding: A few days later, after the announcement of the first anti-Jewish measures in Athens, Zak was forced to go underground. He hid in Liopessi (Paiania), helped by Vangelis Sideris and Stavros Batas, who had connections with his brother in law, Ilias Dentes. Next to the house was a German outpost. “While the smart old man Vangelis kept a look out, I took out the radio and listened to the news from London and Cairo,” he would write years later. His activities as a saboteur, liaisonand informant for the Apollon / Yvonni resistance group was recognised in 1949 by the army ministry as the equivalent of “nine months’ service in the frontline” and he was awarded the rank of colonel. In 1968 he recorded his memories of the occupation in a rare book entitled Ptyches (Aspects), which today adorns the collection of the Jewish Museum of Greece.
ALLEGRA FELOUS
One of the most “politically minded” Jews in the Resistance was born on 17 January 1916 in Trikala. She was the second daughter of David Felous and Marika Koen, whose first born was called Louiza (1914) and the last Ilias (1920). The turbulent era in which she grew up and the family’s involvement with the KKE shaped her political consciousness from a very young age. An uncle, Raphael Felous, served as KKE secretary in Trikala in the 1920s and was one of the instigators of the massive demonstration of Trikala farmers in February 1925. The family fled to Volos, where Allegra joined the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE) and married businessman Raphael Kapetas. During Metaxas’ Dictatorship (1936-1940), she was exiled to Kimolos and Folegandros islands, along with prominent KKE members. Her first cousin, Minas Kambelis, died in exile on Agios Efstratios island in 1941.
With the collapse of the front in 1941, the exiles on Folegandros fled to Athens and involved themselves in the reconstruction of the KKE. Allegra participated in illegal proceedings of the KKE Central Committee’s sixth session which declared armed resistance against the occupiers. After the establishment of EAM on 27 September 1941, she was sent to her hometown, where she was active in the creation of EAM organisations in western Thessaly. From 1942 to 1944 she travelled throughout Central Greece, establishing organisations and serving as secretary of the National Solidarity in Thessaly. In 1945 she was elected a member of the KKE Central Committee.
During the civil war, Allegra shared the fate of the Greek communists. In 1945 she married Dr Takis Skyftis from Volos, former surgeon in the I ELAS Division, and together they fled to the mountains. She was responsible for women and political commissar in the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) in Thessaly, together with Charilaos Florakis. In 1949 she took the path of political exile to East Germany. She returned in the 1970s. Until her death in February 2011, she was involved in political activities and historical debates about the 1940s.
MOIS YUSSUROUM
Mois (Maurice) Yousouroum hails from a historical Greek Jewish family. His grandfather, Bochor, came from Smyrna to Athens in 1860 and opened an antique shop on the corner of Karaiskaki and Ermou streets. Ever since, that part of Monastiraki has borne the Yussuroum name. In 1913, a son of his, Noah, went to Thessaloniki, where he married Mazaltov Habib from Athens, who had followed him there. There, Isaak and Leon were born. In 1917 the couple returned to Athens, bought a house in the centre and gave birth to four more children: Moissis or Mois (1920), Iakovos, Djoyia and Sterina.
Mois finished the 9th Boys’ Gymnasium (high school) and studied dentistry at the University of Athens. During the Greek–Italian War, he served in the Red Cross as an anaesthetistand took part in the Battle of Crete in Herakleion sector, along with his brother Iakovos. He joined Resistance very soon and in the capital, he spearheaded the creation of a Jewish group within EAM, mainly comprised of students. After taking to the mountains around Athens (September 1943), he went to Dervenochoria in Mt. Parnitha and received his baptism of fire during the German sweep operations in October. He joined ELAS as “Yiorgos Gazis” and served in the Parnassida Battalion in Fokida, while Iakovos joined the neighbouring 36th Regiment. In January 1944, under orders from the V ELAS Brigade, he was transferred to the Peloponnese and was placed in the 6th (Corinth) Regiment. There, the most important phase of his life in the resistance began. Thanks to his organisational skillsand education, he was assigned the responsibility for the entire coastal area. He set up an advanced resistance outpost, maintaining bases in Zarouchla and Akrata. He formed a mobile unit that collected intelligence, destroyed telegraph poles and railway lines and set up telephone lines with the mountain villages. That summer, he established a permanent ELAS headquarters in Lykoporia (F8).
After the Germans carried out their last search-and-destroy operation in August, the regiment liberated Corinth. When ELAS surrendered its weapons in February 1945, he returned to his neighbourhood, Thissio. With the same sense of duty shown during the occupation, he fought with the Greek Army in the Civil War (1947–1950) and was decorated with the Silver Cross of Valour and the War Cross. He lived in Athens till his death.
DANELOS ALCHANATIS
Danelos Alchanatis was born in Athens in 1922. After completing the historical 8th Boys’ Gymnasium (high school) on Koumoundourou Square, he enrolled to study architecture at Athens Polytechnic. When the Germans occupied Athens, he was finishing his first year.
With the student lecture halls in turmoil, it was impossible to stay out of the resistance. In early 1942, he was recruited to EAM by a classmate, Neilos Mastrantonis, a top student and hero of the Greek–Italian War. Danelos enthusiastically undertook to set up an EAM branch for Jews and succeeded in getting several coreligionists involved, starting with his childhood friends Mois Yussuroum, Zakinos Koen, Robertos Zakar, Simos Valenstein and others. This was one of the few initiatives of organised Jewish resistance in occupied Greece. The team disobeyed the callsof the community, planned forms of resistance and participated in all major protests and demonstrations in the capital, as part of EAM Youth and, later, EPON.
In October 1943, the German grip on the Jews of Athens began to tighten. Danelos used the fake name “Thanasis Stamatoukos” and hid in Pyritidopoieio (present day Egaleo). The neighbourhood concealed the fact that they were Jews. As the actions of the collaborationist Security Battalions expanded into the Athenian suburbs, he escaped with the help of EAM to Eretria, Evia, together with his brothers and the family of an uncle, Leon Azouvi. In December 1943, he signed up to the 7th ELAS Regiment in Evia, which was headquartered in Steni, joining Leon Amar, Samikos Fornis and others from Chalkida who had enlisted earlier. He took part in many battles under the command of local captains Yiorgos Douatzis (“Othris”) and Vangelis Karamichalis (“Vyronas”). On account of his beliefs, he was exiled for two years to the island of Ikaria (1947–1949) and served in the army as a “political undesirable”.
He subsequently worked as an architect and devoted his entire life to Greek Jewish community organisations. After the liberation, he established the Association of Jewish Students and was actively involved in the rebuilding of the Jewish Community of Athens. He served on all the boards of the community from 1960 (he was president from 1980 to 1995) and served as president (1977–1978) of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KISE). He died in August 2012.
SARA YESHUA
Born in the “Ovriaki” (Jewish quarter) of Chalkida in 1927, Sara (or Sarika) Yeshua belongs to the emblematic figures of the resistance. When the war broke out, she was a student in the Public Commercial School in Chalkida. After the untimely death of her father in the same year she was born, she was brought up by her mother, Zafira, and her older sister Yaffa on Kotsou St, the main street of the Jewish quarter. Her mother was the sister of war hero Col. Mardochaios Frizis, who played a key role in the formation of her patriotic consciousness. Before she turned 15, Sara assisted the wounded at city’s military hospital as a volunteer nurse.
The next step was the resistance. The energeticJewish girl secured fake identities for her mother and herself. From the beginning of the German occupation (October 1943), Sara got involved with EAM, took her mother and left Chalkida for Steni where her sister lived with her husband.
To guard against German incursions against the terrified Jews who had fled to the mountains, the resistance dispersed the Jewsin various villages (Paliouras, Theologos, Stropones, Vasiliko) and later they organised an escape network by boat to Turkey from Tsakei beach. The young Sara became a teacher in the isolated village of Kourkouloi and worked actively in EPON. After the horrific murder of her cousin Mendi Moschovitz by the Security Battalions in Stropones (4 March 1944) and the burning of Kourkouloi, she joined the partisan ranks. She established herself immediately as a speaker who passionately preached armed struggle, particularly among young women. Soon he formed an independent female group that fought, gathered intelligence and organised theatre performances in the villages. An American journalist who was in occupied Evia devoted a paragraph to her in an article aboutthe Greek partisans: “She’s a short, stocky girl with dark hair and blue eyes. She runs like a man and can shoot a walnut from a tree at 200 yards. Whether she is calling out marching orders or pounding out a beat with her arm as her Company goes singing down a mountain path, she does it vibrantly and proudly”. At the liberation, she was “kapetanissa” (partisan leader) of the Model Women’s Platoon of the 7th ELAS Regiment and already legendary among the partisans of Evia under the name “Captain Sarika.” He now lives in Tel Aviv.
IOSSIF NISSIM
Iossif Nissim first saw the light of day on Sarantaporou St in Thessaloniki on 22 February 1919. He was the fourth child of merchant Gabriel Nissim, a merchant, and Maria Abastado. Their home was French-speaking and Iossif received a good education. He was a cadet at the School for Reserve Infantry Officers when the war with Italy broke out on 28 October 1940. With his love for military life and his hate for the Germans, as a Jew and a Greek soldier, he decided to continue the war, even on his own. During the German invasion, he and some colleagues escaped to Crete by boat. After the heroic defence of the island, he travelled to Alexandria, in Egypt, aboard the British cruiser HMS Warspite. The journey seemed to last for ages because of the constant bombardment by German Stukas.
In the Middle East, he donned his uniform once again and started a fascinating military life. In the summer of 1942 he volunteered for the Sacred Band (Ieros Lochos) led by Col Christodoulos Tsigantes. He was the only Jew in this special unit of 300 Greeks who were trained in camps in Haiffa as an elite “commando” for patrols, parachuting, hand-to-hand combat, explosives etc. After the second Battle of El Alamein (October 1942) and the defeat of Rommel, the Sacred Band joined the unit of French General Leclerc. With his knowledge of French, Iossif acted as a liaison officer during the campaigns against the Germans in Tunisia. At the critical Battle of Ksar Ghilane (10–19 March 1943), his jeep was hit by a mine. For his injuries and his determination to save an injured fellow fighter, he was decorated with the highest distinction, the Gold Cross of Valour (“Chrissoun Aristeio Andreias”). It was the highest award given to a Greek Jewish solider in the Second World War. In addition to an operation onSamos (October 1943) and the mass evacuation of 14,000 Italian prisoners to Turkey, Iossif took part in numerous raids and operations in North Africa, from Lebanon to Cyrenaica, and retired in 1945 with the rank of second lieutenant. In Athens, he was reunited with his parents and three siblings Elias, Errikos and Dora, who were in hiding. Only the eldest sister, Rachil, perished at Auschwitz, along with 80 members of the Abastado, Asseo and Nissim families.
In 1947 he married Zan Aroesti, a fellow Jew from Thessaloniki whom he met in a refugee camp in Aleppo, Syria, during the war. They emigrated to Italy where they still live.
