Hidden Children

Beniamin Albalas was born on 1 September 1937 in the central Athens neighbourhood of Kato Petralona to parents from the western Greek city of Preveza. For him, it is a happy coincidence that it was his father’s sister, Aunt Matilda, who was the midwife at his birth. The Second...

At the outbreak of the Greek-Italian war in 1940, ten-year-old Lilian Benrubi lived with her parents, Isaak and Dora, in Tsimiski Street in Thessaloniki. Lilian's father, Isaac, a realist and a foreseeing native of Thessaloniki, decided back in 1941 to protect his family by moving to Athens, then under...

When Thessaloniki was bombed in 1941, the family of Yvette Beza decided to move to the village of Vyzitsa, on Mt. Pelion, where they would be safer. They lived quietly there for a time, while their father, Mois, traveled back and forth from Thessaloniki on business. One day though,...

Shelly Cohen was one of the few children of Thessaloniki who, from the balcony of their home, saw the Germans arrive as occupiers in her native city on 9 April 1941. Soon, the little girl would leave her carefree childhood of playing games on the street and learn that...

The eldest son of cloth merchant Leon Hatzis, from the northwestern city of Ioannina, and Sarina (Nina) Samuel, from the central city of Trikala, Isaak Hatzis was born in Ioannina on 27 September 1931. On the eve of the war, he lived with his parents and two younger siblings,...

Thirteen years had passed since the end of the war. Sixteen-year-old Fotini Kamba lived with her parents in Athens. They were a quiet, loving family. Then her father happened to be taken ill with Asian flu. There was an epidemic of it at that time and he was taken to...

The family of Moissis Konstantinis lived in Athens. His father, Kanaris Konstantinis was an inspector General with the PTT. The children, Moissis and David, his elder brother by three years, were at school when the war broke out. Until 1943, while Athens was still under Italian occupation, little changed...

Samuel Matsas, the son of Minos and Margarita (née Sarfati), saw the light of day in 1937 in Athens. His earliest childhood memories were bound to have a strong musical colour, given the Hoffman piano in the house and the songs his parents sang in the evenings to the...

In the vortex of war, the family of Eftychia Nahmia found themselves in Athens, far away from their native city of Ioannina, where they normally lived. The anonymoys crowd of the city would help them pass unnoticed. When Stroop ordered the city’s Jews to be registered the family went...

ROSINA PARDO In the centre of prewar Thessaloniki , at 35 Tsimiski street, lived the family of Haim and Evgenia Pardo lived with their three daughters, Lilly, Rosina and Denise. Haim was a merchant and his shop was just across the street. Until the declaration of the war in 1940,...