A Hidden Child in Greece


Book Description

“Your story deserves to be widely heard.” —Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize–winning author and Holocaust survivor ---------------------------------------------------------------- Six-year-old Yolanda Avram is rescued by righteous strangers during the Holocaust in Greece. This is her story of courage and survival in the context of dozens of other rescues and shows Jews saving themselves and others in audacious and often heroic ways. Her story is uplifting and focuses on those flickers of light in the vast darkness of evil, known in Greece as the Persecution. This little-known saga of the common folk outwitting the Third Reich is a powerful and important story, told simply and movingly in cinematic episodes. The book is incandescent with empathy and gratitude. “What a powerful and moving story it is.” —Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and author of eighty-eight historical books “A Hidden Child in Greece is a monumental story that documents her family’s miraculous survival in a unique and moving way. It gives life to the principle of human dignity and courage as a universal precept . . . this book is a true light unto the nations.” —Yaffa Eliach, author and creator of the first university-level Holocaust curriculum and the Tower of Life, a 1,500-photograph permanent display at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC “Willis is Anne Frank, if Anne Frank had lived.” —Diana Hume George, author and educator “For me, the heart of this book is the family story—the real power lays in the intimate story you are able to describe very simply and movingly.” —Mark Mazower, director, modern European history, Columbia University




The Greek Millionaire's Secret Child


Book Description

Nurse Emily Tyler has come to Greece with good intentions. But Nikolaos Leonidas sees only a gold digger, with eyes fixed on his family's fortune. It's his plan to expose the fragile beauty. A weekend of champagne and seduction on his opulent yacht ought to do the trick. By the time Emily has proved her integrity, it's too late. She's fallen for the daredevil Greek. But his risk-taking lifestyle makes cautious Emily wary—especially now that she's pregnant with the Leonidas heir!




Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece


Book Description

A historical investigation of children’s memory of the Holocaust in Greece illustrates that age, generation and geographical background shaped postwar Jewish identities. The examination of children’s narratives deposited in the era of digital archives enables an understanding of the age-specific construction of the memory of genocide, which shakes established assumptions about the memory of the Holocaust. In the context of a global Holocaust memory established through testimony archives, the present research constructs a genealogy of the testimonial culture in Greece by framing the rich source of written and oral testimonies in the political discourses and public memory of the aftermath of the Second World War. The testimonies of former hidden children and child survivors of concentration camps illuminate the questions that haunted postwar attempts to reconstruct communities, related to the specific evolution of genocide in Greece and to the rising anti-Semitism of postwar Greece. As an oral history of child survivors of the Holocaust, the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of the history of childhood, Jewish studies, memory studies and Holocaust and genocide studies.




Flares of Memory


Book Description

A collection of "over one hundred brief stories written by survivors from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Balkan countries ... along with "poignant recollections of American liberators who were devastated by the horrors they discovered after the fall of the Nazis."--Jacket.




Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece


Book Description

A historical investigation of children’s memory of the Holocaust in Greece illustrates that age, generation and geographical background shaped postwar Jewish identities. The examination of children’s narratives deposited in the era of digital archives enables an understanding of the age-specific construction of the memory of genocide, which shakes established assumptions about the memory of the Holocaust. In the context of a global Holocaust memory established through testimony archives, the present research constructs a genealogy of the testimonial culture in Greece by framing the rich source of written and oral testimonies in the political discourses and public memory of the aftermath of the Second World War. The testimonies of former hidden children and child survivors of concentration camps illuminate the questions that haunted postwar attempts to reconstruct communities, related to the specific evolution of genocide in Greece and to the rising anti-Semitism of postwar Greece. As an oral history of child survivors of the Holocaust, the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of the history of childhood, Jewish studies, memory studies and Holocaust and genocide studies.




Out of Chaos


Book Description

The stories in Out of Chaos forms a profound testament to lost and found lives that are translated into compelling reading. The collection illuminates brief or elongated moments, fragments of memory and experience, what the great Holocaust writer Ida Fink called “a scrap of time.” In all, the anthology expresses survivors’ memories and reactions to a wide range of experiences as they survived in so many European settings, from Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, and France. The writers recall being on the run between different countries, escaping over mountains, hiding and even sometimes forgetting their Jewish identities in convents and rescuers’ homes and hovels, basements and attics. Some were left on their own; others found themselves embroiled in rescuer family conflicts. Some writers chose to write story clusters, each one capturing a moment or incident and often disconnected by memory or temporal and spatial divides.




Something Beautiful Happened


Book Description

Yvette Manessis Corporon grew up listening to her grandmother's stories about how the people of the small Greek island Erikousa hid a Jewish family -- a tailor named Savvas and his daughters -- from the Nazis during World War II. Nearly 2,000 Jews from that area died in the concentration camps, but even though everyone on Erikousa knew Savvas and his family were hiding on the island, no one ever gave them up, and the family survived the war. Years later, Yvette couldn't get the story of the Jewish tailor out of her head. She decided to track down the man's descendants -- and eventually found them in Israel. Their tearful reunion was proof to her that evil doesn't always win. But just days after she made the connection, her cousin's child was gunned down in a parking lot in Kansas, a victim of a Neo-Nazi out to inflict as much harm as he could. Despite her best hopes, she was forced to confront the fact that seventy years after the Nazis were defeated, it was still happening today. As Yvette and her family wrestled with the tragedy in their own lives, the lessons she learned from the survivors of the Holocaust helped her confront and make sense of the present.




Greece, the Hidden Centuries


Book Description

For almost four hundred years, between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Greek War of Independence, the history of Greece is shrouded in mystery: distorted by Greek writers and largely neglected by others. What was life really like for the Greeks under Ottoman rule? Was it a period of exploitation and enslavement for the Greeks until they were finally able to rise up against Turkish rule, as is the traditional, Greek nationalistic view? Or did the Greeks derive some benefit from Turkish rule? How did the Greeks and Turks co-exist for so long? And, why are Greek attitudes towards Venice, who also controlled much of Greece for many of these years, so different? In this wide-ranging yet concise history David Brewer explodes many of the myths about Turkish rule of Greece. He places the Greek story in its wider, international context and casts fresh light on the dynamics of power not only between Greeks and Ottomans but also between Muslims and Christians, both Orthodox and Catholic, throughout Europe. This absorbing and riveting account of a crucial period will ensure that the history of Greece under Turkish rule is no longer hidden. It will delight anyone with an interest in Greek and Turkish history and in how the past has shaped the Greece we know today.




Lost Child of Greece


Book Description




Hidden in Plain Sight


Book Description

As Nazis expand their domination of the European continent, nearly sixty thousand Greek Jews mistakenly believe they are safe. Anna, a young Jewess from Salonika, has gone to live in Athens. Trained as a doctor, Anna knows if the German army invades, she will no longer be allowed to practice medicine at the hospitals. With great anguish, Anna masks her faith and her vocation to live as a Christian and avoid arousing any suspicion. Anna falls in love with Alexander, an Orthodox Christian. Documenting the terrible brutal occupation of Greece by the Nazis, Hidden in Plain Sight shines a light on the plight of Greece's Jews and the brave attempts of the Archbishop of Athens to protect them. Carefully researched and expertly plotted, this novel's attention to detail and compelling characters will appeal to fans of historical fiction and those of Jewish faith or Greek heritage. This book is similar to The Lost Wife by Alyson Richmond.