PITTSBURGH, PA– Yolanda Avram Willis was born 81 years ago in Thessaloniki, the child of Jewish Greek parents. She recently spoke at the New Kensington campus of Pennsylvania State University about her family’s survival – blending in with Greek Orthodox families so as to successfully fool the Nazis during World War II, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.
The lecture was titled “Holocaust Remembrance.”
Willis is among 22 holocaust survivors who have presented their stories on campus, according to Lois Rubin, an emeritus associate professor of English at Penn State, the Review reported.
Willis credited the survival of her family to the compassion and cleverness of Greek Christians. Greek Archbishop Damaskinos Papandreou protested Jewish deportations and instructed his flock to take in and protect Greek Jews. Athens Police Chief Angelos Evert forged fake identification cards, the Review reported.
Both men saved thousands of Greek Jews.
“The Christian Greeks — they risked their lives for us,” Willis said.
Willis was six years old in 1940 when the Axis Powers invaded Greece, the Review reported. Her father moved the family and looked for work, but when Germans invaded Crete, Willis, her family, and others sought refuge in the mountains.
“When we went to the mountains, my father was given a black mule,” Willis said, the Review reported. “But over our heads were the Nazi planes.” She referred to the German paratroopers as “the umbrellas.”
“The women were urban and wore sandals, and I wore sandals to climb the mountains,” she said. “I remember looking down at the brown dirt caked on my socks sticking out of the sandals,” Willis said. They found a chapel and temporarily sought shelter in a cave, wrote the Review, but slept in the open on soft branches covered by army blankets, she remembered.
But the Germans wanted Greek residents to go back to the towns to provide services for the army, according to Willis. So her family, blending with an Orthodox Christian family, returned to the cities of Greece.
The family made its way to Athens, but her father was recognized and the family split up. After pretending to be non-Jewish for about four years, the family reunited when Greece was liberated in 1944.