Some, who have been following this blog, may be wondering how our father did not suffer the same fate as the rest of his family.  My sister who has written some poignant commentary attached to this blog, has written about his escape. The following is her piece that describes the circumstances of how he eluded capture.

This past June, we set out to understand for ourselves what had happened to our family during World War II.  They had been systematically and brutally rounded up, deported and killed. Their towns today are “Juden rein” (free of Jews).  Hitler achieved his Final Solution in Macedonia and Thrace.  We wanted to get closer to those who suffered this fate. It was a heart-wrenching experience, but amidst the pain and sorrow, we found unexpected comfort and warmth from people we met. Surprised and curious about our very existence, we were welcomed .  They were fascinated to learn of our story, as we were born to a survivor whose existence was not known to them.  There were no survivors!  Before them, however, stood the next generation. We are the descendants of at least one family from the Jews of Xanthi in Thrace.  The Nazis did not succeed, we are alive, they did not eradicate us all. From one survivor, our family now numbers 36, and counting!

This is the story of a brave and determined young man, who was able to get away. We, his children exist today thanks to the will and courage of this 21 year old who decided that he would not fall victim to adolf hitler.

His journey was filled with miracles and coincidences. His unique sense of perseverance and grit resulted in his escape from hitler’s grasp.

It was Passover, 1940, when Dad had taken a few days off from the University of Thessaloniki to visit his family in Xanthi and the Seder conversation revolved around the situation in Europe. His parents warned him that the Nazis would likely invade Greece and, if this happened, he should make his escape to Crete. They did not know about the concentration camps, they only knew that young Jewish men were being sent to labor camps.

By 1941, his university in Thessaloniki had shut down because of the Greco Italian conflict, and he found a job in Alexandroupoli. The Germans invaded Greece on April 11 the same year. Remembering his father’s urging, he, along with three friends, escaped the mainland by stealing a small row boat sitting along the shoreline.  For 30 hours, these four men rowed until they reached the nearest island, Samothrace, only to find panic and pandemonium there.

What happened next was an extraordinary sequence of luck and coincidence;  In Samothrace, his friends decided not to go further. Our father knew that the arrival of the Nazi’s was imminent. Determined to find a means of escape, he happened to see a boat that looked vaguely familiar, docked 100 m off-shore. Seeing no other real options, he jumped into the Aegean Sea, and swam to it where he discovered that it, in fact, belonged to his Uncle Moise’s close friend, Stefanopolis, who, as fate would have it, was on board when he swam alongside. Stefanopolis offered him a ride to the next island, Lemnos, where, within days of his arrival, our father learned that the Germans had landed in Samothrace.

Absent any defenses in Lemnos, he knew he had to continue south but there was no way off the island. Again, luck was on his side:  he befriended a young man named Limenarchio who, fortuitously, worked for the Port Authority.   Dad would later refer to this chance friendship as the single most important event that saved his life. Limenarchio offered his help in acquiring Dad a Sailor Identity document, a paper allowing him to travel the world’s oceans. Armed with this authorization, he, again by chance, fell upon the father of a high school classmate, who was the captain of a boat going to the next large island-Lesbos. He got another ride.

In Lesbos he learned that the Germans were already parachuting onto Crete. He changed plans. Although he was a merchant on the mainland, serendipitously, his uncle Moise’s boat was docked in the Lesbos harbor. With his uncle’s connections, he signed on as a sailor aboard a small boat going to Istanbul.  He entered Turkey illegally and for 6 weeks he had to evade the Turkish police while standing for hours in lines trying to gain access to various foreign embassies. No one would help him, not the Americans, not the French, not the British nor any of the South American countries.

What next? Having grown up with the advent of air travel, he was drawn to the idea of flying a plane. Good fortune was on his side, once again, when through a family friend, he was introduced to the British Air Attache. Dad volunteered to become a pilot with the Royal Air Force and was issued an entry visa into Palestine, which was a British Protectorate at the time.  He had to report to RAF Headquarters in Jerusalem. He now faced a new challenge – how to get himself there with no money!  A harrowing series of bus, train and boat trips followed, but 3 months after beginning his escape, he arrived at the port of Haifa.

He trained as a pilot in Gaza and Rehovot.  It was during that latter training period that Dad met the 17 year-old high school beauty whom he would eventually marry – our Mother.  Two months later, Dad joined the Bomber Squadron in Northern Egypt where he participated in bomber battles in the North African theater.

In March 1943, Dad received one last letter from home. It was a distressing missive expressing anxiety that Jews were being sent to concentration camps. Shortly thereafter he was called into the office of his squadron leader who showed him a newspaper article reporting that the Jews of Thrace had been rounded up and sent to Treblinka, a death camp!  His whole family was murdered.

Some months later, Dad was transferred training operations in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where he trained others to become pilots…and later, where he began the rest of his amazing life…but that is another story.

When Dad was well into his eighties, we were finally able to convince him to talk about his escape and how he felt that day when he arrived at the port of Haifa:
“I felt I had finally made it to Palestine, that I was safe.  I did not know then, that I had also evaded the fate that my family suffered. I would never be a casualty of the Holocaust, I would be a survivor!”