The Second World War and the Holocaust figured in the official
addresses by both President Shimon Peres and his Greek counterpart
President Karolos Papoulias at the state dinner that Peres hosted on
Monday night in honor of the president of the Hellenic republic.
Peres said that his late father, Yitzhak, as a soldier in the British
Army, had been stationed in Greece and had been captured by the
Germans.
At state dinner, Peres says that his late father, Yitzhak, as a soldier in the British Army, had been stationed in Greece |
He had managed to escape, but finding shelter was difficult because
he knew no one in Greece, and not a word of Greek. But he had found his
way to a Greek monastery, where for two years, he and six other British
soldiers had been hidden by the priests who, at great risk to their own
lives, fed them and ensured their safety.
After two years in hiding, Yitzhak Perski and the other soldiers
decided to make another bid for freedom, and attempted to sail out of
Greece on a small dinghy that was quickly intercepted by the Luftwaffe.
They were again taken captive by the Germans, who brought them to a POW
camp not far from Auschwitz.
During the period in which he had been in hiding, Perski had learned to speak Greek and sing Greek songs.
When he returned home after a four-year absence, he would frequently
gather his children and grandchildren around him to tell them Greek folk
tales and sing Greek songs to them.
Whenever he hears Yehuda Poliker, the son of Greek Holocaust
survivors sing Greek melodies, said Peres, it fills him with emotion,
and he is reminded of his late father.
Poliker, in fact, was chosen to sing for Papoulias at the dinner, and the Greek head of state later embraced him.
Papoulias, who during his visit to Israel met with Greek Holocaust
survivors and visited Yad Vashem, said that during the Nazi occupation
of Greece, Jews and Christians joined forces in the struggle against the
barbarous destruction wrought by the Germans and their cohorts.
In the village of Ionnina where he was born, the Nazis murdered ten
Jewish families with whom he had grown up. Among the victims was his
first girlfriend from elementary school. His voice broke as he recalled
how the Nazis had locked the Jews in the synagogue and set fire to it
while they were still alive.
Greece had paid a heavy toll in blood during the Holocaust, he said.
More than 65,000 Greek Jews had been murdered, and the number would
have been even higher, had not so many simple Greek Christians put their
own lives at risk in order to save the lives of their Jewish friends.
He had been very moved, he said, when meeting Greek Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem.
The Holocaust is more than the number six million, he said. Behind
each victim is a name, a life, a tragedy. This is the reason, he said,
that the Greek people, state and community do not turn a blind eye to
any incident of anti- Semitism, racism or religious incitement.
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