Dr. Frederic Kakis, Surviving the Holocaust

This website was created as a tribute to the valiant Jewish men and women who avoided capture and deportation to the death camps by electing to resist and defy the Germans rather than surrender like lambs to the slaughter.

The trials tribulations of my family while trying to escape capture during the German occupation of Greece is a great example of the daring, courage, and determination that saved the lives of Jews all over the world who decided to join the resistance and fight. www.jewishpartisans.org

The heroin of the book is my mother whose education, knowledge of languages (that included German and Italian), and stubborn refusal to submit and obey the German directives resulted in our family being, to my best knowledge, the only family among Greek Jews that survived the holocaust in its entirety.

Approximately 95% of the Jewish population of Greece (ca. 100,000) perished in the concentration camps of Germany and Poland. Among those were all my relatives, on both my mother and my father’s side, who were urging my mother to comply with the German demands, and surrender. She stubbornly stood her ground, refused to listen or to take their advice, and started the family in a perilous journey of Hide and Seek under the noses of the S.S. and the Gestapo, outwitting and fooling the enemy at every turn. Above all, her ability to remain calm and keep her composure in extremely dangerous situations and not cave in under stress was the most significant factor in the survival of the family.

The entire “odyssey” is depicted in my book the Legacy of Courage. The book concurrently provides a glimpse into the nature, composition and faith of the Greek Jewry, the important role played by the Greek resistance in saving numerous Jewish lives, and the historical events that took place just before, during, and immediately after the German occupation.