Oct. 17, 1952
Fugitives from Nazis Settle in S.F. — 2 Greek Families Trying to Forget Past Horror
An identification card, a string of jewels and a quick walk spared the lives of two Greek families during the German debacle during the last war and brought them safely to San Francisco.
A comfortable two-story house in the Richmond District has been home since last fall for Illas and Rachel Aelion, for Rachel’s brother, Daniel Saporta, and his wife, Allegre, and for the Saportas’ two small sons, Harry and Samuel.
All of them are still quite young. But for the past 10 years, their lives have been crowded with grim horror — of suffering and persecution, of watching friends and family fall victim to Nazi torture, or living like caged animals to evade the Gestapo.
“They said that afterwards we would have no appetite to laugh,” Illas, 34, quoted a saying current during the war. “And they were right. For now, when I see a moving drama, or a comedy, I cannot laugh or cry. I keep remembering my father and mother, my whole family — how they died at the hands of the Germans. I have no emotion now.” His voice trailed off.
A quick walk spared Illas from a similar fate.
After his family was taken by the Germans, Illas escaped with an aunt, uncle and three small nephews to Athens, where they lived like prisoners in a shuttered-up house during the day and ventured forth on the streets only after 9 at night.
But one afternoon, nervous and strained, Illas braved possible capture by the Gestapo for a short walk in the fresh air.
And when he returned, a brief 40 minutes later, all his relatives were gone — the house a shambles. The Gestapo had made a raid on their household while he was gone.
For Illas’ friend, Daniel, it was an identification card that spared his life.
He too fled German rule in Salonica for Italian-occupied Athens, more favorable to Jews. His train was nearing the Athens station one afternoon, when suddenly a fellow passenger eyed his heavy valises and, thinking them to be full of jewels, cried to a guard, “He is Jewish!”
Daniel tried to jump off the slowing train, but his long overcoat, caught by a chair, held him prisoner.
For ten days after Daniel’s arrest by the Gestapo, he lay with other prisoners in a dirty, closet-like alcove without food or water. Each day, the Germans came to each prisoner, pressed a gun to his temples, and growled, “Are you Jewish?”
Each day, when it came Daniel’s turn, he cried, “No, no, I am not Jewish. I am a Christian!” On the tenth day, his pretense worked and the Germans let him go free. For Daniel carried an identification card that he had taken from the body of a Greek officer on a battlefield many days before.
Until the liberation, Daniel, his wife and sister and his old friend Illas who had married his sister lived together in Athens in a house surrounded on four sides by friendly Christian Greeks. Never in all that perilous time did their neighbors betray that they were Jewish.
It was a string of precious jewels which had belonged to Illas’ mother that saved them from starvation during this time. One by one, the treasured beads went for food, just enough to keep them alive.
Finally, with the aid of the Joint Distribution Committee and the S.F. Committee for Service to emigres, they found a new home here last year.
They are two of six Greek Jewish families brought here by the two organizations during the past year, but they are the lucky ones. For the other families here were among the 1,000 Greek Jews who returned from the German concentration camps in Poland, in which 60,000 Greek Jews perished.
Oct. 9, 1992
Jews and blacks focus of controversial exhibit
An art exhibit on the black-Jewish relationship that ignited controversy in New York’s Jewish community in March goes on display here Thursday.
But the Jewish Museum San Francisco has worked with black and Jewish groups in advance of its opening here and doesn’t expect any problems here.
“Bridges and Boundaries: African American and American Jews” — which shows Jewish complicity in discrimination and therefore raised questions about how the Jews would be portrayed — is at $120,000 the museum’s largest project ever, “three times the size of anything we’ve done,” says director Linda Steinberg.
The Jewish Museum in New York has poured even more money and effort into creating the exhibit — despite apprehensions in some quarters of the Jewish community that the display might further strain black-Jewish relations.
“I think they ran into the same problems we did for the Rosenberg exhibit,” Steinberg says about that 1990 exhibit on the Jewish couple executed as atomic spies in the 1950s. “There are factions in the Jewish community who would prefer not to deal with these issues.”
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