A Hidden Child in Greece

About the Book

“Your story deserves to be widely heard.” —Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize–winning author and Holocaust survivor ---------------------------------------------------------------- Six-year-old Yolanda Avram is rescued by righteous strangers during the Holocaust in Greece. This is her story of courage and survival in the context of dozens of other rescues and shows Jews saving themselves and others in audacious and often heroic ways. Her story is uplifting and focuses on those flickers of light in the vast darkness of evil, known in Greece as the Persecution. This little-known saga of the common folk outwitting the Third Reich is a powerful and important story, told simply and movingly in cinematic episodes. The book is incandescent with empathy and gratitude. “What a powerful and moving story it is.” —Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and author of eighty-eight historical books “A Hidden Child in Greece is a monumental story that documents her family’s miraculous survival in a unique and moving way. It gives life to the principle of human dignity and courage as a universal precept . . . this book is a true light unto the nations.” —Yaffa Eliach, author and creator of the first university-level Holocaust curriculum and the Tower of Life, a 1,500-photograph permanent display at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC “Willis is Anne Frank, if Anne Frank had lived.” —Diana Hume George, author and educator “For me, the heart of this book is the family story—the real power lays in the intimate story you are able to describe very simply and movingly.” —Mark Mazower, director, modern European history, Columbia University

About the Author

Yolanda Avram Willis was born in Greece in 1934. She was six years old when World War II began in Greece. During the war, she and her family were hidden in Crete and in several locations in Athens. When she was eight, her family was forced to disperse. Two different Greek Orthodox families hid her until she was ten at liberation. The first family to hide her became fugitives, just like her own Jewish family. She came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship, graduated with honor and earned an MA degree in chemistry. After her third child was born, she received an MA and a PhD in sociology and worked in industry as a researcher, manager, educator, and management consultant for twenty-two years. In 1994, she began collecting oral histories from Greek Holocaust survivors and rescuers. Dr. Willis lectures nationally, speaking of righteous Greeks from personal experience. In 1996, she was the associate producer of a documentary film, It Was Nothing, It Was Everything, focusing on ten Greek rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, including one of her own in Crete. Her writing has been published in several collections, including Flares of Memory, an anthology published by Oxford University Press in 2001. In addition to serving as speaker, panelist, and board member, she was an interviewer for Steven Spielberg’s Visual History Foundation. She has taught courses on Rescuers and Hidden Children at Carnegie Mellon’s Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning and at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. Yolanda is proudest of her three adult children and seven granddaughters, several of whom accompanied her on return trips to Greece, where they visited her rescuing places and met Yolanda’s rescuing families. Eight of her rescuers were recognized by Yad Vashem (Israel) as Righteous among the Nations.