Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was deeply touched to see the name of his aunt, Evangelia Georgiadou on the plaque in the Garden of the Righteous among the Nations in Jesuralem. Georgiadou, the youngest sister of Mitsotakis’s grandmother has been honored as one of the non-Jews proven to have saved the lives of Jews during the Holocaust.
“This is a special moment for me. Evangelia Georgiadou was my grandmother’s younger sister. She was my aunt. I remember her vividly. She did an act of bravery during the war like many other non-Jews who are honored as the Righteous among the Nations,” the Greek Prime Minister said.
The name of Evangelia Georgiadou is engraved together with some 300 other Greeks who helped Jews during the WWII occupation of Greece by the Nazis.
Evangelia Georgiadou (born 1910), a mother of two, lived in Filothei, a suburb of northern Athens. She became friends with Bianca Ventura, who moved to Athens from Crete in 1942 together with her husband and their two children. When the persecution of the Jews in Athens began, the Ventura family impoverished and the pressure and danger grew.
The Ventura family started to hide in the homes of various Greek friends and at some point they decided to separate. Evangelia Georgiadou agreed to hide the Ventura daughter, 7-year-old Yvette. Despite the danger, Georgiadou gave shelter to the girl from early 1944 until October of the same year when Athens was freed from the Nazi occupation.
The Georgiadou family treated Yvette as the third child in the family and Evangelia never revealed the child’s real identity neither to friends nor neighbors.
Once, when the little girl became seriously ill, Georgiadou offered her the maximum medical care without contacting the girl’s mother. The two women could not communicate for obvious reasons.
Bianca Ventura and Evangelia Georgiadou remained close friends after the war and continued to meet regularly for many years.
On November 3, 1986, Yad Vashem proclaimed Evangelia Georgiadou as one of the Righteous of the Nations.
“Every name written on this monument tells us a personal story of bravery. And for me it is very important to be here and to honour the memory of Evangelia Georgiadou and her name honours all the Greeks. But also each one individually who during the Holocaust, of this horrible and unspeakable tragedy that will haunt humanity forever, committed an act of great bravery to save her fellow human beings,” Mitsotakis added.
Prior to the visit to the Garden of the Righteous, Mitsotakis visited Yad Vashem and laid a wreath at the Holocaust Memorial.
He concluded his visit official visit to Israel and returned to Greece. During the visit he also announced an upcoming cabinet reshuffle, however, without specifying the date. This could take place beginning of July, when New Democracy will celebrate one year in power.
