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Some day in February, maybe a month after they had caught my mother, they came to knock at my door: a German, a Greek ruffian and a translator. When I opened, the Greek asked me where Spanopoulos stayed. I told him.
Normally I should have recognized the fat guy, as he was the same that had come to arrest my family at our place in Ploutarchou. However, at that moment I didn’t think anything bad, I must have had some sort of peculiar reaction, hit by the February sun, and I thought of nothing bad. I said to myself, they may want to confiscate something.
Five minutes later comes the gardener and tells me, ‘Ioanna, the Germans are at the Levi’s place, they are hitting them and telling them that if they betray the other Jews hiding here they will leave their children alone.’ I cut him short and ask him, ‘And what do I care about it, Kostas?’ The Levi family didn’t betray me; it was the Christian servant who had been taking care of the kids all their lives, who betrayed me.
So I leave the house and go on foot to the other side of Ekali, phoned my sister and asked her to find Apostolopoulos and inform them on what had happened. She didn’t find them and upon returning I found Mrs. Maria out of control: ‘Oh what did my son do to me.’ And things like that and that the Germans are looking for me. I went into the room and when I tried to get out I realized she had locked me in, so I got out through the balcony.
I returned to the same grocery shop with the telephone and called again my sister who had managed to get in touch with Apostolopoulos. She informed me that I should leave immediately. I don’t know where I found the courage, but I returned to the house, collected my belongings and left.
As the night was approaching and the buses were not that frequent, I went through the meadow, after that to the public road and there I asked a passing van to give me a lift to Athens where, supposedly, my sister was giving birth.
So I returned back home and once again they found me another job, not as a servant but as a slave. The husband had lost a big fortune, he was suffering from neurasthenia and he was sleeping with a bayonet in his hand. The house was also rather big, and the work there was very hard. I stayed until May. Then they found me another job as a chambermaid, cook and child minder of two kids.
On 18th May I presented myself to the Fix family, opposite Zapeio, but we immediately left to go to their farm in Magoufana [today Pefki]. I had a very nice time with them and we are still friends. They even gave me a false identity card, from the ones that Evert was issuing. My false name was Ioanna Marinopoulou.
Normally I should have recognized the fat guy, as he was the same that had come to arrest my family at our place in Ploutarchou. However, at that moment I didn’t think anything bad, I must have had some sort of peculiar reaction, hit by the February sun, and I thought of nothing bad. I said to myself, they may want to confiscate something.
Five minutes later comes the gardener and tells me, ‘Ioanna, the Germans are at the Levi’s place, they are hitting them and telling them that if they betray the other Jews hiding here they will leave their children alone.’ I cut him short and ask him, ‘And what do I care about it, Kostas?’ The Levi family didn’t betray me; it was the Christian servant who had been taking care of the kids all their lives, who betrayed me.
So I leave the house and go on foot to the other side of Ekali, phoned my sister and asked her to find Apostolopoulos and inform them on what had happened. She didn’t find them and upon returning I found Mrs. Maria out of control: ‘Oh what did my son do to me.’ And things like that and that the Germans are looking for me. I went into the room and when I tried to get out I realized she had locked me in, so I got out through the balcony.
I returned to the same grocery shop with the telephone and called again my sister who had managed to get in touch with Apostolopoulos. She informed me that I should leave immediately. I don’t know where I found the courage, but I returned to the house, collected my belongings and left.
As the night was approaching and the buses were not that frequent, I went through the meadow, after that to the public road and there I asked a passing van to give me a lift to Athens where, supposedly, my sister was giving birth.
So I returned back home and once again they found me another job, not as a servant but as a slave. The husband had lost a big fortune, he was suffering from neurasthenia and he was sleeping with a bayonet in his hand. The house was also rather big, and the work there was very hard. I stayed until May. Then they found me another job as a chambermaid, cook and child minder of two kids.
On 18th May I presented myself to the Fix family, opposite Zapeio, but we immediately left to go to their farm in Magoufana [today Pefki]. I had a very nice time with them and we are still friends. They even gave me a false identity card, from the ones that Evert was issuing. My false name was Ioanna Marinopoulou.
Period
Interview
Yvonne Capuano-Molho