“We have been organizing these reunions since 1992, but this, I think, will be the last one, as survivors and rescuers are now too frail to make the journey”

With the number of Holocaust survivors dwindling, Yad Vashem this week hosted probably the last event of its kind — the emotional reunion of two survivors and their Israeli-born grandchildren, with the woman who’d rescued their family during the war.

Melpomeni Dina, 92, cried as she met Sarah Yannai (nee Mordechai), and her younger brother Yossi Mor more than 75 years after hiding the Mordechai family in the small Greek town of Veira, near Thessaloniki.

“It’s difficult to come, but I’m so happy to be here to see this family,” said a wheelchair-bound and frail Melpomeni as she embraced the Mordechai grandchildren in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names. Sitting by her side and clasping her hand, Sarah Yannai spoke of her rescuer as like an “older sister” who’d “risked her life to save me.”

The Mordechai family had lived in Greece for generations when the Germans invaded the country in 1941, after their Italian allies failed to defeat the Greek armed forces. “The Germans announced that they were just sending Jews for labor, but my mother didn’t believe them,” remembers Yossi Mor, now a resident of Be’er Sheva. “She saw how cruel they were, and so we went into hiding. Melpomeni’s family took us in — our parents and all five children — despite their poverty and the danger. They lived in one-and-a-half rooms, and had to provide us with food, medicine, and clothes.”

Melpomeni and her older sister Bithleem farmed a small patch of land many kilometers away and brought back their produce by hand to support the two families. After neighbors informed the Germans that there were hidden Jews, the sisters helped the Mordechai family to escape to the Vermio mountains, where they continued to provide for them until the end of the war.

In the immense sea of cruelty and indifference that was Nazi-occupied Europe, Yad Vashem lists over 27,000 Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to save Jews. So why did Melpomeni and her sisters endanger themselves when so many looked away?

“She did it partly because our mother had been good to her older sister Efthimia, giving her free sewing lessons because she was an orphan,” says Sarah Yannai. “But she mainly did it because she had a good heart.”

That good heart was on display as Melpomeni looked at Yossi. “You didn’t remain a little boy as I remembered you,” she said, half-crying. And then, looking round at the grandchildren, some of them very young, “It’s such a pity that I didn’t bring them any candy!”

The Yad Vashem reunion was organized by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR), which provides financial assistance for those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. According to JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl, the organization supports 265 righteous persons in 18 countries, and has disbursed more than $40 million over the program’s course. As the generation of survivors passes on, the focus of the JFR is on its educational arm based at Columbia University. “Fourteen US states have an educational mandate to teach about the Holocaust, but don’t provide a curriculum. That’s where the JFR steps in,” says Stahl.

“We have been organizing these reunions since 1992, but this, I think, will be the last one, as survivors and rescuers are now too frail to make the journey to meet.”

As the 30-strong group of Israeli grandchildren greeted their family’s rescuer, there was a symbolic moment as a German-speaking tour group pauses to see what’s going on. It’s a reminder, as one of Yossi Mor’s children puts it, that “G-d gave this woman a special merit — to save all these generations.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 784)