Sara Fortis

Last updated
Sara Fortis
Born
Sarika Yehoshua

1927 (age 9596)
Nationality Greek, Israeli
OccupationGreek resistance member

Sara Fortis (born 1927) is a former Greek-Israeli resistance member. During World War II, Fortis fought as part of the Greek resistance against the occupying Axis powers. She later resettled in Israel.

Biography

Sara Fortis was born Sarika Yehoshua in 1927 in Chalkis. [1] She was raised by her mother after her father died early in her life. The family identified themselves as Greek, but practiced aspects of their Jewish faith. Sara was the niece of Mordechai Frizis, a high ranking Jewish officer in the Greek army who would later be killed in Greco-Italian War. [1] [2]

When the German and Italian armies invaded and overran Greece in the spring of 1941, Sarika and her mother disguised their faith and blended into the civilian population; however, in 1943 they fled their home and took refuge in the mountain countryside of Euboea. There, Sara became involved in the local Greek resistance movement against the German occupation forces. She focused her efforts on recruiting other women to fight against the Germans; [3] this paid off, and she was able to form a fighting force that specialized in using diversionary tactics to draw German soldiers away from areas that other resistance fighters planned to attack. Despite the success of these actions, Sara and her band were not always credited with their victories, as it was unfathomable that women could accomplish such acts. [1] [2] [4]

By the age of 18, Sara was well-known enough to be referred to as "Captain Sarika". [1] She continued to fight against the Germans until the liberation of Greece in late 1944. After the withdraw of the German army, Greece descended into a state of civil war as left and right wing factions inside the country battled for control. Sara's rebel group was in opposition to the right-wing Greek government, resulting in her eventual arrest. However, she was released and resettled in Israel. [1] [2]

In 1991 her home in Israel was destroyed by an Iraqi SCUD missile during the Persian Gulf War. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish Combat Organization</span> World War ll Jewish resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Poland

The Jewish Combat Organization was a World War II resistance movement in occupied Poland, which was instrumental in organizing and launching the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ŻOB took part in a number of other resistance activities as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warsaw Ghetto Uprising</span> Jewish insurgency against Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland during World War II

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Majdanek and Treblinka death camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Thompson</span> American journalist and radio broadcaster (1893–1961)

Dorothy Celene Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster. She was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and was one of the few women news commentators broadcasting on radio during the 1930s. Thompson is regarded by some as the "First Lady of American Journalism" and was recognized by Time magazine in 1939 as equal in influence to Eleanor Roosevelt. Recordings of her NBC Radio commentary and analysis of the European situation and the start of World War II was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2023, based on its "cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wartime cross-dressers</span>

Many people have engaged in cross-dressing during wartime under various circumstances and for various motives. This has been especially true of women, whether while serving as a soldier in otherwise all-male armies, while protecting themselves or disguising their identity in dangerous circumstances, or for other purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek resistance</span> Armed resistance to the Axis occuption of Greece during WWII

The Greek resistance, involved armed and unarmed groups from across the political spectrum that resisted the Axis occupation of Greece in the period 1941–1944, during World War II. The largest group was the Communist-dominated EAM-ELAS. The Greek Resistance is considered one of the strongest resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe, with partisans, known as andartes, controlling much of the countryside prior to the German withdrawal from Greece in late 1944.

Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Jews during World War II</span>

The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the persecution and murder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa. The massive scale of the Holocaust which happened during World War II greatly affected the Jewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Final Solution after the war. The genocide, known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe</span> Various forms of resistance conducted by Jews against Nazi occupation regimes

Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Axis occupation of Greece</span> 1941–1945 period during World War II

The occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers began in April 1941 after Nazi Germany invaded the Kingdom of Greece to assist its ally, Fascist Italy, which had been at war with Allied Greece since October 1940. Following the conquest of Crete, all of Greece was occupied by June 1941. The occupation of the mainland lasted until Germany and its ally Bulgaria were forced to withdraw under Allied pressure in early October 1944. However, German garrisons remained in control of Crete and some other Aegean islands until after the end of World War II in Europe, surrendering these islands in May and June 1945.

Jewish military history focuses on the military aspect of history of the Jewish people from ancient times until the modern age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aviva Kempner</span> American filmmaker (born 1946)

Aviva Kempner is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sosnowiec Ghetto</span> Nazi ghetto in occupied Poland

The Sosnowiec Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews in the Środula district of Sosnowiec in the Province of Upper Silesia. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, most inmates, estimated at over 35,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported to Auschwitz death camp aboard Holocaust trains following roundups lasting from June until August 1943. The ghetto was liquidated during an uprising, a final act of defiance of its Underground Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) made up of youth. Most of the Jewish fighters perished.

Sara R. Ehrmann was a Boston civic leader who fought against capital punishment both city- and nationwide. Best known for her work establishing the 1951 "Mercy Law" in Massachusetts, which allowed juries to opt out of the death penalty on first-degree murder cases, Ehrmann was an influential leader of the Massachusetts Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty (1928–1969) and the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment (1949–1969). She launched her career as a direct response to the internationally controversial Sacco and Vanzetti case, which her husband worked on as an assistant defense councilman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faye Schulman</span> Polish Holocaust survivor (1919–2021)

Faye Schulman was a Jewish partisan photographer, and the only such photographer to photograph their struggle in Eastern Europe during World War II. Her full name was Faigel "Faye" Lazebnik Schulman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naomi Frankel</span> German-Israeli novelist

Naomi Frankel, also spelled Fraenkel and Frenkel, was a German-Israeli novelist. Born in Berlin, she was evacuated to Mandatory Palestine with other German-Jewish children in 1933. She became a member of Kibbutz Beit Alfa, where she lived until 1970. She began writing novels in 1956 and achieved fame with her trilogy Shaul ve-Yohannah, a three-generational tale of an assimilated German-Jewish family in prewar Germany. She wrote four other novels for adults as well as several books for children. In the 1980s Frankel abandoned her leftist convictions and adopted right-wing ideology, settling in the West Bank, where she died in 2009, aged 91.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Ginaite</span> Jewish Lithuanian resistance fighter

Sara Ginaite-Rubinson was a Jewish Lithuanian-born Canadian author and academic. During the Second World War she was a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, becoming a Jewish partisan in 1942.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonia Orbuch</span> American educator and resistance fighter

Sonia Shainwald Orbuch was an American Holocaust educator. During the Second World War she was a Jewish resistance fighter in eastern Poland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holocaust in Greece</span> Systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in Greece

The Holocaust in Greece was the mass murder of Greek Jews, mostly as a result of their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp, during World War II. By 1945, between 83 and 87 percent of Greek Jews had been murdered, one of the highest proportions in Europe.

<i>The Light of Days</i> Non-Fiction Book

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos is a 2021 non-fiction book by Canadian writer Judy Batalion.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sara Fortis". Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. 2016-12-07. Retrieved 2018-10-12.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Greek Resistance During World War II | Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Retrieved 2018-10-12.
  3. "Holocaust service to hear tales of resistance - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 2018-10-12.
  4. "Ten Jewish women who fought antisemitism and saved Jewish lives – Latest News". cst.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-13.