Rosina Pardo, who was an author, speaker and a Greek Holocaust survivor, has died in Thessaloniki at age 87.
The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki announced her death on Monday.
Pardo’s story was told in her best-selling book from 2005, “548 Days With Another Name,” detailing her hiding from the Nazis during World War II, while living under an assumed name.
Pardo lived with her parents and two sisters in Thessaloniki at the outbreak of World War II.
Like other Jews whose ancestors had lived in the ancient city for hundreds of years, her family was confined to a ghetto in Thessaloniki after the Germans occupied the city on April 9, 1941.
When the Germans began deporting Jews to concentration camps, the family was able to flee, taking up shelter with a non-Jewish family which sheltered them until the Germans retreated from Thessaloniki on October 26th, 1944.
Pardo and her family remained inside the house for a total of 548 days, where she kept herself occupied by writing a detailed diary of their confinement, including her own thoughts and fears. Excerpts from the diary were the basis for her book.
In later years, Pardo became a well-known speaker on the Holocaust. Asked in a receent interview about how she felt about the Germans she replied:
“After so many years there is no hate left in me for the Germans and their catastrophic deeds. I don’t hate them. But I hate those who try to emulate them today.”
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