A gripping tale of survival in Nazi-occupied Greece

56,000 Jews lived in Salonika (Thessaloniki) before the Nazi occupation in 1941 and just 1,000 returned from the concentration camps after the war ended.

Three Jewish families survived in hiding.  To avoid capture, the Algava family was forced to relocate several times during their 600 days in hiding. During that time they lived amongst the Greek population representing themselves as members of the non-Jewish community. Living in plain sight, they survived guided by their intuition and with the help of Christian friends and neighbors.

Andreas Algava was a young child during those dark months, but in the decades that followed—he became an American citizen, completed college, built a career and created a home of his own—the story of how his family survived the Greek Holocaust was never far from his thoughts.

After years of experiencing the effects of the trauma, Algava began to research the occupation of Greece by the Nazis and transcribing taped interviews with his parents and other eyewitnesses; he began to see disturbing parallels in U.S. and world politics.

This spurred Algava to finish his family memoir: 600 Days in Hiding: A Jewish Family in Nazi-Occupied Thessaloniki Greece.  He sees 600 Days in Hiding as a call to action to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy that occurred in Greece and is happening here and now.

Download a free chapter of 600 Days in Hiding. (PDF)