He was born in a cave in Pelion, in December 1943, when the cry of a baby could mean the death of an entire family. He passed away eight decades later, in New York, having dedicated much of his life to ensuring that the memory of those days never fades.
Professor emeritus and Holocaust survivor Asher Matathias passed away on Sunday at the age of 82. A Greek Jew with a long presence in the Greek Diaspora and active work against anti-Semitism , he closed a life cycle that had begun under extremely difficult circumstances, during the Nazi Occupation of Greece.
He was born on December 3, 1943 , in a cave in Pelion , near Volos, where his parents Iakovos and Nina had taken refuge to escape persecution. His father came from a family of Romaniote Jews, while his mother from Sephardic Jews , whose ancestors had settled in Greece after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. In his person, therefore, both major currents of Greek Judaism met.
His parents had married in 1942 and, when the persecutions and arrests of Jews intensified, they left Volos seeking refuge in the mountains. In their attempt to survive, they found the help of Greeks who, even putting their own lives in danger, offered them protection.
The survival of the newborn Asher was particularly difficult, precisely because a cry was enough to reveal the hiding place. He later recounted an incident in which a German patrol discovered them, but a young German soldier chose to let them live . This experience, as he had mentioned, had a decisive influence on the way he later dealt with the collective attribution of responsibility to the Germans. It is, perhaps, the most instructive element of his entire story. A man who had every reason to hate, chose to remember the one exception.
After liberation, the family found themselves faced with the consequences of war, poverty and the difficult years of the Civil War . In 1956 , they immigrated to the United States, with the assistance of aid organizations and HIAS , settling in New York.
There, Asher Matathias maintained close ties with both the Jewish community and the Greek diaspora. He was an active member of the Magnesia Prefecture Association “Argonauts” , while about three decades earlier he had served as a representative at the general assembly of the Federation of Greek Associations of Greater New York . Until recently, he participated in pan-ethnic gatherings for the organization of the Greek parade on 5th Avenue, while closely following political developments in Greece. He had even expressed strong dissatisfaction and bitterness during the period in which Golden Dawn secured broad representation in the Greek parliament, something completely understandable for a man who was born hidden in a cave.
For him, his personal story functioned both as a testimony of rescue and as a reminder of the consequences of Nazi persecution. For years, he spoke publicly about his family’s experiences and the rescue of Greek Jews who managed to survive, seeking to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
Asher Mattathias leaves behind his wife Anna , their three daughters and seven grandchildren . And with them, a testimony that becomes increasingly valuable as those who can still tell it firsthand become fewer.
