Sotiris Papastratis lived in Chalkida on the Greek island of Euboea. After the German invasion of Greece in 1941, he joined the National Liberation Front EAM, the country’s largest resistance organization.
In 1943 many Jews fled the mainland for Euboea, hoping to continue to Palestine from there. Papastratis helped with the EAM to set up an escape aid network. At the end of 1943 he fled to the ELAS partisans in the mountains because Greek security battalions were looking for him. Despite this, from the spring of 1944 until Greece’s liberation in October 1944, he organized numerous crossings from Euboea to Turkey, around 185 miles (300 kilometers) away. A total of at least 700 Jews were taken across the Aegean on fishing boats. It was the largest organized rescue campaign in Greece.
In 1947, during the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), Papastratis was persecuted as an ELAS partisan and banished to the island of Ikaria. After the civil war he worked as a lawyer. The Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored Papastratis as Righteous Among the Nations in August 1988.
Sotiris Papastratis (center) with his Jewish friend and fellow student Elias Krispis (left), Chalkida, 1930s. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Greek People’s Liberation Navy ELAN sailing boats in Chalkida, October 1944. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Immigration certificate issued by the British mandate government in Palestine to the Borbolis family, rescued by Papastratis’ escape aid network, dated October 8, 1944. Source: Evraiko Mousio tis Ellados, Athen
Sotiris Papastratis in the Garden of the Righteous with a board displaying his name at the Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1988. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
