Mosche Pessach was the chief rabbi of the Greek port city of Volos.
The city was occupied by German troops in September 1943. The German city commandant Kurt Rickert ordered Pessach to hand over lists of the names of Jews living in Volos. Mosche Pessach knew that the occupiers had deported thousands of Jews from Thessaloniki in March 1943. He therefore suspected the order was part of preparations for a deportation, and did not follow it. Instead, he called on the Jewish population of Volos to seek safety in the nearby Pelion mountains. He was supported by the Greek Orthodox bishop Ioakim Alexopoulos and by partisans from the National Liberation Front. Mosche Pessach himself also fled. The persecuted Jews were housed in partisan-controlled mountain villages; the majority of Volos’ Jewish population were thus able to escape deportation. 130 Jews who remained behind were arrested on March 25, 1944, and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Mosche Pessach became chief rabbi of Greece in 1946.