Giorgos Karakotsos lived in Thessaloniki with his wife Phaedra and their son Philon. Giorgios Karakotsos ran a medical practice and had Jewish patients and acquaintances.
After the city’s German occupation in April 1941, the local population were oppressed and Jews were persecuted. When Jewish men were made to perform forced labor, Giorgios Karakotsos attested that his patient Chaim Pardo had a heart problem, which saved him from deployment.
One day, he learned that the Jewish Pardo family wanted to escape from the ghetto and were looking for a place to hide. In April 1943 the Karakotsos family took in Chaim and Eugénie Pardo with their three daughters, and hid them in their home for 18 months. Karakotsos also obtained forged identity papers for the parents, issued in the names of Evgenia Karakotsos and Triantafyllos Karakotsos. Their home was searched several times, but the Pardos were always warned in time.
Out of the window, they watched Jews being driven from the ghettos to the station and deported. The Karakotsos family was one of the few in the city to take in Jewish people and save them.
