Ioanna Tsatsou

Tsatsou was born Ioanna Seferiadi (Greek: Ιωάννα Σεφεριάδη) in Smyrna, which is now İzmir, to Despina Seferiadi and Stelios Seferiadis. She had two brothers, Giorgos Seferis and Angelos Seferiadis. Seferiadi spoke both Greek and French from a young age.^[4] She and her family were in Athens during the Burning of Smyrna. They never returned to Smyrna. She wrote, "National despair was annihilating us. We had surrendered Greek soil, become fugitives. Greece shrank, shrank, crumpled." Seferiádou stayed in Athens for the rest of her life.^[8] Between 1927 and 1937, Seferiádou completed her studies in law and gained a PhD.^[4]

The Axis Powers occupied Greece in 1941 during WWII. So began the Holocaust in Greece and the attempt to exterminate all Greek Jews, including the ancient Romaniote community and the Greek Sephardim.

Ioanna Tsatsou, who lived in Athens, worked together with Archbishop Damaskinos to protect Jews in her community from the genocide. She assisted Damaskinos in secretly "baptising" Greek Jews so they could obtain identity cards which said they were Christians. The aim of the baptism was not to convert the Jews. The purpose was only to secure false Christian identity cards for them so they would avoid death.^[6]

Tsatsou ran a program, created by Archbishop Damaskinos, which provided monetary assistance to the families of Greek men who had been executed or taken hostage while resisting occupation.^[9]

On her own, Tsatsou ran a soup kitchen in Plaka which fed over 200 people each day. Many of the people they served were unemployed Jews. Her soup kitchen enabled many to survive the war. She also hid Yolanda Baruh and her parents in her home for months during the occupation.^[6][10]

In 1943, Tsatsou was interrogated by Italian forces who believed that Damaskinos was receiving money from the Middle East. She was unharmed.^[11]

Tsatsou wrote a book about her experience during the war, titled The Sword’s Fierce Edge: A Journal of the Occupation of Greece, 1941-1944.^[6]

Tsatsou wrote a number of books in Greek. Many have been translated into English. She also translated some of her works into French,^[5] for which she was awarded the Prix de la langue-française [fr] in 1976.^[12] Her early works focused on the Axis occupation of Greece.