Oral Histories of Jewish Hidden Children Across Thessaly During the Axis Occupation of Greece (1941–1944)

Abstract This paper examines the experiences of Jewish children who survived in hiding across Thessaly during the Axis Occupation of Greece (1941–1944), situating their narratives within the region’s distinctive wartime context of dual occupation, mountainous geography, and strong communal networks. Drawing on oral testimonies from survivors from Larisa, Karditsa, Trikala, and Volos, it analyses how Italian administration, subsequent German control, and the presence of resistance movements shaped opportunities for concealment and protection. Through thematic analysis, the study explores three interrelated dimensions of hidden childhood: strategies of flight and disguise, relations with Christian villagers and partisan networks, and the challenges of postwar reintegration. Methodologically, it addresses the problem of remembered childhood, treating oral testimonies as layered reconstructions shaped by trauma, affect, and retrospective reflection. By triangulating personal narratives with regional and historical scholarship, the article shows that survival in Thessaly depended less on institutionalized child-extraction than on situational protections within partisan zones and village moral economies. Children’s emotional labour, silence, mimicry, and adaptive performance were central to sustaining concealment. These testimonies expand Holocaust historiography in Greece by illuminating a lesser-known geography of evasion and foregrounding hidden childhood as both a lived and remembered condition.