More than 80% of Greek Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Among them were the father, sister, mother, and baby brother of Solomon Kofinas, a survivor from Athens and a leader of Kehilah Kedosha Janina (KKJ), New York’s Greek synagogue.
Kofinas was born in 1936 in Athens. After the Nazi invasion of Greece in 1941, Kofinas and his older brother fled to the outskirts of the city, where they hid with the help of Greek Orthodox Christians and later with distant family members. They never saw their immediate family again.
In 1955, Kofinas emigrated to New York, where he married another Holocaust survivor and started a family of his own. Now a grandfather and great-grandfather, he has served as a gabbai and lay leader at KKJ for more than 50 years.
This Museum and KKJ program explores Kofinas’s story of loss, survival, and rescue in Greece.
Watch the program below.
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