Father Ioannis Marangos SJ: Righteous Among the Nations


In the coming months, Yad VaShem will hold the ceremony to recognize Father Ioannis Marangos, Greek Jesuit priest, as one of the Righteous Among the Nations because of the Jewish boy he hid in his religious community during the Shoah.

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Gerardo Saias was born in Thessaloniki in 1932. His family had Italian citizenship, and therefore was able to leave in the summer of 1942, when the Germans began to intensify the persecution of the Jews. In the following months a ghetto was established in Thessaloniki, to be followed in spring 1943 by the deportation of over 43,000 Jews to Auschwitz and the destruction of this ancient Jewish community.

The Saias family managed to reach Athens, which at the time was still under Italian rule. The relative safety, however, did not last long – in September 1943 the Germans took control of the entire territory of Greece, and the Saias family were once again in danger. The parents decided it would be safest if they split up. The father was to go into hiding in a village that was under the control of the ELAS resistance movement, the mother found shelter with a family, and was searching for a safe haven for her 11 year old son. She decided to turn to one of her father's acquaintances, a priest at the Catholic cathedral of St. Dionysos. There she met Ioannis Marangos, a Jesuit priest, who agreed to hide Gerardo in his monastery. He promised to return the child to his parents after the war, and only if they did not return, would the child be raised to be a Jesuit.

Gerardo was taken to the Jesuit religious community at 28 Michael Voda Street in Athens and introduced as the priest’s nephew. Only Marangos and another brother, Nikolaos Xanthakis, knew that the boy was Jewish. He served as an altar boy, but Father Marangos kept his promise and no attempt whatsoever was made to persuade him to convert. Gerardo stayed in the monastery for over a year, and had no contact with his family. "As well as being my mother, father and spiritual guide," wrote Gerardo Saias in his testimony, "Father Marangos was also an extremely good teacher. In addition to the religious instruction, which he gave me himself, and the mathematics lessons that Father Philippos gave me, I acquired an extensive general education at his side. The Jesuits are renowned for their wide knowledge".

Following liberation, Gerardo’s parents came to take him home. By that time Gerardo was so attached to Father Marangos, that he didn’t want to leave the monastery. It was the priest who persuaded him to go with his parents.

Attempting to make their son forget the monastery and the monks, his parents never mentioned Marangos, but as Gerardo found out later, they did maintain contact with the man who had saved their son’s life. Only when he was older did his parents permit him to visit Father Marangos. From that time on, the Catholic priest became a family friend, attended all the celebrations, including religious holidays, and Gerardo visited him frequently. When Ioannis Marangos passed away in 1989 at the age of 88, Gerardo felt as if he had lost his father.

On 7 March 2010 Father Ioannis Marangos was posthumously recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

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