A month after the Germans entered Thessaloniki, Albert Revah, the grandfather of the main character Renée Revah, a dynamic, independent, and educated man, does not tolerate the harassment by the Nazis. He closes his shop in Emporiou Square and goes to Athens, where, with the help of his friends and his fluent Italian, becomes a foreman in the mines of Lavrion.
Albert writes to his mother, Sol Venezia, and his siblings, Olga, Lina and Isaac, to go to Athens. He assures them that he has a way to hide them, but they refuse, believing they are not in danger.
“Where should we run?… Where to leave our home?… We’re fine here… The Germans aren’t hurting us. They’re only confining us…”
And so, they stayed in Thessaloniki.
Albert spends two years in Lavrion relatively well, calm and protected by his Italian friends. In September 1943, when Italy capitulates and sides with the Allies, the Germans arrest all the Italians who are in Greece, including Albert, who escapes and arrives on foot in Athens. There, he finds two other old friends, Nikos and Evangelos Papadopoulos, who hide him without a second thought in a small apartment at 50 Karneadou Str. And Marasli Str. In Kolonaki.
He has now learned that his family had been transported from Thessaloniki along with 45,000 other Jews, but he believed, as everyone did –and as even those who got into the cattle cars did- that they were taken by force in Eastern Europe, where wartime deaths had left the factories empty. After the Germans leave Athens, Albert has the sole purpose of preparing the return of his own family. With borrowed money, he starts buying beds, mattresses, blankets, food, clothes, etc., and every day he does nothing but collect things he can find in derelict Athens.