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Admin, C. (2017, November 2). Sara Fortis. Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. https://www.jewishpartisans.org/partisans/sara-fortis

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Sara Fortis was not her biological name; she was born with the name Sarika Yehoshua to her mother and father in 1927. The location of her birth in Chaklis (also spelled Chalcis) which is a town near Athens, Greece. Unfortunately, her father passed when Sara was two months old, so therefore she never knew him.

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Sara and her mother left their hometown when the Germans arrived in 1941. (there is no mention of what happened to her sister) They had heard of Jews being deported from towns near them and decided to move to a village called Kuturla. After living here for a short while, it became unsafe. Sara escaped while her mother stayed behind and was hidden by the locals. While looking for a new place to hide, Sara was invited to join the resisters.

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Sara Fortis - Sara trains her army of women

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Despite her father passing away, Sara's mother still managed to raise her two daughters. Though they were 100% Greek, they also identified as being Jewish. They celebrated Jewish culture by visits to the temple on special holidays and lighting candles on Fridays.

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Sara agreed to joining the resisters (also called an Andarte) As a natural leader, she wanted to play an important role in the resistance group. She traveled from village to village, recruiting girls to fight against the Nazis. After a while she gathered enough girls that they became a necessity to the male groups. This women resistance group transformed naive village girls into strong independent women.

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At first, the men would not allow Sara and her group of girls to fight alongside them, so they had to prover their worth. Thankfully after the first mission they were invited to join the men. This mission involved throwing Molotov cocktails which distracted the enemy and allowed other partisans to attack. The men were impressed and allowed the female group to participate in most missions. These included burning down the houses of Nazis and killing Nazi collaborators.

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Sadly, even though the women worked so hard to prove that they were tough, people still believed that women were not capable of executing dangerous missions. As a result of this mentality, the men were given the credit of the missions that were actually performed by the women.

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JPEF Interviews. (2013, May 21). Sara Fortis - Sara trains her army of women [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHey1R9CJ1M

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Sara became such an important part of the resistance (by the age of 18 she was called 'Kapetenissa [Captain] Sarika.') that the Nazis sent an informant to capture her. He mistook Sara for her cousin, Medi. Medi was arrest, raped and murdered. Sara was furious and eventually found the man that killed her cousin and murdered him out of revenge.

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When the Greek government changed, the resisters were disliked and as a result, Sara was arrested. But because she had such a good reputation, she was released shortly after being arrested.

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After being released, Sara moved to Isreal, where she met her husband.

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Sara Fortis’s biography. (2016, May 13). Facing History & Ourselves. https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/sara-fortiss-biography

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Fear Was Not in My Dictionary: The Revolutionary Work of Sara Fortis

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Fear Was Not in My Dictionary: The Revolutionary Work of Sara Fortis

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Fear Was Not in My Dictionary: The Revolutionary Work of Sara Fortis

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Reading time: 6 minutes When the small Greek town of Kuturla burned in 1943, teenage Sara Fortis had been on the run from German occupying forces for two years already. From the raw age of fourteen, she had hidden her Jewish status and worked for underground resistance movements as a nurse and teacher. But when her sanctuary burned, when she was separated from her mother, Fortis was no longer willing to hide. She was no longer willing to limit her resistance to ‘women’s work.’

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Born in Chalkis, a small town near Athens, Greece, Sara Fortis never knew her father, who passed away when she was only two months old. Raised by her mother, Sara and her sister enjoyed a happy childhood. Though they identified as Greek, they carried on Jewish tradition by lighting candles on the sabbath and attending religious services on holidays.

When the Nazis came to her hometown in 1941, Sara knew it was time to leave. She had heard about Jews in other small Greek towns being deported by the Nazis and never returning. After fleeing with her mother, they settled in the small village of Kuturla. When it was no longer safe, Sara was told that she needed to find a new place to hide, although the villagers agreed to continue to protect her mother.

While looking for a new place to stay, Sara was offered the opportunity to join the resistance and become an andarte (guerilla resistance fighter). She agreed, but with conditions. Wanting to play a significant role in the group, Sara insisted that she be allowed to recruit other women who wished to fight and form their own unit.

Sara's band of female partisans soon became indispensable. However, fears about the unit's well-being were not confined to their fighting; in between assignments, the women were often forced to sleep next to the men, and Sara always worried about their safety.

On their first mission, Sara's unit was ordered to throw Molotov cocktails to distract the enemy and allow the partisans to attack. Impressed by their skills, the male partisans invited the all-female group to join them on future assignments. As the war continued, Sara's all-female partisan unit burned down houses, executed Nazi collaborators, and aided the men in a way no group of women partisans had before.

Despite their accomplishments, sexism prevented Sara's unit from getting the respect or credit they deserved. In fact, male andartes, Greek resistance partisan fighters, were given credit for many of the missions that the women carried out because few people believed that women could accomplish such acts.

Despite the unit's lack of recognition, Sara became a prominent and well-respected figure in the andartes movement in Greece. By age 18, she was known as Kapetenissa (Captain) Sarika. The Nazis sent an informer to try to capture her, who mistakenly arrested-then brutally assaulted and murdered-her cousin, Medi. Vowing revenge, Sara tracked down and executed the informer.

After the war, the andartes fell out of favor with the new Greek government because of the political alliances they formed. Sara was arrested. Fortunately, her reputation as a hero of the resistance led to her release. She then emigrated to Israel, where she met her husband.

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Read the story of Sara Fortis, a young woman who fled her hometown in Greece when the Nazis invaded in 1941 and joined the resistance movement.