Sara Fortis by IAN RHIEKIM

Who was Sara Fortis?

ir10_1 — 2023-12-12 15:43:40 UTC

Sara Fortis (Born Sarika Yehoshua) was born in 1927 in Chalkis, Athens. She personally identified as Greek, but practiced Jewish tradition. During WWII, Sara formed a band of Female Partisans to resist Nazi rule within Greece.

Sara Fortis Informational Websites

cfm2_1 — 2023-12-12 15:46:35 UTC

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/sara-fortis

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-resistance-female-jewish-partisans

https://www.jewishpartisans.org/content/jewish-women-partisans

Sara Fortis multimedia link

cfm2_1 — 2023-12-12 15:47:40 UTC

Sara Fortis - Sara trains her army of women

Sara Fortis in her partisan uniform

ir10_1 — 2023-12-12 15:51:34 UTC

Sara was wanted for her actions as a partisan and was arrested at the end of the war.

Female Jewish Partisans

ir10_1 — 2023-12-12 15:57:43 UTC

She formed a band of female partisans, impressed by their skills, the male partisans invited the all-female group to join in many missions. They burned down houses, executed Nazi collaborators, and aided the men in a way no group of females had before.

Sara at the start of WWII

2023-12-12 16:05:24 UTC

At the start of the war, Sara worked as a nurse but later fled her home town to avoid the approaching Germans. Greece was invaded by Nazi Germany in April of 1941.

It was hard for women to join partisan groups

ir10_1 — 2023-12-12 16:07:19 UTC

Jewish men and women faced a whole new set of challenges once they made contact with partisan groups. Many Eastern European units, composed of ex-Soviet soldiers who were escaped prisoners of war and male anti-Fascists from native populations, did not accept Jewish fugitives.

How women helped

ir10_1 — 2023-12-12 16:09:05 UTC

Women played a variety of roles in both Jewish and non-Jewish groups, but primarily their partisan activities were extensions of their traditional caretaker roles.

They were responsible for feeding their entire unit, nursing the wounded and the sick, setting up and breaking down camp, doing the laundry, and cleaning and carrying weapons—vital duties that ensured a camp’s survival, safety, and ability to function.

Women were able to break gender rules and join partisan groups

ir10_1 — 2023-12-12 16:10:12 UTC

Some women partisans were able to bend the rigid rules about gender roles. Given the unusual conditions the partisans confronted, any woman who could use a weapon was needed to fight. Brenda, a female partisan, joined a 1600-member Soviet partisan unit in eastern Poland at the age of 17, and she recalls pleading with her unit commander for weapons training: “If I was going to die, I wanted to die with a gun in my hand, fighting my enemy. I wanted revenge.”

Sara Fortis and her influence on women

ir10_1 — 2023-12-18 15:56:36 UTC

‘Capitan Sarika’, as she came to be known throughout Greece, taught the girls how to behave around men. “They all came from homes in which a girl would never speak to a man and suddenly I was telling them, ‘You’re a partisan now.’