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Something Beautiful Happened: A Story of Survival and Courage in the Face of Evil
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Something Beautiful Happened: A Story of Survival and Courage in the Face of Evil
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781613759707 |
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Publisher: | Oasis Audio |
Publication date: | 09/12/2017 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.12(d) |
About the Author
![About The Author](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
Read an Excerpt
Something Beautiful Happened
New York
April 13, 2014
It was 1 a.m. when I walked into Nico’s room. His back was to me, but he was still awake. I knew he would be. We all were.
Earlier that day we had gotten a call that didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t, and I imagine it never will. My 14-year-old nephew, Reat, and his grandfather, Bill, were dead.
Bill and Reat had gone to the Jewish Community Campus in Overland Park, Kansas, so Reat could attend a singing audition. They were shot and killed by a white supremacist neo-Nazi as they exited their car. The man who killed them shouted “Heil Hitler!” when he was arrested and said he wanted to know what it felt like to kill Jews before he died. He murdered three beautiful people that day, none of whom were Jewish.
I sat on the edge of Nico’s bed and reached my hand out to stroke his hair. My sweet nine-year-old boy rolled over to face me, his big brown eyes brimming with tears. And then he spoke, breaking my heart for the second time that day.
“I’m so sad, Mom,” Nico said. “I don’t understand. When you told me about our family and what they did, you told me the Nazis were gone and that the people were saved. How could this happen?”
Nico was right. I did tell him that the Nazis were gone. And I did tell him that the family was safe. I’d thought they were. But then I was branded a liar that day, our family’s history rewritten by a hate-filled man on a mission to kill Jews.
Nico knew the story as well as I did. Again and again I’d told him how during World War II, my Greek grandmother, my yia-yia, was one of a group of islanders who helped hide a Jewish tailor named Savvas and his family from the Nazis. Despite the risk, despite the danger, and despite the fact that they were told that anyone found helping Jews would be killed along with their entire families, not one person on our tiny Greek island gave up the secret of Savvas. Not one. Savvas and his girls were saved and they all survived.
For the past several years, Nico had witnessed my personal journey, my search to find Savvas’s family, the girls my yia-yia had risked everything for. After countless dead ends and disappointments, I had finally found them. They were a beautiful family, including five people who are alive today because of what happened on our tiny island 70 years ago. We had celebrated with the descendants of Savvas’s family. We celebrated and cried, because they had survived; goodness had prevailed and the Nazis were gone. That was on Thursday, April 10, 2014.
Three days later, on Sunday, April 13, 2014, we cried again, because Bill and Reat were dead and we realized that the Nazis weren’t really gone after all.
“I don’t understand,” Nico asked. “How could this happen?”
How do you accept that tragic irony is a cruelty reserved not merely for Shakespearean plot twists?
How do you admit to your son that monsters exist outside of fairy tales?
How do you explain to a child something you can’t understand yourself?
Table of Contents
Introduction: They Weren't Really Gone After All xiii
Part 1
Chapter 1 We Loved Them Like Sisters 3
Chapter 2 The Jews of Corfu 7
Chapter 3 You Are Orphans Now 20
Chapter 4 Pass the Lamb. We Saved the Jews. 28
Chapter 5 Papa Savvas, the Jewish Tailor of Corfu 33
Chapter 6 The Nightly Knock at the Door 43
Chapter 7 Yia-yia Never Told 50
Part 2
Chapter 8 Searching for Savvas 71
Chapter 9 Righteous Among the Nations 78
Chapter 10 Whatever You Do, Don't Challenge Him to a Game of Chess 93
Chapter 11 I Think Our Grandmothers Were Friends 99
Part 3
Chapter 12 Reat and Bill 107
Chapter 13 When Words Don't Make Sense 124
Chapter 14 Tragic Irony 137
Chapter 15 He Picked the Wrong Family and the Wrong Community 140
Chapter 16 He Was Watching Over Them 152
Part 4
Chapter 17 The Ones Who Stood Up 161
Chapter 18 Heaven Is All Around Us 169
Part 5
Chapter 19 It Was Nothing. It Was Everything. 197
Chapter 20 Piecing Together the Story of Savvas 214
Chapter 21 Rosa's Family 226
Chapter 22 Modern Miracles 240
Chapter 23 Reunion 245
Chapter 24 Erikousa's Icarus 254
Chapter 25 Finding Savvas 267
Chapter 26 Full Circle 273
Epilogue 286
Afterword Lessons from New and Cherished Friends 292
Acknowledgments 303