The Banality of Kindness

In the summer of 1944, a young Tony Molho was riding with his mother on a train in Thessaloniki, Greece. Suddenly, two officers in plain clothes boarded and began to ask for everyone’s papers. Molho’s mother, who had recently returned from her escape of Nazi persecution, acted quickly, passing Molho’s little hand to that of a man standing beside them. The train stopped, and she jumped off. 

Such are the stories detailed in Molho’s memoir, Courage and Compassion: A Jewish Boyhood in German-Occupied Greece, released in the U.S. last June. The book, first published in Greek in 2023 under the title The Banality of Kindness, won the Academy of Athens’s Ouranis Prize. Rebecca Goodman, Brown Alumni Magazine

questo memoriale è uscito anche in Italia presso Viella con il titolo La gentilezza degli altri. Un bambino ebreo nella Grecia occupata. Il nome di Tony Molho mi richiama, per omonimia, quello dell’affascinante Renata Molho, che conobbi anni fa: esperta di moda, autrice di un giallo ambientato nella Milano della moda e di una biografia di Armani. La cito volentieri, in ricordo di Armani.