Incredibly, Princess Alice of Battenberg endangered her life and that of her royal family by undertaking to rescue Jews in Athens during the German occupation, despite her own family’s ties to the highest ranks of the Nazi party.
Princess Alice was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Her father was a German prince and her upbringing was primarily German. However, in 1902 at the coronation of her cousin King Edward VII in London, Alice fell in love with Prince Andrew of Greece. The two were married the following year, making their home in Athens, Greece.
Shortly after moving to Greece, she and her husband became close friends with Haimaki (“Chaim”) Cohen, a distinguished Jewish member of the Greek Parliament. The friendship extended to Haimaki’s wife Rachel and their family. As already in those years there was increasing anti-Semitism in Europe, the royal family pledged to help the Cohens if the need arose.
When Germany invaded Greece in April 1941, Prince Andrew and Princess Alice were forced into exile in France. In her concern over the fate of the Jewish family in German-occupied Greece, Princess Alice sent word through her trusted friend Demosthene Pouris to Haimaki’s widow Rachel that she would arrange to hide the family.
At the request of her brother-in-law, Princess Alice took charge of a large building. It was here that she sheltered the family in a small apartment on an upper floor. Haimaki’s widow Rachel and her daughter Tilde moved in; they were later joined by a son, Michel.
However, there was a big drawback: the building was mere yards from the Gestapo’s headquarters in Athens. At times, the Gestapo became suspicious of the royal princess and brought her in for questioning. Although totally fluent in German, Alice would pretend to not understand the officials’ questions.
Demosthene Pouris recalls: “Having been the only one who was authorized by the Princess to visit the Cohen family and with a very limited circle of the Princess who were loyal to her, we were the only ones who knew the secret. During the long and difficult years of the occupation I would visited Mrs. Cohen and her children in the apartment, help them maintain contact with the outside world, run errands for them and keep up their spirits.”
Alice never spoke of her wartime heroism to her family. They learned of her actions long after her death in 1969. In 1988, Princess Alice’s remains were transferred to the family crypt on the Mount of Olives. It was her desire to be buried in Jerusalem.
