Nestoras Matsas (1932–2012)

Nestoras Matsas was born to a Jewish family in Athens, Greece. During the Nazi Occupation of his country in World War II, he went into hiding and was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church. After the war, when he was only 16, he published some of his stories in the periodical Nea Estia. In 1950, he published three plays, Animenei (Unmarried), Fleghomeni batos (Burning Bush), and Yiom Kipur (Yom Kippur). Animenei, written in collaboration with K. Asinakopoulos, was a stage hit. His debut novel Klisti ourani (Closed Heavens), appeared in 1955. He has also published several collected volumes of short stories, poetry, and novellas. Other works include two children's novels and To paramithi tou Theofilou (The Fairy Tale of Theophilos, 1963), a fictional biography of a Greek painter that was awarded the National Prize for literature. Later in his literary career, he returned to describing his Holocaust experience in hiding with his 1995 memoir I Istoria Ton Hamenon Peristerion: Imerogio Enos Paidou Ston Emfilio (English translation, This Child Died Tomorrow: The Holocaust Diary of a Greek Boy, 2003). He also wrote a popular biography of Alexander the Great. To Hirografo Tis Babilonas, Megalexandro Apomnimonevmata (1980), translated into French in 1983 as Les Memoires D'Alexandre Le Grand, d'apres Le Manuscrit de Babylone. Matsas also wrote the scripts for documentary films and directed feature films.