A Community and Business Leader:

Minos Mordechai (1947-2017)

            We are mourning the passing away of one of the principal founders of the Jewish Museum of Greece, as well as leading Member of the country’s Jewish Community.

Minos Mordechai was born on 15 May 1947, in Ioannina, the heart of Romaniote Greece. He was the first son of the three children of Auschwitz survivors, Solomon Mordechai and Anna Mordechai, born Levi. He started helping his father at his factory, at the young age of 8, as his father could neither read nor write. The name of the factory was Profisol and it made pipes. Later, he studied at the Polytechnic University of Athens, graduating as an engineer. After his father’s death, he worked with his younger brothers Isaak and Elias Mordechai and Aris Fornis at Athlitiki, S.A., an import company of Diadora and other sports clothes and shoes.

Since 1989, he and his two brothers involved themselves in banking, funding a Securities company, which was called Axias, S.A. and numbered other investors. Like his brothers, he was a prominent member of both the Jewish community and the Board as well as Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece. In the past forty years, of the Museum’s existence, his presence and support were always keenly felt, at every turn. A generous benefactor, he has also been forthcoming with counsel and advice, during the many phases of the Museum’s establishment, development and consolidation. To him and to his family, the Friends of the Museum owe a heavy debt of gratitude for its remarkable progress into one of the leading museums of its kind in all of Europe and a mainstay of the Community.

A successful business leader, Minos stood out as exemplar of “tikkun olam”.  Not only did he practice it, but he and all his family, excelled is social action and advocacy against all forms of racism and anti-semitism. Revealing of his character and deeply-held beliefs was the fact that, when on one occasion, his residence was robbed, he refused to answer the question whether, he thought, the thieves were immigrants or Greeks. For his fortitude and steadfast anti-racist human stance, he received, in 1997, the coveted prize: S.O.S. – Racism, bestowed by an NGO with this name.

He is survived by his wife Lila, two children Solomon and Dolyanna, and a newborn grandson.

May his Memory be for a Blessing.