A special figure among the Jewish partisans, he was born in December 1922 in Preveza and raised in Ioannina, from where his father came. Salvator’s path to resistance began in the first days of the occupation. As one of the leaders of EAM Youth in Ioannina, he led about 80 young Jews from the city. He developed a strong fighting spirit. Together with Moshe Dostis, he distributed leaflets on Pargas Square, wrote slogans and openly threatened Jews who had contact with Italian or German soldiers.
He continued his resistance activities in Athens in February 1942, when he enrolled to study at of the university. At the time of the Italian capitulation, he was an active member of EAM’s Student Youth (“Spoudazousa”), under the nickname “Sotiris”. After taking to the mountains, the enthusiastic Ioannina native, saw armed struggle as the only way forward. He remained in Parnitha, initially as an ELAS reservist in the village of Ayios Thomas, and then in the I/34 ELAS Attica Battalion under its legendary captain Theocharis Polychronos, who guarded the gates to "Free Greece". In January 1944 he presented himself at the headquarters of the V ELAS Brigade at Lidoriki and joined the Staff Company, led by Capt. Yiannis Lazaridis. The Company trained in the Mornos valley in May, ahead of a long hot summer. Salvator distinguished himself in the Battle of Amfissa (2 July 1944) and the epic battle at Karoutes in Fokida (5 August 1944), when an elite German mountain unit from the 18th SS-Polizei-Gebirgsjäger-Regiment, was surrounded in the village and exterminated by the Greek rebels. Ninety-seven Germans were killed and 105 captured. Salvator never forgot waiting a whole night, without speaking or smoking in order to avoid detection, for the signal to attack in the morning. He was one of about 50 fighters injured in this remarkable battle: He took a bullet in the right leg as he engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Germans. He was admitted to the Brigade infirmary in the village of Pentagioi. When in October the brigade was renamed II ELAS Division, "Sotiris" was one of the 30 partisans selected for EPON’s Model Platoon (“Ypodeigmatiki”).
He was the only one of his family who survived the Holocaust. He was married to Dora Koen and they had a daughter, Ester. He died on 8 July 2012.
