Moisis Michail Bourlas

Moisis Michail Bourlas was born in 1918 in Cairo

Bourlas was born in Cairo in 1918 to Greek Jewish parents, the fourth child of a large family. Money problems brought the family back to Greece, first to Naousa and then to Thessaloniki. As a child he helped his father, who worked in a bakery.

After high school he trained as a turner. In 1935 he joined the Communist Youth of Greece. He served as an army bridge builder in the Greek military and fought on the Albanian front, then joined the ELAS resistance in 1943.

In 1945 he was arrested for his political views and exiled to several Greek islands. A Greek-Israeli agreement freed him in 1951, and he moved to Israel. There he worked as a turner and was active in the Communist Party of Israel until he left with his wife in 1967.

After a short stay in Bulgaria, the couple settled in the Soviet Union near the Ural Mountains. He retired in 1982, taught Greek in Sukhumi, and returned to Greece in 1990. He regained his Greek citizenship in 1999 and published his autobiography in 2000.

He lived his last years in a home for the elderly in Thessaloniki and ran for the city council in 2002 and 2006. He died in 2011 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Stavroupoli.