The first Greek paratrooper to go to battle with the Germans as a secret agent in WWII was Sonia Sofia Stefanidou, the eldest daughter of Pontian doctor Filopomenas Stefanidis.
Born in Odessa, in the Ukraine, she moved to Athens at the age of five in 1907 after her father signed up as a volunteer doctor for the Greek Army during the Balkan Wars. Stefanidis managed to convey his patriotism to his brave daughter.
Proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, she followed in her father’s footsteps by signing up as a volunteer at the School of Air Defence Nurses just a few months before the start of the Greek-Italian war. Following the declaration of war she requested to be incorporated into the defence services. “I considered it my duty to contribute as much as I could to the ‘sacred struggle’,” she said.
