Albert Burla: My mother is my role model

The praise for his mother, which as he said is a model for him, knitted, talking to New York Times, its CEO Pfizer, Dr. Albert Burla. As he describes, his family, who lived in Thessaloniki, managed to survive and escape from the Nazis, during World War II.

“My mother was the youngest of seven children” said Dr. Μπουρλά, saying he was hiding with her older sister for a year, beginning in 1943. “Like the Anne Frank, “My mother should not have left the house,” she said, noting, however, that as a teenager she did not follow the rules, with result one day he left home to be arrested and taken to jail.

It was close to the end of the war, when the Germans no longer sent Jews to Auschwitz. However, as she explained as a prisoner, he was beaten and abused. while he added that he escaped the executive extract at the last minute, when her sister’s husband bribed a German officer to give her life.

“He never said”look what the Germans did to me”. That was irrelevant. He never said “oh, when I suffered”. He put a humorous touch to things so that we do not feel the terror. Most importantly, the stories were full of messages of optimism“, Said, among others, Dr. Bourlas.

«My mother believed that you can do everything in life. That there is always a way. The way may not be clear at first, but it always is. I owe her a lot because of that. He is my role modelConcluded the interview with the expatriate CEO of Pfizer.

See Mr. Bourlas (center) on his wedding day, with his mother (next to him). Photo from the personal archive of A. Bourlas.

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