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(ANSA-AFP) - ATHENS, 12 MAR - A 93-year-old Greek
grandmother, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Price for
helping refugees flooding into Europe, died on Sunday, the state
news agency reported. Emilia Kamvysi and two other elderly women
became instant celebrities in 2015 when they were pictured
bottle-feeding a refugee baby whose parents had just landed on
Greece's Lesbos island after a perilous sea crossing. The
arrivals were among more than a million refugees and migrants,
many fleeing the Syrian civil war, who reached EU shores during
the influx. The three elderly women were children of ethnic
Greek refugees from Turkey, and became a symbol of the
solidarity of the people of Lesbos with the huge numbers of
arriving Syrians. Greek state news agency ANA reported Kamvysi's
death and said her funeral would take place in her village on
Lesbos on Monday. The other two grandmothers had already passed
away -- Maritsa Mavrapidou in 2019 at the age of 92, and
Efstratia Mavrapidou in 2022, aged 96. The trio had insisted
they had done nothing special. "What did I do, my son?" Kamvysi,
famously told Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos. "They were
gentle people and they were just passing through," she later
told AFP. (ANSA-AFP).
