Who is Athanasios (Athos) Roussos from Fugitive Pieces and what is their importance?

Athanasios (Athos) Roussos was a geologist born in Odessa, Ukraine. As the member of a commercial Greek family, Athos trained in geology at Cambridge University and specialized in peat, limestone, and archaeological wood. He traveled extensively before WWII, working in England, France, Austria, Yugoslavia, and finally Poland, where he worked at a dig in Biskupin. While there, he was approached by a terrified seven-year-old, Jakob Beer, who was freshly orphaned and hiding from the Nazis. The fifty-year-old the adopted Jakob and spirited him off to Zakynthos Island in Greece. They lived in hiding on the island, keeping themselves high in the mountains, and enduring great deprivations until liberation. During the Greek civil war that followed, Athos accepted a teaching job in Toronto, Canada.