'Why not do it?'

"If I can do something, why not do it?" Maritsa Mavrapidi asked a journalist in 2015, when a flood of desperate people from the shores of Asia Minor arrived on Greece's eastern Aegean islands. She was one of a group of three elderly women who were photographed as one fed a baby with a bottle of milk shortly after it arrived on Lesvos with its mother and many other refugees. The photograph, by Lefteris Partsalis, touched people across the world. Mavrapidi, who died two days ago at the age of 90, and her companions, though, did not think they had done anything beyond what anyone would do.

The gentle old woman's bemusement at the emotion prompted by the photograph was clear in her question. This was the attitude with which she and her companions responded to those who wanted to meet them, who wanted to honor them as symbols of humanity and solidarity (they were even nominated...