My mother, Dimitra Bailey, who has died aged 97, was a refugee, a Red Cross nurse, a migrant worker and a war bride who made a new start in the UK.

Dimitra’s early life was shaped by war, famine, poverty and displacement. She was born near Smyrna, now Izmir, Turkey, to Ioannis Irianoglou, a merchant, and his wife, Martha (nee Kolokotroni). The family were Ottoman Greeks whose ancestors had lived in the area for generations.

At the end of the Greco-Turkish war in 1922, ethnic Greeks were forced to flee their homes. Dimitra was two days old when she became a refugee, as her family fled to Smyrna. The city, which was overwhelmed with thousands of fleeing Greeks and Armenians, was then almost destroyed by a fire lasting more than a week in which tens of thousands died.

Dimitra survived and with her family eventually arrived in Athens, where she grew up in the refugee area of Vyrona.

In October 1940, when Italy tried to invade Greece, Dimitra worked as a Red Cross army nurse caring for wounded Greek soldiers. In 1941, when the German army arrived in Athens, the harsh years of occupation and mass starvation began. So in 1942, seeking what she thought would be a better life, she volunteered for an organised work programme and boarded a train for Vienna.

Wanting to use her nursing skills, she went to work in the Steinhof mental hospital. Years later she learned that hundreds of children had been murdered in the children’s ward as part of the Nazis’ progamme of euthanasia.

She returned to Greece in 1943. The following year the German army began its retreat and the British liberated Athens. The property in which she lived was requisitioned as the British army’s local HQ. This is how Dimitra met my dad, Arthur Bailey, a soldier.

In December 1945 Dimitra and Arthur married in Athens and she became a British subject. The following year she boarded the RMS Ascania, and arrived in England in what became one of the coldest and longest winters on record. Food rationing was at its height, but Dimitra, accustomed to food shortages, barely noticed.

Life was difficult for her in Leeds. Her English was not good enough for nursing, so shop work became her source of income, enabling her to support her mother in Athens.

In the mid-1950s Dimitra and Arthur settled in Croydon and life finally improved. She trained as a beautician and Arthur worked as a painter and decorator. Eventually she became a representative for a French cosmetic company, travelling to Paris and all parts of the UK.

Dimitra was an avid reader, especially of the Russian classics and biographies. She enjoyed classical music and going to the theatre. She was a warm, caring, compassionate woman who empathised with the hardships of others. She abhorred racism and fascism.

Arthur died in 1999. Dimitra is survived by her daughters, Lucy and me, two grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.