Idomeni, Greece(CNN) Panagiota Vasileiadou has spent most of her life in the peaceful village of Idomeni, a world away from the ravages of Syria. But she knows what it's like to have nothing.
As a child, her life was turned upside down when the Nazis occupied Greece more than 70 years ago, forcing her family from their home.
"They burned our house. We didn't have anything, just one dress. Our mother used to take it off and cover us in rags so she could wash it," she recalls. "We had no food. Our mother used to cry alongside us. I understand suffering."
Vasileiadou, 82, has become known as "Mama" by almost everyone who has met her, and it's easy to see why. When a group of young Syrians came knocking on her door two months ago, she simply could not turn them away.
"They came to bathe. It was a very rainy day," Vasileiadou says. "My eldest son was here with his wife and he said to me, 'Mama, where are they going back to in this rain?'"
"I told him, 'I'm afraid, I don't know these people. We hear that they could be terrorists,'" says Vasileiadou, who reluctantly invited them to stay. "I didn't sleep that night. I was waiting to hear an explosion," she adds.
"The morning we woke up I made the sign of the cross. My son told me, 'Mama don't send them away.' I asked him, 'Where am I going to get the money from to feed five people?' And he said, 'We'll help you.'"
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Living with refugees
So for the past two months, five Syrian refugees have been living in Vasileiadou's small home in this tiny village near the Macedonian border. Chickens run around in their pen, vegetables grow in their patches, and firewood logs for the oven are piled high on the front porch.
The men are among thousands of refugees stranded here in Idomeni as they wait to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia. Borders across Europe have slowly been tightening to the flood of fleeing Syrians, creating refugee camps in border towns like this one.
Two of the young men staying with Vasileiadou agree to speak to us. Neither of them give their names. They may have made it out of Syria, but they still have family there and fear for their lives.
The men appear deeply grateful for their grandmotherly hostess.
"Not just any person would open up their home," one says, sitting around the kitchen table with Vasileiadou looking on. "Not just any person.
"Given the war we have come from, most people would think we are a violent people, but she found it in herself to do this," he says. "It has given us an amazing impression of people. It has lifted our spirits, given us hope that we can live with normal people in spite of what we've seen."
Vasileiadou is supporting these refugees on a state pension of just €450 (roughly $515) a month -- well below the average for Greece retirees. Fellow locals also help out in whatever way they can -- a local baker donates bread, neighbors help out with the cooking, and others donate food staples.
But despite these acts of kindness, the future for these two young men -- along with nearly 10,000 others stuck in limbo in Idomeni -- remains uncertain.
The future of those stuck in Idomeni
Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A woman cries
after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018,
according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.
Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.
Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis
was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."
Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother
drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."
Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.
Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a
no-man's land on the border.
The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.
Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.
A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.
A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.
Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.
In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.
The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.
A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.
A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.
A ship crowded with migrants
flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coast of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.
Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.
Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.
A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.
A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.
Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.
Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.
Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.
Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely
fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.
It was once the gateway to the Balkan route for migrants hoping to reach Western Europe, but the closing of the Macedonian side of the Greek border has turned Idomeni into a purgatory.
The situation is dire for the thousands of migrants forced to endure the relentless rain, cold and hunger at the camp on the Greek side of the Macedonian border, on the railway track, or in the town square.
"I understand the pain these people feel, I know what they are going through -- cold, hunger, everything," Vasileiadou says. "I went through it. If you haven't been through it you can't possibly understand."
Vasileiadou looks downcast when we ask how long she can continue to help refugees. She fears she's getting old and wishes she could do more.
"I wish I was younger and with more money and [could] take with me half of the camp and look after them," she says. "I cannot, sadly."
"We took five kids, and what happened? What about the rest of them who are still out there? Suffering in the rain and mud ... the ones that are here with me, I know they are the lucky ones."
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But while they may be just five of thousands, their lives have been forever changed by the kindness of one Greek grandmother.