9. Family moves to Ritini 1940

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Family moves to Ritini 1940

We can now return to the sequence of events.  Having achieved the kind of reputation that he did in Katerini as Headmaster of its best school, Papadopoulos was now chosen by the Department of Education of Northern Greece to join its headquarters in the city of Thessaloniki.  It was an honor he could not refuse and so the family moved to Thessaloniki in 1938.  This phase in his life and career lasted only two years.  The declaration of war in 1940 and the fierce fighting on the borders of Albania with the Italian army convinced the teacher that the family would be safer in the village.  So the decision was made to move to Ritini.  The teacher also decided to sell all big household items and use the money to buy provisions from Katerini.  Our mother felt uneasy, to say the least.  She was upset with the dismantlement of the household which they had put together less than two years before.  It takes long for a family to settle into a new town, make a home and find schools for the children. All that had been achieved and now they had to leave.  Eleni remembers that mother was also upset at the thought that her husband had worked hard for many years to get to where he was, and he was now going to move backwards to where he had started eighteen years ago.  It was like demoting himself. The idea was discussed that only the family would move to the village and father would stay in Thessaloniki in the hope that we could all move back once the hostilities were over.  But father wasn’t that optimistic.  He refused to be separated from us longer than absolutely unavoidable, and he believed that what was happening would not be resolved quickly.  He anticipated that Greece, and indeed the whole of the European continent and even further, was entering a long period of struggle and hardship.  He was right.

 

However, there was more than the loss of prestige and the new uprooting that was worrying our mother.  She had a foreboding premonition. She had been aware, all those years, of the envy of some of the villagers, some of them even relatives. There were those who loved her husband, more especially the needy people in the village.  But there were also those who felt that the teacher, a stranger to the village (in Greek ‘xenos’), had risen too fast from a poor refugee to the envied position of being the Headmaster of their school, and then promoted to the position of Headmaster of the First Municipal School, the best school in Katerini.  Being called to the ‘big city’ of Thessaloniki a few years later for an even higher position in the Department of Education only increased their envy -- one of the seven capital sins, and a common one universally.

Glykeria may have been unhappy about the return to the village, but she could also see that there were good reasons for it.  She couldn’t foresee what was coming for the people of Greece, but she trusted that her husband knew better.  Air raids and bombardments had already started in Thessaloniki, and I remember my very first traumatic experience of hearing sirens and being taken in hurry, almost tumbling down the stairs, to hide with my mother, my two sisters and my brother, in a tiny shed under the external cement staircase of our house.

The immediate plan was to move us and most of our necessary possessions first.  Father would then return to Thessaloniki to finalize the rest – empty the house, sell furniture etc. and get the approval for his transfer. The move wasn’t a smooth one by any means.  Xanthoula, then about fourteen years old, remembers getting on a full train from Thessaloniki to Katerini, and our brother Stefanos tells the same story in one of my tapes. On the way, just outside of Thessaloniki, an air raid warning made it stop in the middle of a plain.  Trains were always primary targets so everyone had to get off quickly and run away from it through the fields.  Father, with me on his shoulders and mother to his side, told the other three to separate from us and hide in a field barn.  The two girls went into the barn, Stefanos, about 11 years old, says that he continued to run, got lost and ended up with strangers in an old abandoned building.  He later found his way to the barn and rejoined the two sisters.

The older children later understood that splitting up the family was a precaution on the part of our father so that the whole family wouldn’t be wiped out in case the enemy planes came down low shooting at us, or in case a bomb exploded.  Fortunately the planes left, the train was not bombed, and eventually we all went back on it, only to find out that the railway lines had been blown up further down.  That particular train couldn’t get to Katerini.  According to the memories of my older siblings, we had to walk to another railway line to pick up another train with a different final destination but still going through a station called ‘Makrygialos  (‘Long Beach’) about 5 kilometers from the village where father’s family lived.  Father had to quickly improvise and change the route.   That second train was by now so full, my brother described the people hanging from everywhere like “bunches of grapes”.  But we managed to get on it and continued our trip to the safety first of the village of Sfendami where father’s own family lived, then a few days later to our own house in Ritini.  It seems that a couple of horses were borrowed from our relatives to load up some of our things and carry me and my mother. Neither of us could have walked that far – around 8-10 hours on foot between these two villages. 

From that whole episode, I have a vague memory myself of getting off the train and moving through fields on my father’s shoulders.  Again it is the traumatizing sound of the sirens that stayed with me over the years.  But the rest of the trip is completely forgotten.  It was a cold day in November 1940 and I was only four and a half years old.

In the years that followed, our father’s predictions were proven correct, Xanthoula says. People suffered more in the cities, killed by bombardments or died of hunger. Schools closed for winter 1940-41, then opened sporadically for some of the following school year.  During 1941-42 two years of schooling were condensed into one, to make up for the lost year.  Once the German occupation was firmly entrenched, permission was granted for schools to remain open, at least in the bigger towns and cities.  But there were problems of space caused by the occupying forces.  In the cities and towns many of the school buildings were taken over to house the invaders’ army.  Our brother Stefanos recalls in the tapes with graphic accuracy classes being held at various locations in Katerini during his first years of high school: in the big church near the central square or under trees in the park, if the weather was good.  A piece of cardboard would be stuck on the trunk indicating what year class was being held under that particular tree. In the colder but still bearable weather, they would sit under makeshift roofs and dividing walls with blankets hung in-between trees, wearing as many heavy clothes as they could.  And in very bad weather, they were just sent home.  School principals were always on the lookout for some space that could house their classes.  In the villages, many of the schools closed for various reasons, one of them being that the local teacher, if he/she was young enough, had decided to join the Resistance movement.  Or because, suspected of helping the Allies and the partisans, they were arrested and sent to a prison camp. This was the case with our own school in Ritini when our father was arrested in the summer of 1943.  The school closed and children of my age had to wait until the Germans left Greece to go to school for the first time. 

Xanthoula remembers that, after missing year 1940-41, she and our elder sister Eleni went back to school for 1941-42.  The two girls first stayed with various relatives or friends in Katerini.  They couldn’t all be accommodated together, so Stefanos, by now at high school age himself, stayed with another family of friends in Katerini.  Being the youngest, I stayed in the village.  I have no memory of this, but I have been told that my father taught me to read and write before he was arrested in 1943.  It seems that he spent hours with me, day after day, teaching me to read and write for a year but I don’t remember...  After his arrest, the school in Ritini closed and I never attended formal school until 1944.  At that time they asked me how old I was and placed me in the class where I should have been according to my age.  By then I was nearly 9 years old.  I was lucky that my father had taught me to read and write before he was killed, lucky that there were many books around the house and lucky that I liked reading.

Eleni started University in September 1942 and had to go to Thessaloniki while Xanthoula was still attending high school in Katerini.  Eleni first stayed with friends and it was in the following year that Xanthoula joined her.  They stayed at the YWCA together with many other young girls doing their studies away from home.  Life in the city during the Occupation was as my father had predicted. The Greek currency, the drachma, was devalued and couldn’t buy much, but even if it could have, food supplies had become very scarce.  People were seen selling everything they had -- clothes, jewelry, household items -- for a bag of flower.  Hunger was widespread in the cities and people were dying in the streets begging for food.  Through the Teacher’s Association, the two girls had access to food rations, which they could go and collect daily.  On the way back, they saw such misery and hunger out in the streets that these meager food rations often didn’t make it back to the YWCA.  Eleni remembers handing the food out and crying all the way.  They were lucky that they lived at the YWCA which was partly supported by the International Red Cross so some food was given to them. 

The cities suffered particularly from hunger, but even life in the villages wasn’t easy. Apart from the usual geographical isolation of villages and the traditional poverty of most families, the food shortage was aggravated by recurring raids from the invaders in search of whatever they could confiscate to feed their own troops. And when the Resistance groups started forming, their needs for survival took further toll on the already heavily burdened villagers. Those who risked their lives going to the mountains to fight the enemy also needed food.

Some of our personal experiences of that period have been marked indelibly in our memory. The first incident is a combination of my memory and that of my brother, as he recounts it in one of the tapes in my possession.  It was sometime towards the end of 1942 when the more ruthless and systematic burning and killing had started.  The Germans were raiding villages in the hope of finding and killing groups of partisans, or at least getting information regarding their whereabouts.  They came to our village. We were all instructed to gather at the village square where the church and the school stood.  A Gestapo officer, who must have been in charge of this operation, spoke through an interpreter and assured the villagers that nothing would happen to them if they cooperated.  Children were given candy and people were invited to come forward with any information they had on partisan activity in the area.  But people didn’t volunteer freely, so the next thing I remember is German soldiers with guns making a circle around the school.  We, the children, were isolated and taken inside the school for interrogation while parents and older people stayed inside the circle, in the school yard. I remember steely grey-blue eyes set deep in a thin and pale face, looking through black-rimmed glasses, asking questions which were translated to us.  My brother has exactly the same memory of the same steely eyes.  I don’t remember speaking, probably none of us small children did. We were old enough to understand what was going on but were frozen with fear.  With no information from the children, the next step was the interrogation of the adults.  We had to change places.  They were taken inside and we stood outside, surrounded by the German soldiers with the guns turned towards us.

Nothing dramatic happened on that occasion and at the end we were all allowed to return to our homes.  I will never be sure why.  Was it that they didn’t want to alienate us, hoping that the people of the village would be more forthcoming in the future?  Was it that they were satisfied that we didn’t know where the partisans were hiding and decided to leave us alone?  Or was it because someone did give information, and the Gestapo left content that this village wasn’t against them, hoping for future collaboration?  I will never be sure, but later events and rumors seemed to confirm the last supposition.

Xanthoula, Eleni and I have visited Ritini several times over the years.  We are always drawn to the village square where the church and the school still stand.   The original church was demolished and a bigger one is now in its place, but the old school, built with local stone, has been carefully preserved and restored in its original form with its stone walls and slate roof.  It now serves as a local cultural center for the village.  A good part of our father’s life was spent in that school, and the three of us sisters stepped with emotion inside the small office of the Schoolmaster in our last visit there.  On that beautifully sunny day in May 2006, in order to exorcise any bad images and sad memories, I took a photo of my two sisters on the back steps of the beautifully restored old school, overlooking the yard where, over half a century ago, I stood with other children in fear with the German guns pointing at us.

Another memorable event of my childhood is a tragic one and it happened in November of 1944.  All three of my siblings remembered it in the tapes I made in 1986, as all of them happened to be in Ritini at that time.  I remember I was playing with some neighborhood children in my grand father’s garden beside our house.  Children came to our house often to play with me. I liked to think then that they came because they liked me, but later I realized that it may have been also because my mother would cut thick slices of bread, spread over them a little oil and salt or sugar with cinnamon, and distribute them to all of us, often with a handful of dry raisins.  On that day we suddenly heard the distinctive noise of machine guns, not too close but close enough to be clearly heard in the stillness of the mountain air.  Then, looking up towards the mountains, we saw smoke.  Everyone could tell that it came from the village of Elatohori (‘Village of the Tall Pines’), the next village up from ours, about ten kilometers away.

 

People feared the worst, and several men started going up the road to see what happened.  Many of us children did too, and we were about a third of the way up when a man came down agitated bearing the dreaded news: the Germans had come from the other side of the mountain, not through the rough and narrow road that linked more directly the town of Katerini to our village, and that was the reason why we didn’t know about their coming.  They rounded up everyone in Elatohori, older people, women and children, as most adult males had already joined the Resistance movement.  Having found traces of ammunition in the village school, and having interrogated the people of the village without getting any information, they set the houses on fire and ordered the small population to start marching down on the main road towards our village.  When they were on the road, they opened fire on them.  Most of them were hit and fell on the ground, some were badly wounded, a few survived miraculously because they could run away. The road was covered with blood, some of the small children still alive and crying next to their mothers’ bodies.  The Germans then left, moving up to the next village, rather than down to ours...

When the news reached us, we, the children, were told sternly to go back home.  As soon as the Germans were out of sight, people from our village went up to clear the road and bury the dead. 

After the war, Elatohori was rebuilt by a few survivors slightly lower on a ridge overlooking the plains of Katerini.  The old site remained untouched, some walls of its stone houses still standing, ghosts with black gaping holes in them.  I saw them some forty years later, in the seventies and even eighties, still in that same condition.  The people who returned didn’t want to live there, but perhaps they didn’t want to forget too soon either.  So they left things untouched in the old village for several decades.  It probably takes at least that long for wounds to heal.  Nearly half a century later the growth of the new village and the more recent construction of a ski station on the neighboring slopes helped to revive the old village.  When feasible, the old houses are being rebuilt more or less as they were.  A few small guest houses have opened, built in the local style with stone walls, wood floors and open fireplaces.  The old school is also restored and has become a picturesque restaurant run by the grandson of one of the villagers.  The old Elatohori is now visited by tourists, mostly Greeks, who may or may not know about the past tragic events.   Most of them come to spend a day away from the city looking for a quaint old village and a good restaurant.  But the attentive visitor will notice a modest and somewhat worn marble memorial on the side of the road with a long list of names carved on it.  They are the names of the people who lay on the road, one day some sixty-five years ago (27 November 1944), near that very spot.

I also remember, when our village would be alerted that the Germans were coming, how my grandfather would put me on his shoulders so that the family could move faster.  He would take us to a secret hideout he had made outside the village, under a big rock near our orchard, camouflaged with branches and leaves.  My brother Stefanos had an even clearer memory of that hideout and he described it in detail in one of the tapes.  He stayed there for a while with two other young men who were cousins, Takis and Alekos.  They needed to hide because Takis’ father, a former Major in the Greek army, was a well-known leader in the Resistance movement.  The two young men first stayed in our house in the village but with the fear of the German raids they went to stay in the hideout for more safety.  The harboring of these two young men was later to become part of the accusations accumulated against my father.

During the raids our family would hide there with some food and blankets for sleeping through the night, until the word went around that the Germans had left. For some reason our village was never burnt and there were no mass executions.  In fact, the case of our father was a unique one in Ritini.  No one else from the village was arrested by the Gestapo, taken to a prison camp and executed.  The rumor went around that our village was spared because the mayor of the village was friendly with the Germans, and because a couple of other men, prominent in the village, gave information on guerilla moves and collaborated in various ways with the Gestapo.  The enemy troops that came to our village seemed to be content with taking anything they could find in the way of food: chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, flour, corn, wheat, dried beans, onions, even fruit and vegetables.

On that subject, there is one incident that I can never forget.  Once, when the Germans came and we were still in the village, I saw a young German soldier drag a screaming pig up the hill near our house, towards the village square where their truck had stopped.  It was quite funny to see him sweating and probably swearing, trying to get this fat but unwilling pig to move.  It sat on its short hind legs, resisting and letting out shrill sounds as if it was being slaughtered.  I remember being proud of it, thinking “even the pig is resisting”! The pig belonged to our relatives next door.  Ours was a two-storey house, under one roof but with two separate entrances, built by my grandfather who had brought money from his years of work in America.  He was helped by his younger brother, Nikolas, to select and carry the stones and the wood necessary for its construction.  His and our family shared the house.  I knew this pig well because I watched it over the fence being fed and grow fat in our relatives’ back yard.  It was white with black patches all over, or black with white patches.  I am not so sure now which color was the dominant one, but it was definitely black and white.  As far as I remember, we never fattened a pig ourselves, because by the time I was born we no longer lived in the village, except for summers.  But almost every other house in the village would have one, if they could afford to get a little one and if they had enough food and leftovers to feed it.  The families would fatten the pig and slaughter it before Christmas to have meat for the holidays and salted fat to be used for cooking for the rest of the winter.

To come back to the pig scene: it was heartbreaking to see my old auntie following the German and her pig, begging him not to take it away, explaining that it was food for the whole family for the winter months, talking, talking, without him understanding a word.  Soon she was on her knees, dragging herself on the dusty road behind the German soldier and her screaming pig, but to no avail.  He kept going ignoring her, screaming on top of his voice, and so the Greek black-and-white pig met its fate in the hands of the Germans. Later, thinking about the scene, I was surprised that my auntie wasn’t shot.  There were probably strict orders. And I continue to wonder why I can remember so clearly the pig scene, and so many other details, but not my father teaching me to read and write...

Both my sisters and my brother remember that our parents gave willingly from the provisions they had brought with them.  They also gave from those my father bought when he went down to the town of Katerini to collect his salary. Women of the village would come to our mother with a couple of eggs, some goat’s milk, or sometimes nothing if they were too poor, asking for some flour to make a little bread, for a cup of oil to stir in with the vegetables, or ‘for the vigil light’ as they would say.  Other things in demand were a little sugar, coffee, soap, or aspirin for fever and any other medicine in my father’s medicine cabinet.  Glykeria always gave. In the afternoons, she would cut slices of bread for the neighborhood children who came to play with me.  Our father resumed not only his duties as a teacher when schools were allowed to reopen in 1941-42, but also those of ‘doctor’ in the village. Nothing much had changed since he had left Ritini. The poorest of the village, the widows and orphans, found again their protector. And the others, the envious, kept a watchful eye on him.

It must have been spring 1942 when, at the first national day celebration  on March 25^th, a day commemorating the declaration of the Greek revolution in 1821 against the Turks, our father felt he had to honor the Greek national heroes as it was customary – and still is in Greek schools today -- with a patriotic speech and a school parade.  But he also felt he had to include in his address a message about the present occupation of Greece. This speech is not preserved, but it is known that the teacher spoke of freedom for all people in general and for the Greek people in particular from the invaders.  He must have felt it was his duty as an educator and he thought he was safe within the small community of the village.

But he was wrong.  This speech was reported to the Gestapo in Katerini.  Eventually it became part of the accusations accumulated against him.  Someone in the village who was collaborating with the enemy either out of fear or out of desire for power, and who was consumed by an old envy rekindled by the teacher’s presence in the village, took the opportunity to do him harm.  Other more significant accusations were also added: harboring partisan’s relatives and Allied soldiers.

The teacher was 47-48 years old, father of four children and Head of a school full of children who needed him.  He was past the stage of taking up arms and he considered it his duty to stay and teach.  He decided however not only to help the village people but also to contribute to the fight for freedom by helping as much as he could those active in the Resistance movement.  Some Allied soldiers (British, Australians, New Zealanders), mostly escapees from prison camps or from trains transporting them to prison camps within and out of Greece, found themselves in the region of Mount Olympus and the mountain range called Pieria just above Ritini.  Hunted down by the Germans, they needed shelter and food, at least for a while, until they could find a way to leave the country.  The word went around quickly that the schoolteacher of Ritini would open his door to them. Progressively, several of them were sheltered in our home, although our father knew exactly what punishment awaited him and his family if Allied soldiers were discovered: as a rule, execution on the spot.

The teacher’s harboring Allied soldiers, giving hospitality to the two young men related to a leader in the Resistance movement, and that speech during the 25^th of March school celebration openly condemning the occupational forces and praising the pursuit of freedom, all that put together made enough of a case to the Gestapo in Katerini.  These were just accusations; there was no tangible evidence, just the word of someone from the village.  But that was enough.  The Germans were becoming increasingly nervous about the British intervention in Greece and about the resilience and insubordination of the Greek people.  The Gestapo did not consider the teacher dangerous enough to come all the way to the village to find him, but they were informed that he came down to Katerini on a regular basis.  At the first opportunity, they were ready to arrest him. 

During the summer of 1943 the whole family was up at the village.  The academic year was over and Eleni had already finished her second year at the University.  Xanthoula had just finished high school and was also planning to enter the University.


Go to 10. "Ioannis Papodopoulos imprisoned & executed" blog.

10. Ioannis Papodopoulos Imprisoned & Executed

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Ioannis Papodopoulos Imprisoned & Executed

What Xanthoula remembers (and this is confirmed by my elder sister and by my brother in the taped interviews of 1986) is that around late June our father prepared to go down to Katerini with a small group of people from the village with horses and mules.  That would cut down the travel to four hours from six, if he had to go on foot.  It was his usual trip down to collect his salary, get some necessary provisions and, this time, to visit the dentist – a couple of his teeth needed to have fillings.  Bad omens, which village people took seriously those days, made both my grandfather and my mother feel uneasy: the family dog, Rozakis, for no apparent reason was howling during the night for many hours.  In the morning my father dropped a bottle of ouzo which broke as it fell on the ground.  He was using it to ease his toothache.  My mother begged him not to leave, but he laughed off those signs and said he had already made arrangements to go with these friends from the village, the widows needed their meager pensions, and his teeth needed to be taken care of.  So he left.  Xanthoula, Eleni and my brother Stefanos remember all this well but I don’t have any personal memory of this. All I know is that he never came back... We learned on the same evening, when the others returned to the village, that he was arrested while having lunch at his brother Elias’ restaurant in Katerini.  Evidently the Gestapo was alerted that he was coming down, and his movements must have been watched.  Someone betrayed him, and Judas must have been someone familiar to him, probably one of the people he travelled with who was willing to alert the Gestapo.  Someone would have pointed him out to the Germans, otherwise they wouldn’t have known whom to arrest.

He was transported by Gestapo escort to the prison in Katerini – a large house that had been designated for that purpose. He was interrogated but was not mistreated physically.  In a letter he was allowed to write to his family he seems optimistic about being released. During this initial confinement, the Gestapo was gathering evidence to support the charges against him. Back home in the small village the news spread quickly.  Everyone knew that during 1942 the teacher had sheltered the son and nephew of a Major in the Greek army who never surrendered to the Germans, and who, still wearing his army uniform, had become an important figure in the Resistance. His son and his nephew left Katerini where they were known and sought refuge in the teacher’s house in the village. They eventually went up into the mountains to hide, but they had remained in the teacher’s house long enough to draw the attention of informers. Such people existed everywhere and Ritini was no exception.  They may have kept the village from being burned, but the price was paid by their teacher and benefactor and by his family.

In his first letter from prison our father writes that his brother Elias and some friends were trying to find a way to get him out. There seemed to be some hope, as the German investigator said they might release him in two or three days.  Locher was his name and he was to be remembered for a long time in the area of Katerini for his atrocities. Our father was under the impression that to give hospitality to relatives of a partisan was not a serious enough charge: “the children of rebels and insurgents are not wanted persons themselves”, he writes in his letter.  However this didn’t mitigate the charges against him. And there were other charges that were more serious, such as being a Communist.  This he denied. “Those who denounced me said that in Ritini I am a propagandist for the Communist struggle… unfair and untrue. God is righteous and fair and the truth will hopefully come out. But if I should die because of the lies of evil people, I will not fear death. I will die as is worthy of a Greek.”

His family and many other people who appreciated his character knew well that his offering shelter to relatives of Resistance fighters and to Allied soldiers stranded on Greek soil was driven first and foremost by humanitarian principles towards people who were suffering rather than by any political agenda or ideology such as Communism.  It was quite ironic that he was accused of being a Communist, when he actually had fled from Communist Russia. His love of humanity was so great that he would have attended to a wounded German soldier if he had found one in his way. The teacher had a profound faith in God and was deeply inspired by Christian values. His humanity and compassion had been demonstrated many times throughout his life. But speaking in favor of freedom and human rights, particularly those of the Greek people, didn’t help his case. The Germans knew they weren’t dealing with someone who would take up arms against them, but with someone who might be dangerous in an indirect yet equally effective way by influencing others to resist. They were rounding up people in this category using the flimsiest of excuses.  Since there was no actual proof or tangible evidence that any of the accusations were true, it seemed at first that he was going to be released.  Finally, however, the informers prevailed, especially with the negative intervention of someone from  Katerini who was openly a collaborator.   To play it safe, the Germans decided to hold the teacher and move him to the concentration camp in Thessaloniki.  There he would face a military court that would ultimately determine his fate.

The family had heard that while he was kept prisoner in Katerini he was allowed to go to the dentist, accompanied for his appointments by a Greek policeman who knew him well.  His hands weren’t even tied during those outings. The policeman was seen just walking side by side with the teacher.  We heard later from him that he had urged our father to make an escape.  He told him to start running while he would shoot a few times up in the air until he disappeared.  But the teacher’s answer was a categorical “No” for two reasons:  the personal danger to the policeman himself, as the Gestapo could take it out on him and punish him for his prisoner’s escape, and the possibilities of reprisals against his own family and other relatives.  His brother Elias had already been compromised and was preparing to go into hiding.  So the teacher remained a prisoner. On September 1, 1943, approximately two and half months after his arrest, he was transferred to the prison camp called “Pavlou Mela” in Thessaloniki, the same camp where Slim was kept for a couple of months in the autumn of 1941.   There, the Germans had installed their own Commander above the Greek prison warden.  Soon after that, and as hopes had now severely diminished of having his brother freed, Elias quietly closed the restaurant and left for Athens to hide in the anonymity of a bigger city.  His wife and two daughters locked the house and followed him soon after.

Meanwhile the Greek people, with the exception of those who collaborated with the occupiers, were putting up a vigorous fight. Within a year of the invasion resistance flared up all over Greece.  The highly symbolic act of tearing down the swastika from the Acropolis within a month of the capture of Athens, carried out by two young Greek students (one of them is still alive and still active in the Greek political scene), fired up the population.  From the beginning of 1942 resistance was organized in the cities, especially in Athens and Thessaloniki, and began with massive strikes.  They were brutally suppressed but kept recurring.  In the countryside, small groups sprang up -- some were remnants of the Greek army increased by civilians who joined them, while others formed independently.  A remote village high up on Mount Olympus became the first headquarters, and later several other bands sprang up all over the rest of Greece, including the large islands like Crete.  Fighters gathered under two main groups, ELAS or EDES, and a few other smaller bands.  They were all keeping the invaders’ forces busy with sabotage and ambushes, often very successful.   Then the news went around that the British were now involved again: a British Military Mission was first established in the area of Mount Olympus in which two young Australian soldiers became active: Bruce Vary and Slim Wrigley.  Soon, British plane drops were providing arms, ammunition and provisions to the partisans.

The occupiers labeled the city strikes “sabotage”, which carried the death penalty, and declared that belonging to “gangs of armed rebels” (the “antartes”) was punishable with death by hanging.  A swift execution by firing squad was for those caught helping “rebels” or harboring Allies.  They were sent to prison if the charge couldn’t be substantiated. This is why the camp of “Pavlou Mela” was functioning right from the start, and why by 1943 it was already filled beyond capacity in spite of periodic and large group executions. The highlight of the Greek resistance was the blowing up of the bridge of Gorgopotamos (‘Fast River’) on the 25^th of November 1942 -- a key railway bridge for the transport of enemy troops and arms south to Athens and the port of Piraeus.  This significant operation was a combined effort between the British and the two main branches of partisans, ELAS and EDES.  It was not only a big blow to the pride of the occupiers but it also delayed for over a month the enemy’s army supplies going to Egypt.  As a result it raised the morale of both the Allies and the Greeks.   However, arrests and mass executions increased as they were the only means the invaders had of terrorizing the Greek people.

The few letters sent by the teacher mentioned nothing about the living conditions in the camp where he spent the last four months of his life. We know more about that from the journals of prisoners who survived. The buildings, originally a Greek army camp, had been converted to a prison as soon as Germans entered and settled in Thessaloniki.  By then those buildings had deteriorated: they had rooms with broken window panes, dirty concrete floors, and dark cells without the most basic essentials. In his book “Martyrs.  Persecutions 1942-1945” (Damascus Editions, Athens, 1949), Father Dionysios Haralambous, who arrived at the camp in November 1942, writes (translated from the Greek):

“April 10, 1943. The terrible, bloody executions do not diminish our numbers. On the contrary we continue to increase. They’re bringing prisoners in by train two, three hundred at a time!

They shut them in one miserable cell – low, pitch dark, the one skylight blocked with cardboard, at the mercy of the north wind and the rain; they were lying on wet concrete. No bed clothes, nothing to cover up with. Two hundred and more souls crammed into that freezer.  Two hundred and more sheep, hungry, tortured and threatened by the terror of horrific execution (p.52)”.

On December 27, 1943 he writes:

“The icy north wind blows. One sees nothing outside, only black crows streaking through the air – harbingers of great calamity. When I was outside for a moment, I saw a long line of elderly people, men, women and even children. It breaks your heart. Unshaven, covered with dust, broken. Many days on the road. Without bread, without any food, without clothes, without blankets.

The Germans went out searching for insurgents, and so as not to return empty-handed, pulled these unfortunate people out of their homes and brought them here.  And now they are taking them to Cell Block 6. It’s a horrible place on the roof, with a low ceiling and dark.  Wind and rain beating down, with no windows or glass.  Here they pile all of them and lock them up.  And those unfortunate people will lie on wet concrete, no mattress, no covers”.

The next day he continues:

“The drama of last evening flashed before my eyes all night long. As soon as the camp gates opened, they were sent straight to Cell Block 6 – all of them freezing, blue from the cold, particularly the little children. Their teeth chattering from the cold. They are crying and wailing. Such a sight tears up your heart (pp.73-74).

Executions are frequent and increasing with time. Father Dionysios describes the atrocities of the occupiers:

“April 12, 1943.  Again, chains and cages. They are dragging out some fifteen people, like the butcher drags out sheep destined for his knife without a thought.  They bind them together, throw them in prison vans and send them to the slaughterhouse” (p.52).

A few pages further:

“July 3, 1943. We learn today that the Germans executed fifty – such was yesterday’s “harvest”. They were executed to ‘pay’, according to their announcement, for ‘crimes’ of the Greek people against the occupying forces!” (p.57)

These few quotations give ample testimony to the conditions under which the teacher lived the last four months of his life, and which only became known at the end of the war from surviving witnesses such as Father Haralambous.

When the teacher was transferred to this prison camp in September 1943, it was already brimming beyond capacity. According to his letters, the teacher’s location was “Cell Block 1”.  His two elder daughters were in Thessaloniki: Eleni, 20 years old, now a third-year student at the University, and Xanthoula, 17, in her last year of high school. They were both living at the YWCA and had great difficulty meeting their needs for survival. People were hungry, food in the free market disappeared quickly and daily life was precarious and full of despair.  But at least the girls had a roof over their head and were not starving.  The International Red Cross provided small food rations to organizations like YWCA and YMCA and to student cafeterias at the University. The village was too far away to be of frequent assistance. And there too, provisions were running very low, except for the fruit, vegetables and some corn produced by our grandfather in the summer.

Under such circumstances it was impossible for the girls to do anything for the release of their father. All they could do was visit him, as often as regulations permitted, and bring him a little food – most often from Eleni’s student food rations, and sometimes from the Teachers’ Association rations. Twice a week, beginning in September 1943 and later when winter fell and the northern icy cold wind “Vardaris” blew in, the two girls, sometimes alternating and accompanied by a willing friend, made the journey on foot from the YWCA located in the center of the city to the camp, a good 8 kilometers away.  There they could see their father in the courtyard through two rows of barbed wire.  If they had anything to give him they would hand it to the guards with his name on a piece of paper, hoping it would get to him.  To exchange a few words, they had to shout as there was a space in-between the two rows of barbed wire.  As they left, they would look up at the building to see him waive his hand behind a window of Cell Block 1.  They were lucky later when the Greek prison warden, who according to the description by Father Dionysios was far from lenient, asked the teacher to tutor his little seven year-old daughter.  In return he allowed Eleni and Xanthoula to come up to his office to see their father more closely. This was a great privilege indeed.  Nevertheless, their father’s life was in the hands of the German Commander and even more so in the hands of his enemies. The informants of the village had done their job well. But the teacher’s final fate would be decided by someone else.

For this episode in Xanthoula’s life and for the writing up of my father’s own biography, I have in my hands letters he wrote to us from the prison camp, carefully preserved by our mother through many moves and changes, then later by our brother.  I am now the holder of these documents.  Going through and translating my father’s letters has been a painful process, but they are important to this story.  So I will quote from them directly.

In his first letter to our mother from the camp, in September 1943, he continues to hope that he will be released, or at least he pretends to: “I believe that a Mighty and Just God will help us in our sufferings because I am completely innocent”. Then he mentions our grandfather, asking to be forgiven if he upset him in the past with anything he said or did. It seems he was preparing for the worst and was mostly preoccupied with the survival of the family. In the few letters he managed to send, he didn’t fail to give the most detailed advice:

“Now that the weather is still good, remember to ask my father to send you 2-3 loads of wheat to have your bread for the winter. Both my father and my sister Rachel will send you some. Send down with Stefanos to my brother Elias the gramophone so that he can sell it to get money for Stefanos’ books and shoes.  The girls can take my winter coat and have it modified for one of them.

And further along: “Have patience and endurance. God will help us. Be concerned only with taking care of the children, don’t worry at all about me.  Eleni comes twice a week and brings me what I need. With much love, your husband, Ioannis Papadopoulos”.

In another letter, dated October 10, 1943, this time written to his son Stefanos, now fourteen years old, he again gives some instructions, but also moral advice:

“Be wise and steadfast in all things, be sure to obey your mother and grandfather, and love your sisters, especially the little one, making sure to comfort her by telling her that her daddy will be free to come home soon if she remembers every morning and evening to ask the Virgin Mother of Christ to help us”.

On October 20, 1943, he writes to Eleni and Xanthoula giving them advice on their studies, but above all on their survival, insisting they take care of themselves and the rest of the family and not worry about him.

“About me, it is imperative that you do not worry at all.  Thank God, I am not alone here. There are lots and lots of people.  Our country’s fate is also my fate.  Your duty is to survive. (...) And again, I repeat, no unnecessary expenses for me, no sacrifice and no worry.  I am old enough in years and in good health.  I can sacrifice myself for the good of my fellow men...  If anything unexpected should happen to me, be brave and comfort your mother, look out for your brother and help him become a young man with good sentiments”.

At this point in the letter he mentions the names of those in the village and in Katerini responsible for his arrest and imprisonment. (It is my decision, and that of my sisters, not to make those public.) Such acts cannot forever remain hidden in the dark, at some point they are revealed in the light of day.  It is likely that newcomers to the camp were able to confirm certain suspicions that he already had. He mentions someone who gained freedom at the expense of his own, and speaks of his own simple-mindedness, and of the trap that was set for him. He finally realized that those who were jealous of him in the past were the very ones responsible for his imprisonment. “Always these people, in the past, now, and in the future.” The bitterness of having been betrayed is obvious and he openly warns his children about them. But he finds the generosity to write: “If I am mistaken and have sinned, then may God forgive me.” He appears to be prepared for the worst and tries to prepare his family in every detail, such as how and when to apply for a pension from the Greek State, should an ‘accident’ befall him.

In November 1943 there were to be more executions.  Large pits were dug just outside the barbed wire fence of the camp. At the end of the month, with an additional two hundred prisoners from the town of Giannitsa, the number of prisoners rose to above eight hundred.  The situation was at its worst. Soon there would be mass executions in order to make space for new prisoners.

Father Dionysios writes on November 27^th that nine pits had already been dug outside, and “another seventeen large pits ‘waited with open mouths’. There is talk of mass executions, with 300 and 400 victims. The poor people from Giannitsa, who had been brought in just a few days ago, know they are candidates for the executions and feel literally lost…

Evening. The news Nikos, this good guard, brings us is reassuring. He said the executions are suspended for the time being” (p. 69).

In that atmosphere, the teacher was preparing himself even though the decision of the military tribunal had classified him as a “prisoner of war”, a category from which they didn’t usually execute for reprisals. However, with the November executions he had seen with his own eyes, and with the larger ones that had been announced but temporarily suspended, he decided to write his will on the blank pages at the front and at the end of the Gospel of St. John that he always carried with him. The date marked is November 26, 1943.  In early December he also found paper and wrote letters to all of us.

On December 12, 1943, he writes four short letters in green ink, in his steady and calligraphic handwriting. He separately addresses each member of his family who were in the village and therefore unable to see him – his wife Glykeria, grandfather, our brother Stefanos, and myself, now nearly seven years old – as if he wanted to say goodbye to each of  us individually. The few lines he writes show his feelings and his sensitivity.

The letter to our grandfather addresses him as “Most respected Grandfather”.  Dimonatsos was for some years now ‘grandfather’ to him, as he himself was ‘the Teacher’ for Dimonatsos. The two elder girls don’t ever remember hearing their grandfather call their father ‘Yanni’, it was always ‘Teacher’ which sounds strange in English but not so in Greek.

“Thank you for your greetings and for your good wishes. I hope that God will soon unite us. I have confidence in your big heart and brave soul, and I am sure that you will comfort Glykeria, and that God will reward you for this.

Merry Christmas.

With respect, your son-in-law, Ioannis Papadopoulos”.

The second small piece of paper, with the same green ink and same beautiful handwriting was for our mother Glykeria. The letter for her is different, full of comfort, knowing how our mother was prone to distress. He mentions nothing that would make her unhappier than she already was.

“My dearest Glykeria,

I am in good health, and as I mentioned in my previous letter, there are many good people here who respect me and who have entrusted me with the teaching of their children. Thus the hours pass quickly and imperceptibly. I hope the good Lord will help us come through this ordeal unharmed. Have courage and patience, and ‘this too shall pass’. There are greater misfortunes than ours.  May God help to end the suffering of humanity. The girls are well – they come once, sometimes twice a week and bring me food.  I don’t lack in food, and the prison feeds us quite well. The Good Lord be praised.  I wish you Merry Christmas.  Greetings to Auntie and the children.

I embrace you, your husband, Ioannis Papadopoulos”.

The letter to his son Stefanos, now fourteen years old, is full of advice:

“My dear Stefanos,

I wrote in my last letter to you that if the high school opens and you go down to Katerini you should stay with Mrs. Sophia Athanasiadou, as Alexandra and her father wish you to do. You should always stay there and should not go to any other home except for that of Costas Kragiopoulos, so that you can borrow a book from him every now and then. You are never to speak with anyone about anything other than your school classes.   You are still young and you have an obligation to help your mother and your sisters because only God knows what fate awaits us. Respect and obey your mother and grandfather, and love Valentini.

I embrace you, your father, Ioannis Papadopoulos”.

For little Valentini the letter is all comfort:

“My dear Valentini,

I am well, and I thank you for the fervent prayers you offer to the Mother of Christ so I may get out of prison. Here in the prison I am teaching several girls, one of them is very good, little like you, in the third grade, reads well and writes beautifully. Her name is Panagiota, and every night in her prayers she asks the Holy Mother of God to grant me freedom.

Kisses my ‘Ntina’, and wait for me for Christmas and Saint Basil’s day.   I’ll bring you a New Year’s Day present.

Sweet kisses, your Father, Ioannis Papadopoulos”.

The last letter he wrote is dated December 25, on Christmas Day, to send to his son Stefanos his best wishes for his name day. He again shows his kind and generous nature, advising his son to love his fellow men, even if they are enemies.

 

“My Dear Stefanos,

For the great Feast of the Nativity, for your name day, and for the New Year, I wish you a happy life, to become a good Christian, a virtuous citizen, and a caring son. Remember your father, respect your mother and love your sisters more than yourself. Never harbor hatred for anyone, strive constantly to keep burning in your heart the flame of true Christian love for ‘your neighbor’, and maintain undiminished your devotion to your country. Life, in particular these times, presents great difficulties. Take care from now to strengthen your faith, love and courage so that you will not falter at times when the road ahead might become difficult.

Embrace for me your mother, grandfather and Valentini. I bless you and embrace you with much love, your father, I. Papadopoulos”.

With this last letter to his son Stefanos, the voice of the teacher is forever silenced.  The two young girls had one last occasion to see their father after Christmas, for his name day on the 7^th of January according to the Greek Orthodox calendar.  For some time now, since the teacher started tutoring the warden’s daughter, they were allowed to see him in the warden’s office.  On that occasion, something very good happened: the German Commandant came into the office, and announced to them through an interpreter that their father’s life was not in any danger.  His case was judged and the court’s decision was for him to be held as a prisoner of war, to be released at the end of the hostilities.  That was indeed a moment of joy for the two girls, and their minds were finally set at rest.  At least our father wouldn’t be included in the frequent mass executions for reprisals.

But this joy was not to last.  Only seven days later, on Thursday January 13, the ‘harvesters’ visited again the cell blocks to gather their crop for the day – forty to be precise – who would join five others brought in for that particular execution from the prison of Eptapyrgio (‘Seven Towers’) in Thessaloniki. Among the forty was the Teacher.

The description of this day is found in two books: in the book “Martyrs” by Father Haralambous already mentioned, and in the journal of another prisoner and good friend of our father, Leonidas Giasimakopoulos from Katerini. The journal was published in two volumes by George Kaftantzis in 1999 entitled “The Nazi camp ‘Pavlou Mela’ in Thessaloniki, 1941-1944.”  This is an extraordinary document, painfully accurate, as it is the only diary known, at least in Greek publications, to be entirely written while in prison, and on a daily basis. Mr. Giasimakopoulos gives the most detailed description of the day of our father’s execution on that cold January day.  That day was to have a profound effect on young Xanthoula and on the whole family of the Teacher.  I am translating from the Greek text.

“Thursday, January 13, 1944.

After midnight, I woke up feeling uneasy without knowing why, and I remained awake until 6:00 a.m., at which time I got up and, after a small preparation, I prayed devoutly begging the Most Merciful for peace. Before I had even finished my prayers around 6:50 a.m., Andreas, one of the guards, came into our cell block and called out some names. Another guard called names in other cell blocks.  Then we realized that something terrible was happening.  Indeed, by 7:15 the mystery was revealed.   This was to be a mass execution in retaliation for the killing of German officers in the region of Ardea.  From our camp the Germans took 40 to be executed. Among them:  Georgios Papadopoulos, B. Zogas, Elias Parastatidis, K. Zarkalis, Sym. Mylonas, and my dear friend and companion in suffering, Ioannis Papadopoulos, the teacher of my children – he was the last one called. When he was leaving the cell, he gave me his will, his money and personal effects for me to pass on to his daughters.  He asked me to support the girls and say goodbye on his behalf. It was a very difficult task. We embraced for the last time. He addressed everyone in our cell with a “Goodbye”, and walked out calm and proud, without showing any agitation and with admirable resoluteness, following the guard to go and submit to his martyrdom for glory and National honor. May your memory be eternal, dear friend Yanni!

As we learned from people working in the prison who observed the horrible scene of the gathering of those to be put to death in front of the prison trucks, all of the victims of the barbaric invaders demonstrated incomparable boldness and bravery. Not one of the forty waivered! With heads held high, smiles on their faces and eyes flashing, two-by-two, shackled in heavy German handcuffs, they walked up into the prison truck having expressed their abhorrence for their cowardly and lawless death. First, Vasilios Zogas from the town of Veria, a handsome curly-haired youth of 26 years, addressing himself to the Germans and to the Greeks who were serving as guards in the prison, said: ‘From our blood will spring forth thousands of other young Greeks. Now it’s your turn. Tomorrow it will be ours. Fellow Greeks remember us and avenge us.’ Second was Georgios Papadopoulos, from the village of Palatitsia near Veria, who said: "Fellow Greeks, courage! They are mean cowards, and what they do is cowardly. We will die as Greeks, honest and brave. Do not wince! You who are left behind, avenge us!’ Yannis Papadopoulos called out from the prison truck ‘Goodbye’. Everyone shouted ‘Long live Greece!’ And so the two armored prison trucks departed, with forty victims from our camp, five from the prison of Eptapyrgio, forty-five martyrs in total for the homeland, along with ten armed guards and two officers. The national anthem was sung as the prison trucks drove away. The execution was carried out at 8:30 at the site of the new slaughterhouse where 45 open graves waited since the night before. The National List of Martyrs increased by another 45 victims for our beloved country.

After the horrible separation from my brotherly companion in sorrow and fear, I was overcome with uncontrollable emotion and I sobbed, heavily and continuously. I cried for a whole hour for the gentle ‘teacher’ against whom such a bloodthirsty act and betrayal were perpetrated by ***.  (Note: To avoid animosity and spare the Greek collaborator’s descendants further shame, I decided to suppress his name.)  The entire cell block shared my sorrow and all were keen to comfort me. I was particularly consoled by Father Dionysios and D. Kalligeri. At 11 a.m., I concentrated and collected the personal effects of the deceased.  I had a package and a basket to hand over to the girls when they come. I notified a friend, Theophilo Nikolaidi, to take care to prepare the girls. (…) At 4:30 we were locked in, and when I approached my bed, I was again subjected to a flood of emotions for the loss of my dear friend Papadopoulos” (pp.242-245).

The following day, January 14, 1944, Mr. Giasimakopoulos continues writing about the teacher and his daughters, and agonizes over how he will fulfill his duty.  He is notified that the second daughter, Xanthoula, came to the prison alone to collect the things their father had left behind.  It fell upon a 17-year-old girl to face this horribly painful moment.  The eldest daughter, Eleni, was sick in bed with high fever.  My sister Xanthoula even now reminisces with a trembling voice that event that took place fifty-five years ago.  It is as though time stood still in-between, and she relives that painful memory which brings tears to our eyes.  As a seven-year-old, I didn’t realize then the bitter blow dealt to us.  I measured its impact later, going through life without a father, our good father. 

Xanthoula remembers that the bad news was given to them by the two ladies working in the YWCA office, when she and Eleni came home from school on Thursday afternoon.  The friend mentioned in Mr. Giasimakopoulos’ journal didn’t find them there and left the message with the office ladies.  How could he console them anyway?  The two young girls received the tragic news and were devastated.  Fortunately they were not alone. They had made good friends at the YWCA, and those young girls tried to share their distress. But certain steps had to be taken, and one more trip to the cursed prison camp was necessary.  Then they had to face the task of telling the family, which meant they had to leave Thessaloniki, miss classes and go to the village in the middle of the winter.  They knew that their mother wasn’t very strong, that she would fall apart, and they felt they had to be there for her. 

More recently, since I have started on this writing project, I asked my sisters how they felt to have to carry such a burden.  Even now at such an advanced age, I can’t begin to imagine how two young girls of 17 and 20 could live through this tragedy. They both said that, in spite of their own grieving, they felt they couldn’t allow themselves to break down.  They were now responsible for the survival of the family. As it happened, Eleni had fallen ill with high fever and a bad cough just before that Thursday and therefore she couldn’t make it to the prison.  A friend offered to go with Xanthoula, one of the girls who also lived in the YWCA.  She walked with her the long distance to the prison camp, in January, in the coldest month of the year in Thessaloniki.  The name of the friend was Thiresia Sarafi, and mentioning her name here is a small tribute to friendship in the face of hardship and danger.  Such devotion needs to be recognized.  There were times when Xanthoula was accompanied by other friends to go and visit her father, when Eleni couldn’t go.  Kostas Kyratsos, a young medical student at the time, is one of them, and he has remained a friend ever since.  He, his wife, and his children are still in contact with Xanthoula, and she always sees them when she goes to Greece.  These are indeed moving reunions and I am always present.  During our father’s imprisonment, when Xanthoula couldn’t go to the prison camp, which was rare, some other friend would walk with Eleni, mostly Katerina Vogiatzi, a fellow student of hers at the University.  These have been friendships of a life time, and memories of such generous gestures created an indissoluble bond between these human beings.  Xanthoula never fails to write to or speak on the phone, or visit when she goes to Greece, the friends who stood by her in one way or another during those difficult times.  And Eleni and Katerina, both now 87 years old, still talk to each other on the phone, since Katerina now lives in Athens, and see each other whenever possible.  It has been an uplifting experience for me to know these exceptional people who have also become my friends over the years.  Some of them can’t quite believe that Xanthoula still remembers them and honors them from so far away, after so many years have passed.  That is an uplifting thought and says a lot about them, and also a lot about my sister Xanthoula who remains faithfully connected to these people -- her “companions in sorrow”, as Mr. Giasimakopoulos would say.

Let us join him now on the difficult moment of facing young Xanthoula the day after our father’s execution:

“After an agonizing and interrupted sleep, I awoke at 4 a.m. and without getting up the whole previous day flooded my memory, bringing with it the horrific incident. Our cells are opened at 7 a.m., and I am waiting for the Papadopoulos’ girls to come.  I am thinking of the difficult task ahead of me and I try to concentrate on being able to speak calmly to them. I took refuge in Father Dionysios’ cell where Kalligeris did everything he could to take care of me and console me. Around 10 a.m. the warden’s office notified me that Papadopoulos’ daughter had arrived to collect her father’s belongings.  Ioannis Argyropoulos and Nikolaos Oikonomopoulos helped me to transport the clothes and the basket of the deceased to the office where Xanthoula was waiting. Overcome with grief, she fell into my arms and sobbed.  I, too, overcome with emotion was unable to speak, but could only execute her father’s wish.  I kissed her on the eyes, I gave her his will, money, glasses, and the rest of his personal belongings.  I tried to console her as best I could and told her that, as long as I was alive, they could call upon me for anything. She said her farewell and left crying” (p.245).

Father Dionysios Charalambous, mentioned in the diary of Mr. Giasimakopoulos as the ‘Abbot’, also writes about that day in his book “Martyrs”, very moved himself as he refers to the unexpected execution of the teacher.

“January 13, 1943: Without warning the ‘death collectors’ stormed in. In a short time those selected to be executed walk by. Two… four… eight… ten… twenty… forty.  Right at the end of the line comes the teacher, I. Papadopoulos. I was stunned. I never expected to see him. When he reaches me, I can’t hold back: -- And you too? And you? I approached him quickly. “Yes”, he replies. His voice doesn’t tremble. His gaze is steady. “Goodbye!  Pray that the Lord give me strength”. I let him go. Without closing my hands... 

The guards come and go. I am afraid that these bloodthirsty monsters will not be sated with the blood of those they had already taken. And I send forward Dimitri to find out.  He comes back in a couple of minutes: “They are gone”, he says. “They took them.  I admired their spirit.  No one cried.  Quietly and calmly they gave their clothes and anything of any value they had to the prison office, to be sent to their homes.  And when they got into the death truck, first Papadopoulos called out: ‘Courage, my friends!  We are Christians, and now we can show our faith.’ At the end, all of them cried: “We are brave.  They are cowards, they kill people shut up in prisons.  Goodbye, friends, goodbye!”

I can’t bear not to say here what I know of these people.

The teacher, Ioannis Papadopoulos, was a pure soul, full of splendid dreams and beautiful ideals.  He became a teacher with a profound consciousness of his sacred mission. He dreamed of a great awakening of the Nation from the spiritual lethargy into which it had sunken.  His life was founded upon devotion to Christian principles, which inspired him as head of the family and as a father.  During his service in a village of Katerini, he protected two children whose mother had died and whose father was fighting for the freedom of our enslaved country.  That was enough to put him in the Lion’s pit and to stand soon in front of the firing squad. I remember once when he took a small New Testament from his pocket, opened it and gave me to read something written inside the cover pages: “It is my will”, he said. It seems to me that where we are now we must be prepared for everything.”

I read it very carefully two or three times, and each time I always found something more to admire” (pp.76-77).

At this point, ten years after the fact, Father Dionysios records our father’s will as he remembers it. It is remarkable how well he recalls it, with little difference from the original which survived in the front and back pages of the Gospel of St John.  The little booklet was among his personal effects handed to Xanthoula and it has been preserved as a family relic first by our mother, then by our brother Stefanos who had made copies for all of us.  Now, some 65 years later, it is in my hands, the youngest in the family. The following is the original will (again translated from the Greek):

My Will

In the event of my death as retaliation by the German Army, I bequeath the following:

1) To my wife Glykeria, daughter of Athanasios Dimopoulos (of Ritini in Pieria), my children, my Christian morals, my good name, my endless and pure love, and my home in Katerini.

2) To my daughters Eleni and Xanthippi, my name, which they will bear with pride, the commands of the Holy Gospel, and my noble and honest profession.

3) To my son Stefanos, his mother and his sister Valentini, the commands of the Gospel, and absolute devotion to our Country.

4) To my Country “Greece”, my thirty years of productive service, my good name, my son Stefanos, and my ultimate sacrifice.

5) To my enemies, if such exist, my forgiveness.

Thessaloniki (Camp “P. Mela”)

November 26, 1943. Ioannis Papadopoulos (teacher).

Xanthoula has told me before, about that dark day in her life, but I asked her to tell me again how she remembers it, knowing that we will both cry.  To help me write this story, she agreed to relive those painful days, and I am immensely grateful to her.  I have my own memories, but they are not of this time, I was not there with them to face that ordeal.  I was ten years younger than Xanthoula and in the village, relatively protected, at least from all that went on in Thessaloniki.  So for this part of the story in particular I rely heavily, almost entirely, on Xanthoula’s memories.   

The icy cold wind, ‘Vardaris’, which often blows from the north down through the city of Thessaloniki in winter, was blowing hard on that Friday morning.  It made it even more difficult for the two girls to walk the long road to the prison.  Xanthoula still remembers the numbness that took over her body and her mind until they reached the prison.  She was let inside the gate of the front yard, Thiresia, her friend, had to stay outside.  She remembers seeing Mr. Giasimakopoulos and receiving her father’s things but she doesn’t remember what was said.  Mr. Giasimakopoulos, who wrote his journal every day, gave us a fuller account of that scene.  Xanthoula now says that she felt as though all this was happening to someone else. 

Still to this day I feel the anger, the need to confront the prison warden and the German Commandant, to keep them accountable.  I asked Xanthoula if she didn’t feel like confronting the German Commandant who had assured them only days before, in front of the Greek prison warden and in front of her father, that her father’s life was not in danger.  What would he say?  But the young girl wasn’t even given a chance to see these people.    And what would have been the point?  She asks, with tears in her eyes.  The deed was done, it couldn’t be reversed.  Xanthoula just today remembered that she saw the Greek prison warden, Mr. Glastras,  about a year or so after the liberation, when the family had to get a certificate from the prison stating that our father had been held there and executed.  The camp ‘Pavlou Mela’ was still a prison and he was still in charge.  On that occasion he remembered her and said he was very sorry, he was shocked at the time but he knew nothing about it until after it had happened.  It must have been a mistake, he thought, neither he nor the German Commandant was present so early on that Thursday morning when the names were called.  It was actually true, and we learned some years later exactly how it had happened.

Xanthoula remembers breaking down and crying in Mr. Giasimakopoulos’ arms, receiving her father’s things and then leaving.  The way back was long and it was freezing cold. She and her friend walked back to the YWCA in the bitterly cold Friday morning, carrying what was left of her father.  There she had to face yet another painful situation. Her brother Stefanos had only just arrived from Katerini to visit his father for the first time since the latter was arrested.  Stefanos was too late. Two days earlier, only two days, and he would have been able to see him at least once.  He would have been able to embrace him. Xanthoula remembers speaking to our brother standing in the entrance hall of the YWCA. The tall and thin not yet fifteen-year-old boy, hearing that his father had been executed the previous day, became pale and tightened his lips without crying.  In the taped interviews I have, our elder sister Eleni describes his state as one of “silent rage”.  Stefanos then left to stay for the night with a family of friends, after agreeing that the three of them would leave together the next day for Katerini.  Eleni’s fever had subsided, and she felt that she was up to making the trip.  She felt she had to make that trip together with her sister Xanthoula.  They both knew it was going to be a long and difficult journey: first by train to Katerini, then on foot up to the village, in the cold and snow of January. But they wouldn’t have it otherwise. It was better that mother and grandfather heard the bad news directly from them rather than from someone else.  They were worried about mother and thought that they should both be near her when she heard the shocking news.  Xanthoula remembers that as soon as they arrived in Katerini they decided to continue their trip up to the village, trying to get there before dark.  Stefanos stayed in Katerini.  He had enough pain as it was, the two elder sisters thought, how would it help for him to also witness his mother’s pain? They wanted to protect him as much as they could. And he shouldn’t miss any more school. So they took the road alone, to walk for six hours in the heart of winter.

They arrived in the village late on Saturday evening and thought it was best not to go directly to the house that same night.  They spent it with aunt Panagio, mother’s elder sister, who lived high at the upper edge of the village, near the main road.  Sunday was not the best day to deliver bad news, but they had to do it.  That Sunday when my two sisters brought the news of our father’s execution remains indelibly marked in out memory.  I was seven years old and for some reason I have no memory of our father – as if I was born an orphan.  But for the rest of our lives, both my sisters and I will carry with us the crushing memory of our mother sitting up on grandfather’s bed in the back room of the house, her whole body shaking from sobbing, holding tight to her chest our father’s clothes, her long and still blond hair loose and uncombed.  Mother was barely 36 years old.  It was a terrifying scene for me as a little girl, and I remember my oldest sister gently pushing me out of the house to go to our relatives next door so I wouldn’t see and hear our mother’s grieving. To make things worse, the Germans, in their continuous efforts to get information about the guerillas and spread fear to the population, happened to come up to Ritini on that very Sunday.  Xanthoula remembers that the two of them presented themselves to the school where everyone was summoned.  They let it be known that their father had just been executed in Thessaloniki and their mother was in no condition to come.  To their great surprise, an exception was made and they were allowed to return home!

Xanthoula says that our mother’s immense grieving went on for days, until she could no longer keep her eyes open.  She would fall asleep for brief moments only to wake up and start sobbing and wailing again.  She wouldn’t eat anything for over a week, the girls could only force some tea in her lips with a spoon.  She couldn’t get herself dressed, and her gaze was blank as though she was looking for something beyond the immediate surroundings.  Our grandfather was at a loss to find words to console his daughter.  He was deeply bereaved himself, but he took over the household, chopping wood and lighting the fires as usual, also cooking and cleaning up with the girls.  Close relatives came as well to give a hand until our mother was up on her feet again.  The family didn’t do any of the customary rituals that accompany a normal death – a funeral, the three-day memorial, the nine-day memorial, and so on, rituals that bring family, relatives and friends together and help the bereaved. 

Eleni and Xanthoula couldn’t stay for very long because of their studies.  One more full academic year and Eleni would finish her courses at the University, while Xanthoula would graduate at the same time from the Teachers’ Academy, a two-year course of studies.  When Xanthoula finished high-school in the summer of 1943, she had planned to go to the University like her elder sister, but father, who was arrested in that summer and had been transferred to the prison camp in Thessaloniki in September, suggested that she go for the two-year diploma for primary school teachers.  In that way, both girls would finish their studies at the same time in the summer of 1945.  Father was always thinking ahead and preparing for the worst.

Many people grieved when they heard the teacher had been killed. Candles were lit for him in many houses around the village. Many cursed the Germans, the traitors of the village and the Gestapo in Katerini. The good Teacher, their doctor, their support, had met a violent death, and his wife Glykeria would never recover from it.  The two elder girls courageously faced the situation and undertook the obligations of the family without a complaint.  It was decided that we should no longer remain in Ritini.  Grandfather and mother felt not only despair but also bitterness for the betrayal by someone from the village.  They also feared for our lives.  The Germans were stepping up operations in the area because of the activities of the partisans.  Would the death of the teacher be enough for them, or would they turn against the rest of his family?  I also needed to go to school.  It had been closed since our father was arrested.  My two elder sisters took my fate into their hands, and they were not willing to leave me in the village to grow up as a near illiterate. With great sorrow still in their hearts, within a few days, and as soon as mother could be moved, they gathered some essentials and took us down to Katerini.  Grandfather came with us and the house in the village was to remain shut for a long time.

When the decision to move from the village was made, the plan was to stay in uncle Elias’ empty house – he had fled with his family to Athens the year before, when father was transported to Thessaloniki’s prison camp.  We still owned a small house in Katerini, but it had been rented out to a family since 1938, when my father moved us to Thessaloniki having accepted a new position there.  Our uncle’s house in Katerini had been empty for about a year, and he got word to us that he and his family were not planning to return to Katerini.  It would be good if someone could live there, houses deteriorate if they stay empty.  So we moved in for the time being.  Early winter of 1944 found mother, grandfather, Stefanos and me in our uncle’s house in Katerini, while Eleni and Xanthoula went back to Thessaloniki.  The ultimate aim was eventually for all of us to move there, but it was difficult at that moment so the family remained divided.  Greece was still occupied and the girls were still students.  Eleni was in her third year at the University so she needed another full academic year to finish. Xanthoula was in the first year of her Teacher’s Certificate, and had another full year to go.

After the girls left for Thessaloniki, our uncle’s house, partly because it belonged to the brother of an “enemy” of the Germans who had been executed, partly because it was considered available since we were not its owners, was assigned by authorities to a family that had come to Katerini from a nearby village.  They had fled from their village for similar reasons to ours – safety – but for them, the danger came from the guerillas.  The inhabitants of that particular village were perceived as friendly to the occupying forces, so they became the target of the partisans.  This family was in fact from the same village in which the two Australians who were to meet with Slim were betrayed and arrested.  The family consisted of an older woman, her son, his wife, their two children, both boys, and the older woman’s daughter who had a newborn girl.  Her son-in-law, drafted and armed by the Germans to guard the wheat harvesting machines in the villages of the plain was, rightly or wrongly, killed by the partisans. By a strange coincidence, the last name of that family was the same as the last name of the man who collaborated openly with the Germans and who, as we found out later, was responsible for my father’s execution.  The two families didn’t seem to be closely related and my mother didn’t want to ask or find out. She felt there was no point in knowing, these poor people had nothing to do with our misfortune.  They had their own misfortune to bear.

The mystery surrounding the execution of our father remained unsolved for some time. Long after it, questions like “Why?” and “How?” were still lingering in our minds. My two sisters especially wondered what precisely had happened that led to his execution, after the German military court had decided that father would be held as a prisoner of war, and only days after the German Commander had assured them of his safety. 

What had happened? Why was our father executed? Did the Germans change their minds? Were new accusations added against him? Had there been a mix-up in names? Ioannis and Papadopoulos were both very common names. Had they taken our father by mistake? Were there two prisoners in the same cell block with the same name? If so, wouldn’t Mr. Giasimakopoulos know about it? Such questions tortured us, but to no avail – the irreparable had happened.  We had to stop scratching our wound, especially as our mother could not bear any talk about father. Her grieving and sadness remained intense, and she struggled every day to carry on with her duties as mother and housekeeper.  But I feel compelled to add here that, in spite of her depression, we all remember our mother always up early in the morning, dressed and combed, to help us get ready for school or work.  We remember our modest place always clean and tidy, and whatever food we could afford always ready for us when we came home.  She never failed to do all that, and tirelessly took care of grandfather, no matter how she felt inside.  And she was always ready to receive and feed, to the extent that it was possible, any young friends we brought home, or anyone who came to visit with a need. When she was free from housework, she always did something with her hands, either crocheting or embroidering.  At such moments, she hummed sad tunes in her soft voice.  All of us have, and keep as family heirlooms, many of her works: hand-embroidered small and large tablecloths, whole blankets or bedspreads crocheted, real works of art, the result of many months, sometimes years, of patient and skillful work.

A few years later, when I was about 13-14 years old, the mystery of our father’s execution was solved.  We finally learned what exactly had happened from a former German ‘sympathizer’ (not exactly a collaborator) and former student of our father who was well informed of the events.  Some seven or eight years after the fact and when wounds had healed a little, he revealed to us that the well-known and highly-placed collaborator in Katerini, a former school teacher himself and former colleague of our father in the First Municipal School of Katerini, was directly responsible for the execution of our father.  We already knew that he was one of those responsible for our father’s charges and imprisonment.  His name was included in the letter in which our father mentioned those who had betrayed him. (The name of a second collaborator from Katerini who was believed to also have contributed in father’s arrest is given by Mr. Giasimakopoulos, but I chose to omit all names here – this is not about revenge or about causing shame to their descendants.)  It seems that at the time of the arrest, the teacher who turned Gestapo man was able to convince the Germans that Papadopoulos was a dangerous communist and an enemy of the German State.  He pointed out that the teacher had come from Russia and spoke the language fluently, as he was educated there.  He protected the children of a renowned rebel, Captain ‘Vouros’ as he was known, he made speeches against the German State and incited people to resist the occupying forces.  It was also reported by ‘reliable sources’ that he was helping the rebels and harboring Allied soldiers.

It wasn’t enough that this man,  who had worn the German uniform and carried a German gun, deprived his former colleague of his freedom and ensured his transportation in the concentration camp where he could be executed for reprisals like many others. When he heard that the military court put Papadopoulos in the category of POW and that as a result he wouldn’t be included among those for execution, he decided to take matters into his own hands.  Envy had consumed him for some years, even though it was Papadopoulos who had advanced his career by helping him obtain a scholarship for study in Germany.  On that occasion he had learned German and was therefore well prepared to integrate himself with the occupiers.  For a long time he had been envious of the teacher: why had this refugee become school Headmaster and not he? Why was Papadopoulos so successful as a Principal? Why had the Education Department in Thessaloniki selected Papadopoulos and not him? Why did Papadopoulos receive teaching excellence awards and he didn’t? Why did everyone in the community respect and appreciate him so much? Why, why, why…..

It was finally revealed to us that this man took the train and went to the prison camp in Thessaloniki, where the German Commander would have, of course, welcomed him, had he shown himself. But he didn’t go in an official capacity or for an official visit, and didn’t ask for any favors.  Instead, he sneaked into the prison in the evening before the next execution for reprisals was to take place on Thursday the 13th and bribed the Greek guard who kept the execution list. Only a slight change of first names was needed, as the last name was already on the list – Papadopoulos, a common name.  In fact there was another Papadopoulos as well, Georgios, listed by Mr. Giasimakopoulos.  God only knows how many by that name were executed! The price paid for this small alteration, the symbolic 30 pieces of silver, was ten gold sovereigns and two bolts of British cloth. 

I heard the above account with my own ears some years after the liberation, in the presence of my brother Stefanos.

And finally, what tragic irony that this man was returning to his base in Katerini on the same train as his latest victim’s children!  Stefanos had said at some point that he had caught sight of him on the train.  He knew him well, he had him as a teacher one year, he had even received a slap across his face as a young boy in his class for some disobedience, or speaking up to him.

 

Soon after our father’s execution the partisans sent a secret message to my mother with their condolences.  They also said that they now had the names of those in the village who had betrayed the teacher to the Gestapo, and the names of those in Katerini who were responsible for his arrest and for convincing the Gestapo to send him for trial and possible execution in Thessaloniki. They were well-known informers and collaborators and were responsible for the loss of many other lives as well. The guerillas intended to avenge those deaths, to ‘clean up’, as was the expression, these traitors swiftly as soon as the opportunity presented itself.  But our mother never felt the need for revenge.  Although deeply mourning, she quickly sent a reply ‘not to touch one hair upon their heads’.  She didn’t want any other wife to experience the pain she was experiencing, or any other children to be left fatherless like hers. If punishment was to come, it would come from ‘above’, she said. 

It seems that the partisans didn’t listen to my mother.  We heard at some point later that the one they had named from Ritini was found dead, unfortunately together with his son, who may not have been collaborating with the Germans like his father.  As for the man who put our father’s name on the execution list, we heard after the liberation that he was killed in action wearing the German uniform in a decisive battle, known as the big battle of Kilkis, which took place just north of Thessaloniki.  He was retreating with the Germans when they were attacked by the partisan army.  By the end of 1944, his wife and children were also in mourning, going to school and walking in the streets of Katerini wearing black, like us.  Revenge has no meaning...  Many lives were lost on both sides in that last stand between Greeks and the occupying forces, but losses were greater on the German side.  Many young German soldiers didn’t make it back home, many mass graves were opened in that location, and many families in Germany would also be mourning.

With the requisition of Uncle Elias’ house in that cold winter of 1944, we would have been thrown out into the street, had it not been for the generosity of the elderly woman who insisted that we all stay in the same house and share it.  The other larger family took over most of the house, while we kept one small bedroom in which mother and I slept.  It opened up to a kind of extension that uncle Elias had made, still with concrete floor and at a slightly lower level.  It served as an extra large kitchen and storage room for provisions.  There we installed a wood stove which served both for heating and for cooking.  This is where grandfather slept and spent his day reading the newspaper. This extension had a separate entrance from the back yard, so the two families could in fact have some privacy in their daily life.  Stefanos stayed at first in that same kitchen-room with grandfather, then for better living and studying conditions he went to stay with family friends, as he had done when he started high school in 1942.  For nearly two years and under the same roof four women lived in mourning, having lost loved ones on opposite sides of the conflict. Their sorrow brought them closer together rather than divide them. They saw each other in daily life and spoke compassionately with one another.  And I played with the two boys in the back yard.  One of them, Nikos, was my age, about eight years old.

 For its human interest, I will insert a personal note here: about half a century later (!), Nikos and his wife walked into my high-rise apartment in Houston, Texas, to visit.  It was in the early ‘90s. They had come to America to attend their son’s graduation.   I then found out that the little boy I used to play with was the father of a Greek graduate student who frequented my house, like many others, during his two-year long studies in Houston.  On that occasion, the young man brought his parents to meet me, his father having already made the connection from his son’s account and from my name.  When I first met that student, his last name began by bringing up painful memories.  But I didn’t probe to find out if this student was a relative of the man who was responsible for my father’s death.  I didn’t want to know.  Dimitris was a lovely young man and had nothing to do with that old story.  So until his father walked in to my home and reminded me of two little children about seven-eight years old playing together in a back yard, I didn’t know.  Nikos had become a high school teacher, like my elder sister Eleni, and was over the years promoted to School District Inspector.  He knew my sister and her reputation as a teacher.  I was really happy to see him and his wife, realizing that there was a hidden bond between me and all of them.


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