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 25th 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 27th 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 7th 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.
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.
Go to 11. "Katerini Liberated but ..." Blog
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