ELENI PAPACHRISTOU

You asked me about my memories of that time. Well, there are a lot of them, some of them happy, and some of them sad. It was a sad time for the whole world, but especially for Greece because we were facing two major powers, and we’re such a small country. When the sirens started up, everyone was taken by surprise, but we came round right away , and if you’d seen how much enthusiasm there was in the air, how joyful everyone was on the streets, you’d have said we were going out to have fun, not to war. It was a strange situation. All the young people were very enthusiastic. The older folk were a little reserved.

My father was speechless, because my eldest brother was already in the army – he was doing his national service. That particular batch of new recruits had only been in the army for a month, and that’s why they were decommissioned and allowed home, on the condition that as soon as their country needed them, they’d all present themselves for duty right away. My brother came home, but although he got through the summer doing a bit of this and a bit of that, he couldn’t take sitting round doing nothing any more and went and joined up as a police man, so he could at least do his bit within the city.

But Fate had something else in store for him, because his batch of recruits were sent to Crete as reinforcements some time later – a few months later it was – to put up some resistance while the government and the English fled to Egypt via Crete. He fought - and it was a fierce battle because they were up against the Germans - but as my brother says, "It wasn’t the army that was fighting, it was every man, every citizen." Youngsters, adults, old people…they all fought. They asked the recruits – the soldiers – for weapons, but they didn’t have any to give them. And one time during the battle, keeping low down on the ground, he heard someone who’d been hit groaning next to him. He lifted his canteen to give him some water and they got him…his arm was shot to pieces. The Cretans came to his rescue, and an old shepherd took him up into the mountains where he and his family looked after him. They did what they could for him, but his arm was in such a mess that they had to take him down and hand him over to the Germans who sent him to hospital – behind barbed wire, of course. And after some time - when everything had healed - the Germans sent them back – they sent the prisoners back.

Now, my sister’s husband was in the Albanian mountains from the very start. He was an engineer, and an officer in the engineering corps. And he tells quite a nice little story about that time. They were fighting hard up there, too, and he says that at one point all their lines went down and they lost contact with…they weren’t able to communicate with the other units because there were no telephones or anything…and they all set off for the next post along the Front to repair the line. I think all of this happened near Tepeleni. And he told us something quite moving – they got to a point where they had to cross a river or something, and they see a priest and they say to him, "Save us and bring us a boat." And the priest ran off and came back with a boat, but then they started thinking about how the priest was going to get back because it was incredibly difficult round there, and worrying that he’d be caught. Anyway, they crossed the river, and kept going and going until night fell and they heard church bells ringing in the distance on the headsets they’d made. It was the bells from the village they’d passed through, and they were a long way away. On the one hand they were happy because the priest had probably got back to his church safely, and on the other they were incredibly moved because they remembered it was Easter Saturday and that the belles were ringing because they were celebrating the Resurrection. And they remembered…and they all burst into tears because they remembered their homes, and their loved ones who were so far away. The war continued, all sorts of things happened, but then the Germans joined in, the Germans attacked and invaded, and that’s the beginning of another sad tale.

When the Germans came, everything just disappeared in Athens. And the time of hunger began. We were starving, especially us in Athens, us in the city. The people in the provinces could plant something, or keep a hen to lay an egg, but where could the Athenians put a chicken – on the balcony?…in the house? And my father got a real shock – he ran to the shops to buy in supplies, but there was nothing to buy…everything had been hidden. And that’s when the hunger started for us. We didn’t know what to do, and my father thought only of his children, all his young children. I mean, how old was I?…just seventeen, and another one younger than me, and we had my sister with us, too. And we all came to live together in one house and one of my sister’s kids – the one who was six – would say, "I’m hungry, mum", and my father and my sister would cry because they didn’t have anything to give him.

And the hunger slowly, slowly took its toll. And if we found anything, my father would be the last to take a bite to eat, and he became quite weak. We could see his strength ebbing away. We brought the doctor right away, and he said, "Can’t you see how weak he is? Quickly…" - he had thyroid problems, which back then were pretty much a closed book - and the doctor said, "Quickly, bring him his medicine". And he turned round and told us, "If you’ve got a cat or a dog, slaughter it, and give it to him to eat. And tell me so I can come round and have some, too." It was such a shock!. Eating the cats and the dogs! Well, it came as a great shock to us all. So we ran to get my father’s medicine the next day, but we couldn’t get hold of any. A pharmacist we knew did everything he could to find some, but it was already too late because my father had only had two pills in two days, and he died. A well-off man who had nothing to eat and died of hunger.

But it wasn’t only my father. There was a young man in the neighbourhood – quite well-off, too, he was – who’d go through the trash cans in the street and eat what he found in there. As soon as he saw us looking at him, he’d run off and disappear. That’s how he got through that time alive until…Afterwards, we slowly got back on our feet. Of course, the food we found…

When my father died my mother started selling her jewellery – her bracelets and rings – and we lived off them until the end of the hunger. One time, a young man from the provinces who my brother knew, wrote to him and said, "Please find me some quinine if you can, because the malaria’s killing us." But the letters were censored, and one day we saw an Italian captain coming down the road with two carabinieri, and they started searching the house. We didn’t know what…until we realised – and, of course, they saw that ours was just a house and that we weren’t black marketeers. And my brother-in-law spoke French because he’d studied abroad, and he spoke to the captain, and explained what had happened. The Italians were very polite and friendly, and said to my brother-in-law…he introduced himself, "Capitano Borce. Feel free to come to my office so we can get to know each other." And his name was Captain Borce. My brother-in-law did see him again, but I don’t know what happened…and time passed and we waited to see.

And then we started to have a little fun. Two or three of our friends or cousins would gather round at our house and we’d have a party with the terrible food we had to eat – the wormy peas, the chickpea meat-balls, some other stuff we didn’t even know what it was – and we’d get together. And so they wouldn’t hear us – because you weren’t allowed outside at night – they couldn’t leave, and we’d go up to the terrace and play our guitars, exchange news and tell each other what we’d heard…and sometimes we’d listen to London on my brother-in-law’s radio, and time passed and times changed and everything that happened happened and we were liberated and lived well again.

Now, what else can I tell you? Of course, I can’t say that times weren’t difficult after liberation. …until we found work, until we did all that we had tTheo do to start living again, to get back on our feet.

At the beginning we thought war was…., the young lads thought they’d go get their guns and go and kick the Italians out…well, it wasn’t like that, because the wounded started coming back soon afterwards. The Geroulanos clinic was on the corner opposite our house. We’d go over there to keep them company, and we saw that some of the boys were only lightly wounded, but there were others who’d lost a leg, or an arm, and it was so moving that in the end we didn’t have the heart to go over any more… but the war went on until the time came for everything to come to an end.

From then on…what else can I tell you? The situation on our street wasn’t easy…lots of the people I knew…a few were hiding English soldiers who’d got left behind. They hid them at great risk with everything that was going on.

And later, after the war, I met a gentleman…a friend of ours from Egypt and he told us that he’d been secretly to Athens three times – to Greece – and they’d forbidden him to go anywhere near anyone…but he passed by some relatives’ houses secretly…because he wasn’t supposed to go in – instead they sent him to make contact with someone and such like. And he loved talking with friends or relatives, but he wasn’t supposed to do it.

What else can I say? Let me think, because we remember such a lot. There were various people, various friends living near us who were also involved…who also helped with the resistance, and all of that.

I remember the girl in the house next door – she was a friend of mine and they had a dog, an Alsation, a huge thing it was – and I remember that it suddenly disappeared and we asked her, "What happened to the dog?", and she said, "They ate it. I don’t know who, but they ate it like a lamb, the poor dog." Some of them left and went into the provinces to work for the resistance, while others did whatever they could to hasten the day when it would all be over and everything would be back to normal and we could start struggling to rebuild our lives. Of course, all of that went on until the end of the war.

But even before the war - let’s say from the torpedoing of the battleship Elli on - some people used their ears, and had some idea of what was coming. My father didn’t concern himself with political matters, which is why it all came as such a surprise to him. One of my sisters was married to an American, which is why he left to go on a trip to see his brother in America before the war, and left my sister behind here. But when he got to America, he wrote to my sister telling her to take the children and come over to the States – she had three kids – because things weren’t looking at all good in Europe. But my father said, "He’d not right in the head!" because my sister was young – only 23 at the time – "How’s a 23 year old girl supposed to take three children across to America by herself on a liner?" And he wouldn’t let her go. When war broke out, my brother-in-law wrote to her again, saying "Take the children this minute and go to the American Embassy" – America still hadn’t entered the war –"Take the children and get over here." But my father thought, "They’re sinking ships. How can I let my child travel?", and he wouldn’t let her go. And that’s how my eldest sister, who was 23 and had 3 children, ended up staying in Greece and living through that terrible time, the Hunger, and the occupation.

Before the war, there was a Jewish family that lived in the block of flats that backed onto our house – we didn’t live in a flat – and their little girl used to come over and play with my sister’s children. She was a very sweet little girl, and in the last months before war broke out, we saw her carrying a little icon of Christ around with her…she’d play with it instead of a toy, and she showed it to us and it struck us as strange that a Jewish child should be carrying an icon of Christ around like that. Just after the outbreak of war, she disappeared. "Where’s the little girl gone?", we immediately asked, because it seemed so odd to us. We had no idea. But when we heard that the Germans were arresting Jews, we understood that either they’d gone into hiding or they’d been arrested by the Germans. We never did find out which it was.

But a lot of different things happened. And we understood when the sirens started up at 6 o’clock that morning and we heard what was happening – we went out onto the balcony to see what it was…and they told us, "War’s broken out. It’s war!" And my other brother-in-law heard it on the television – sorry, on the radio – he heard what was being said, that "War has broken out. All Greeks…" everything they said and wrote. And the sirens went off every day.

The truth is that the Germans – and we didn’t know this, we only found out afterwards – the Germans had decided to treat the city of Athens with a lot of respect. They decreed it an unfortified city and didn’t bombard it because of all its ancient treasures. But we didn’t know that, and as soon as we heard the sirens we ran…we were afraid, and we ran. There were no bomb shelters around us - because none of the blocks of the blocks of flats were built then - so we ran to the basement of the Geroulanos clinic where we’d meet up with the patients and chat with them, and sometimes they’d cheer us up, and other times we’d try to cheer them up after what they’d suffered up there in the albanian borders.

And with one thing and another, the time came when bit by bit…

The truth is that anyone who didn’t get involved too heavily with the partisans and the resistance lived quite peacefully.

But of course we really wanted to hear news of what was happening, it was so moving for us…and we’d sit there all the time – even my sister’s young children – and knit socks and pullovers for the troops because, unfortunately, it was a bad winter – as if they’d done it on purpose – a really bad, cold winter, and the soldiers’ legs got frost bite, and the recruits were dying up there on the border from frostbite, and it was all very sad because a lot of legs were amputated. But we knitted and knitted as much as we could…and in time we found out – all the young girls were writing to the soldiers who, of course, wrote back to tell us their news, and although they couldn’t talk about what was happening up at the Front because that wasn’t allowed, at least we had some contact - and in time we learnt a little about what was going on up there. And everyone in the neighbourhood was desperate to know what was happening…right until that stage of the war came to an end.

We learnt the bad news about the Germans and the Russians and all that, and we tried to put a brave face on it. I put the idea into my sister’s head – the one who was engaged and who’s fiancé was at the Front - to go and tell father to let us become nurses. But our parents – our father, that is - wouldn’t let us, and when my sister asked him – she did it because she was older than me - he thought it was her idea, and he sat us down, told us to sit still, and started to explain why we couldn’t go. But we always had the idea in the back of our minds. Geroulanos – the well-known doctor – had a daughter who was in charge of all the nurses in his clinic. Now, she lived close by, and we always greeted her in the street, but we never did become nurses, and we felt sad that we weren’t helping the army by working as nurses.

What else can I tell you? Afterwards, when their time was up and they started to leave, and people flooded into the streets, we learned that the Germans had left and our boys had gone up and pulled down their flag…because I didn’t tell you – and this has been said and written many times – that just after the Germans entered Athens, two of our boys – Manolis Gletzos, who’s a Member of Parliament now, or at least he used to be: I don’t know if he still is, and Santas…two friends who were students at the time – couldn’t stand the sight of the Nazi flag flying above the Acropolis and climbed up secretly and pulled it down. The German flag! How must the Germans have felt? They must have been speechless when they saw that their flag wasn’t flying on the Acropolis any more. And then the boys came down and went home. Of course, we only found that out afterwards. At the time, we didn’t know.

And so, when the Germans started to leave - and no one realised what was happening because they did it suddenly one morning - we heard people moving and a commotion…"The Germans have gone! The Germans have gone!". And the Palas family lived on one side of us – the family that had the big tuition centres – and one of the sons was an officer, and he came out shouting. There was another officer living on the other side of us, and the pair of them came running out of their houses, shouting, "The Germans have gone!", and we got dressed as quickly as we could and went down to Panepistimiou Street, and the streets were heaving – you couldn’t get through. And we walked from one end of Ommonoia to Syntagma and we looked around us and shrieked with happiness. How can you begin to imagine what it was like then? And slowly, slowly, the rest happened.

The rest happened because that same evening we heard that there’d been…we heard some trouble, and we found out that there’d been some trouble because it was time for the fun and games that came afterwards in Athens.

And since I was in Athens, I lived through the whole drama of the Battle of Athens…because I happened to live in the very centre of Athens on the route the partisans had to take to get to Kolonaki…the same way they needed to cross Makrigiannis Street to get to the centre.

I lived on Skoufa Street which was – how shall we put it – the neutral zone…Navarinou Street was the neutral zone. The English had dug themselves in on top of the chemistry faculty, and the partisan lines started from the block of flats behind us – we lived in a two-story house. And the bullets flew over us and who knows what went on. The food disappeared again, and we didn’t know what to do again until my brother-in-law went out at some point to the bakery – during a lull in the fighting - to see if there was any bread, and saw a Swedish nurse waving the Swedish flag on one side of the road in front of the Sbarouni clinic, and a partisan waving the Greek flag on the other. And he went up to her and said – he spoke French – he said, Please tell me what’s happening." And she said, "I can’t tell you anything." "Tell me. I have small kids", and she replied, "If you’ve got young kids, get them out of here." And he came back – he didn’t go anywhere – he came back and told us, "Pack up. Everyone take as much as they can carry, and let’s get out of here." "Where are we going?" We didn’t know. He wanted us to take the roundabout route to Akadimias Street where the "AnZervos" offices were where he worked and where he could put us up. So we took the baby’s pram downstairs, loaded it up with a mattress, some blankets, and whatever else it would take. But when we got to the corner of Navarinou and Ippokratous - where the neutral zone came to an end and the English zone started - they wouldn’t let us through. And my brother-in-law went up to them and said, "Please" – he could speak English and French – but they just told him, "Back" and stuck a pistol in his chest. And my brother-in-law said, "Let us through because these kids are Americans" - the kids had been born in America – "They’re Americans". And he called for my sister and told her, "Tell them you’re an American and the rest of it." Well, she wasn’t, but the kids were, and they let us through…they were afraid people might go through and go towards Kolonaki where Scobie was and the rest of the English, in Great Britain Hotel and the rest.

And we stayed there until the Battle of Athens, until… By the way, the English had put some artillery just above us in the same building. We slept downstairs, and the English were up on the roof.

A little later – I don’t remember when exactly, at the beginning of December or the end, I don’t remember - the Battle of Athens broke out when everything was destroyed - everything there was – and the time came when we left the building. My sister showed up with her husband and he says to her, "Let’s walk over…" – we had freedom of movement around the city once again – so he says, "Let’s walk over and see what’s happening with our house." And my sister came and sees a 16 year old girl with a couple of cartridge belts slung across her chest lying dead in our yard – at the entrance to our house or next door’s, I don’t remember – with her rifle lying on the ground…she’d been killed in the fighting. But there was no more fighting – the Battle of Athens ended on that day - and they were chased far away and whatever happened later on happened away from Athens.

So we went back, and it was a sad day, but everything had to stop and fall into place again. Then the militia arrived - because they’d called up new drafts right away – and searched every house. We had a basement which we used for storage, and we didn’t dare go down there, and the soldiers came and went in to see if there were any partisans hidden in there, but they found nothing. They fired into the basement first, of course, and listened for any noise, but nothing stirred down there. There’d only been a few partisans in our house because they’d got away along a narrow passageway at the back which led to a little house set back off the road and from there Mavromichali Street. They didn’t make it past there…they shot at them as they tried to get out of the passage.

And then we calmed down and set off down the road to the future…