Dedicated to the memory of the 400,000 children who died of hunger during the German Occupation 1941-44
In our era of well-being, prosperity of goods and services, the story I will tell you will seem unreal. When the Germans executed my father in Sidirokastro, Trifylia, we found ourselves refugees in nowhere. A mother with five children on an occupation train with a few bundles of clothes to Patras. The maternal filter to save my 17-year-old older brother from the clutches of the ideological recruitment of the communists made her sacrifice everything for her child. It was a leap into the void, but for her a leap of salvation. She abandoned our home in Kyparissia. The newspaper “Agon tis Trifylias” which had been closed down to avoid collaborating with the occupier was left at the mercy of the occupier and the locals. The small printing house was taken over by the National Resistance (book by Dim. Kyriazis on the Resistance in the Peloponnese)
In Patras we were hosted at her brother’s house because ours was rented by an Officer of the Security Battalions and at that time the tenancy was in force, meaning he considered it his and no one could evict you even if you did not pay rent. In fact, the tenants considered it a dowry for the unmarried daughter. However, the hospitality soon ended and we took the train with our bags in our hands to the occupied Athens of hunger, blackmail and executions, without a secure home. In other words, a leap into the void. In Athens, during the first few days, we were hosted at my wealthy aunt’s house in the laundry room, but even here, the hospitality ended in a few days. We loaded our belongings into a two-wheeled cart of the time and from Patisia along a dirt road through fields we descended along the Kifissos towards Aigaleo “city”. The crushing I felt then changed me into a different person. Then you either become good or evil against your fate. Family values helped us.
[A similar artificial crushing was given by the British princely couple William and Catherine to their son George to become a waiter for the homeless so that he could feel the crushing of humiliation. For the same purpose, after our children graduated from good schools, we put them to work for a while in the Vegetable Market of Renti]
That little house seemed like a palace to me because I was at home and not a homeless “immigrant”. My mother’s finances were miserable. A pension and my father’s great name. This opened doors for us to relatives, compatriots and friends. Inflation was reducing the drachma to zero the next day.
The compassionate uncle Col. P. G. appointed my mother to the Ministry of War and we obtained a ration of food in the canteen at the Rigilli Club. Of course, pork from Egaleo every day. Christmas 1943 was approaching and lamb or chicken was unthinkable to us, these were only for the people of Mavragori. Beans or chickpeas will be our luck. In those days, the “Kourtoulous”, a rotten Turkish ship, sailed and brought legumes full of insects. But even with that, we would also eat… meat. The compassionate Greeks of America had paid dearly for them at the initiative of the late Spyros Skouras of Warner Bross. Panzurism prevailed at the neighboring “grocery store” of Tsolakis. Huge queue with the coupon in hand. Arriving home with the beans, here is Uncle Panagiotis, my father’s brother and protector, invited us to his house for Christmas. Aunt Stavrini, a refugee from Chartalgimi in Propontis, a noblewoman who gave away her jewelry to marry six girls from the village, gave us an unforgettable festive day. They had procured some lamb from the province and my aunt, an excellent cook with high feelings of love and solidarity with the rich meal and the sincere feelings warmed our hearts.
Our entire company stimulated hope for a better tomorrow. I was delighted by the analysis that my uncle made about the defeats of the Axis and the prospect of the liberation of the country. Apparently he was getting information from foreign stations, an act prohibited at that time with a death penalty. He became my spiritual father. Their songs, their jokes and the good news cheered the souls, lifted our broken morale from mourning and filled us with hope for a better tomorrow. Such people with big hearts and rich feelings are hard to find today. That is why we should not be disappointed.. Divine providence takes care of all its creatures on earth. And yet at that time there were children on the sidewalks of Academy Street, orphans, the waste of closed orphanages, who died, drowned and frozen on the sidewalks with a saucepan in their hand, breathing their last with the cry “I am hungry”. For them there was no god
Such scenes have remained anchored in my soul and such days resurface in the foam and while everyone rejoices, the writer is melancholy. Only the Greeks from the Diaspora supported us at that time and the Swedish Red Cross. Those images torture me like a nightmare. Why did the allies (mainly the British) impose a blockade of our ports on neutral ships? Why were the collaborators of the Germans, the traitors and the Montenegrins not tried? Why do their offspring still rule us today? Why did the Germans treat us with such brutality and criminality, and recently with the Memoranda and in 1922-23 in Asia Minor and Pontus? Why are there 90 billion for Ukraine (in addition to the 200 billion they have already paid) and there were no 40 billion for us? Questions that torment me every time like this. Good luck! (23/12/25)
Konstantinos Konstantinidis
Lieutenant General (retd) Author