Article - A CHILD'S REMEMBRANCE OF LIVING THROUGH WWII

 

A CHILD'S REMEMBRANCE OF LIVING THROUGH WWII

By Leonidas Petrakis

published in The National Herald

February 8, 2020

The National Herald has given HellenicGenealogyGeek.com permission to post articles that are of interest to our group.

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It is well documented that the Nazis committed many horrific acts of violence against the civilians in occupied Greece during World War II. The ferocity and brutality of the German occupiers intensified greatly as the Resistance was strengthening in1943, and the capitulation of Italy forced them to assume sole responsibility for the Occupation. In their open warfare against the civilians they had the eager participation of Greek collaborators. Kalavryta, Kandanos, Distomo are well documented and known cases of the Nazi brutality, but the atrocity against the Spartiates in the Fall of 1943, although extensively documented is less well known. 

The intent of this article is not to retell that atrocity against the Spartiates, but rather to share my remembrances of the horrific events as I lived them as a youngster, and as I still remember them decades later. Although very young at that time, I have very clear recollection of the associated reign of terror, the curfews, the bloka (blocking off streets or coffee shops to sweep and pick up hostages), the night time raids with help from masked collaborators who pointed houses of potential hostages, their transportation out of Sparti after briefly being detained in the municipal prison, the execution of the 118 hostages, their burial, and the devastating effect on the entire town. These I detailed in my memoir of the period, and my recounting here is based on that publication. 

I was six years old when the Germans came to Greece in April 1941. Our first encounter was with German dive bombers as they were searching out retreating British troops who were trying to reach the coast to be evacuated. After the first air raid we left the city for nearby villages, and on our way we met up, and interacted with, British soldiers who were hiding under the plane trees by the river side or under the bridges. 

The Italians, after they broke with Germany and who had been held prisoners in the high school for boys, were initially responsible for the administration of occupied Sparti, but the Germans entered in 1943. The famine during the exceptionally harsh winter of 1941-2 was exacerbated by German brutality: the curfews; the incidents of the budding resistance movement; my school (second elementary near the ruins of the ancient acropolis and theater) being taken over by the occupiers which forced us to hold first grade classes in the basement of a building across the Mainelaeion hotel while they broke our desks by throwing them from the roof to use as fire wood; the periodic executions; the terror of encountering the Tagmatasfalistes, men of the Security Battalion (indistinguishable in their uniforms and weapons from the Germans as they would set out from Sparti for joint operations against the Resistance antartes); burning and looting of villages; the clandestinely received BBC news that adults would whisper; the requirement that we leave unlocked our front doors so patrols could enter at will and inspect who was in a house at any particular moment (I was in my bed at midnight when a soldier lifted my blanket shining a flashlight into my eyes as I was trembling in terror in bed); their taking over houses and restricting the owners to part of their homes.

All these formed a kaleidoscope of impressions that to this day remain vivid. 

The coming of the Germans into the city in formation was particularly fear-inducing. They stopped near the Eurotas bridge, and they marched, menacing in perfect formation, to the Menelaion hotel. We used to dismiss the Italian Carabinieri laughing behind their backs and recalling the Sophia Vembo derisive songs, but the Germans filled us with terror. And despite the successes of the allies and of the Resistance, we were numb, especially when rumors came that the Germans had set a ratio of fifty Greeks to be executed for every one German soldier that would be killed. 

This is how I remembered those events. 

Things had become very difficult by late summer of 1943. The more successes the Resistance had in the country and the Allies had on all fronts, the harsher and more vindictive the Germans and their collaborators – now wearing German uniforms –became. 

In November another disaster struck. 

The antartes had been setting up ambushes and conducting raids against the Germans. After an ambush near our town, the Germans announced reprisals, and set up roadblocks arresting people in the streets and in the coffee houses. They instituted an even stricter curfew. Terrified, we shut ourselves inside our houses and we kept watch from behind the shut windows. Around midnight we saw soldiers and a few civilians wearing masks. There was also barba-Yiannis, the tavernkeeper, without a mask. They arrested the young pharmacist next door and the high school teacher across the street. Uncle Nikos climbed over the back yard wall and jumped into Barba-Stamati’s garden, and escaped and joined the Resistance. 

They arrested 119 people, mostly men, but some women and at least one boy. They took many who were in the Resistance, but also people who were not, but had been falsely accused for personal grudges. 

The following day many people assembled outside the prison where the hostages had been taken. They were pleading, crying, asking for information. What was to happen to the hostages? Late in the afternoon the police ordered everyone away from the prison, but relatives were allowed to bring clothing and food; and they were told that the Germans would interrogate and then decide separately for each hostage. 

A couple of days later the Germans took the hostages in three lorries to Tripoli (some said Athens) for ‘interrogation’. We rushed to the main road leading out of the city, exactly to the spot where we had seen the arrival of the German troops earlier. 

Military trucks full of soldiers appeared and then the three lorries with the hostages standing like cattle on the way to the slaughterhouse. Germans and Security Battalion members did not let us get close to the convoy and from far away with eyes full of tears all were trying to find their loved ones. 

Late in November all hostages, except one, were massacred by the Germans in the most savage way. 

That November morning, I went up to the bishopric for the morning ‘syssition’ (food distribution). Two neighbor kids and I arrived early. We found Mrs. Fotini and the other women tearful and agitated, and instead of preparing the syssition they were huddling and telling the names of the hostages who had been executed. 

The 118 were executed near the Chani at Monodentri. They were killed to teach us all a lesson, even those not active in the Resistance, for we were only Greeks after all, our lives were cheap and did not count. The only thing that counted was the new order of things, what the Fuhrer has decreed – explosions, plunder, fire to churches and crops – and since many still resisted or refused to cooperate or would not inform on their compatriots, then they deserved the gallows and the execution squad, in a ratio of fifty Greels to one German, never mind if they were innocent people, women and children, old people, they were not humans, just numbers, necessary only to fulfill the ratio set by the German General Staff. 

But for Mrs. Fotini and the other women and for all of us the martyred hostages were relatives, friends, neighbors. That’s why the women were remembering the names, one by one, of all those killed – the heroic doctor and the woman teacher and the four brothers and the son of our priest and that splendid man the pharmacist next door, who played the guitar and sang beautifully during summer evenings. 

On the day before the massacre, we saw additional German soldiers leaving hastily. Among them was young Willy, just out of high school, a machine gunner, he lived in the confiscated house across the street. Before leaving for the killing field he oiled his machine gun in front of us, silently, with great attention, as if he was preparing it for a mystical rite. 

Young Willy, a few days later, told several of us kids who had gathered around him as he was again oiling his machine gun many details about the killing. 

The hostages were taken to Monodentri around midnight and they were left in the lorries until daybreak. At that time they marched them to the little meadow next to the road. They turned on the truck headlights so that little Willy and every other butcher could see them well. 

The hostages started singing the Greek National Anthem and the officer in charge gave the order and they started with the machine guns. “This drank a lot of blood again,” he told us pointing to his machine gun. He said it matter-of-factly without any emotion. The machine guns were firing, Willy told us, for several minutes. Then the officers went and shot each hostage in the back of the head – the coup-de-grace, as he called it. 

My two friends and I took to our heels without waiting to get morning milk. On the way we told anyone we run into, “they killed the hostages by the Chani at Monodentri!” 

We were the first ones who heard news there, and we became the bearers of death news. We ran furiously with bated breath and brought the message of death. We stopped at the coffee houses and said it and took to our heels again. To all the passersby we told the news as we were running. Some did not hear our words, but understood our message. 

I got to our house and found mother beside herself with worry about where I was. She had heard the wretched news already, because it had spread like a whirlwind, like a blaze, throughout the whole city. 

Suddenly we heard Mitsos yelling at Mrs. M., that they had killed the hostages including her son. 

Her hearing was not good, so Mrs. M. cupped her hand around her ear to hear. Mrs. K. also came out, put her finger in front of her lips biting it in an expression of disaster. She stopped Mitsos from repeating the terrible news to the poor mother, who unbeknownst to her had already been touched by death. 

Later they told Mrs. M. that her son was not dead, but that he had been sent to a labor camp and after the war he would return to Greece. They started writing letters to her, supposedly from her son, and they read them to her and tell her that the news is that he is coming back. 

The day the Germans executed the hostages they issued an order prohibiting circulation from one PM until the morning of the next day, because they were to bring the dead to have them buried. 

In the afternoon the funeral convoy arrived. There were three lorries like the ones that had taken them a month earlier. I was sitting by the window numbly waiting. The three lorries passed and I saw the dead from very close. Now they were not standing packed as when they were taken from the prison, but they were thrown like slaughtered lamb the one on top of the other, lifeless, bloody bodies, with heads smashed by the coup-de-grace shots. The Germans dug two big trenches across from my grandmother’s grave and threw in the dead bodies from the lorries. 

I don’t know how we have endured all these ordeals. I don’t know what more we have to suffer. Is this martyrdom of ours ever going to end? 

In the summer of 1946 I spent a few days in Monodentri with relatives who had their sheep and goat flocks very close to the killing field. I went with my sister from Sparta to the Chani at Monodentri by bus, and we were met there by the relatives. I was overwhelmed thinking of the events that had taken place in the shallow field nearby less than three years earlier. 

In 1965 while visiting Greece from the United States for the first time on our way to Sparti we stopped at the Monument directly across from the shallow killing field. We brought flowers and we read the names of the dead. The Spartiates, never forgetting their dead, honored the fallen heroes of 1943 by erecting the simple but imposing monument. 

In 1970 again we found ourselves in Sparti, this time arriving over the Taygetos passage from Kalamata with our young children. 

Friends advised us, on account of the junta of the colonels, not to stop at the Monument or at the very least to be careful not to be seen paying our respects. 

Of course we stopped there, but the Monument at this time was obviously neglected. There were broken pots, but also dried flowers that Spartiates or passersby who, obviously ignoring the potential wrath of junta enforcers, kept on bringing and remembering their sacrifice. The couplet at Thermopylae written by Simonides would apply equally well at Monodentri.