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Emmanuel : Stories : The Civil War Experience (1945)
The Civil War Experience (1945)
Constantine (Costas) G. Emmanuel and his sister, Eleni P. Lekanidou, recounted their experiences during the Greek civil war on November 16, 2000, at a dinner at Ifigenia’s taverna, on the corner of Naxou and Mytilinis Streets, in Athens.
By Gregory C. Emmanuel, March 2001
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Greece was liberated from the Germans in September 1944, but there was no peace. The first brutal clashes of the civil war were fought in December between the conservative pro-British forces on one side and the left-wing wartime resistance movement spearheaded by the Greek Communist Party on the other. The civil war continued until 1949, leaving Greece a shambles and her people bitterly divided and exhausted. In addition to the more than 500,000 killed in World War II, 80,000 more Greeks lost their lives and 700,000 became refugees during the civil war. The national economy was left in ruins and Greeks by the thousands immigrated to other countries to find work and peace. The Emmanuels were fortunate to experience only the first phase of the conflict. Grandmother Irini G. Emmanuel and her four sons left Greece and returned to Tanganyika sometime in 1945, and her daughter Eleni followed in 1946.
...to be continued
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