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Emmanuel : Stories : The War Years (1940 - 1944)
The War Years (1940 - 1944)
Constantine (Costas) G. Emmanuel and his sister, Eleni P. Lekanidou, recounted these stories on November 16, 2000, during a dinner at Ifigenia’s taverna, on the corner of Naxou and Mytilinis Streets, in Athens.
By Gregory C. Emmanuel, January 2001
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When Italy declared war on Greece on October 28, 1940, Grandmother Irini Emmanuel tried to leave Greece and rejoin Grandfather in Tanganyika. She found tickets on the S.S. Ellas, one of the last steamships scheduled to depart for Egypt in 1941, just as German troops approached Athens. On the day of departure she bundled all her children into a taxi and headed down Pireos Avenue towards the port of Piraeus. They were almost halfway there when they saw bombers attacking the harbor. The Ellas was sunk in the middle of the harbor and many buildings were shattered, while a British cargo ship burned fiercely. That night the burning ship, which was loaded with ammunition, blew up and shattered windows all over Athens. The Emmanuels were trapped in Athens for the duration of the war, until 1945.
Just before 1940, Eleni Emmanuel eloped with Panagi Lekanidis, a teacher on the island of Andros. When the war broke out Panagis was called up and went to fight on the Albanian front against the invading Italians and Eleni came to Athens. Her brother, Constantine (Costas) Emmanuel, went with her to Andros to fetch her belongings in a kaiki. There was no cabin, so during the rough passage they sat out on the cold, heaving deck. Finally they made it back to Rafina. Then the problem was how to transport all the baggage to Athens. Eleni took the bus to Athens while Costas waited in Rafina with the luggage. In Athens Eleni found a taxi and returned to Rafina, where they loaded all her baggage and took it to their house at Ambelokipi. |
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The occupation, with its cold, hunger, and death, began with the defeat of the Greek Army by the Germans. Eleni and Panagis returned to Andros after he was demobilized, and he resumed teaching. On Andros they found their house completely destroyed by shelling, so they filed for compensation with the German authorities. By the time it was paid out inflation was so high that they could only buy two boxes of matches with that money...
As a measure against guerilla warfare the Italian garrison banned all travel to and from Andros. Unfortunately Panagis got seriously ill with appendicitis and, as there was no surgeon on the island, Eleni petitioned the Italians to let them go to the mainland for treatment. Day after day she went to the Kommandatura to plead for permission to leave, and finally it was granted. They carried Panagis down to the harbor on a bed sheet, as there was no stretcher, and put him in the cramped hold of a small kaiki called Agia Thalassini, which was loaded with lemons. Throughout the trip Eleni sat in the hold with him and made tea on a small stove. At some point during the very rough, stormy crossing the kaiki’s engine broke down. The crew raised sails but the weather was so bad they could make no headway against the waves. Eleni asked the Captain, “What happens now?” and he responded, “Whatever God wills." Finally they made it to Karystos, where they repaired the engine. Eleni remembers that the Captain, who was a very kind person, brought them some ravani, a traditional sweet made there. After the engine was repaired they sailed on to Porto Rafti and then found their way to Athens, where Panagis was successfully operated on. The trip, which should have taken a day at the most, took them three days.
During the winter of 1941 Costas was invited to spend a week with Panagis's father and brother (Manolis) at their lignite mine near Lavrio. It was bitterly cold. The miners worked bent-over in the dark, low-ceilinged galleries, digging ore from the face with pick axes, up to their knees in freezing water. But there was food and wine and Manolis was a big, happy person who loved to sing, so Costas had a great time.
An Italian officer, Ludovico Buonfantino, and his wife were billeted in the living room of the Ambelokipi house. They had a lot of food, which they sometimes shared. Signiora Buonfantino was a kind person and felt sorry for Eleni’s son, Minas, who often cried of hunger. He was only about a year old and there was never enough food for him. Sometimes Signiora Buonfantino would hold Minas up and feed him a little bit of chocolate or marmalade. And so Minas confused sweets with bobota (a sort of rough corn bread made during the war), and he would beg, “Give me bobota”; he called bread nioumi, instead of psomi.
After the Buonfantinos left, an Italian officer named Testa moved in. He wasn’t too bad either, but he was a very frightened man. The Italians weren’t doing too well in the war at that time, being thoroughly beaten by the British in North Africa. In addition, their relations with their German allies were strained, so Testa felt very insecure in his role as Italian conqueror. At the beginning of the occupation the Germans had sealed all privately owned radios so that the occupied Greeks could receive only the official German armed forces radio station and no other. But Costas, like many other Greeks, figured a way of bypassing the seal and at night the Emmanuels would quietly listen to the BBC on their RCA radio set and get the latest war news. Testa knew this, but instead of turning them in he would ask them what the news was and Costas would recount the terrible Italian losses at El Alamein, Tobruk, or Sidi Barani. Testa became totally rattled and feared that for him the end was near. He was so scared that when he finally left the house he gave the Emmanuels his pistol and left behind a large chest of his possessions for safekeeping. When Costa’s shoes gave out he got into Testa’s chest and found a pair of sturdy boots that fit him perfectly, so he took them and a small Italian army tent. Shortly after Greece was liberated, in 1944, all the Emmanuels went camping to Mt. Pendeli (just outside Athens) and they slept in the Italian tent. Testa never returned to claim his belongings.
The Emmanuels soon realized that keeping the Italian pistol in the house was extremely dangerous; if it was ever found they could all be executed. So they buried it at the base of fig tree in the yard. But Eleni didn’t think this was safe enough, so she dug it up and gave it to her father-in-law, who lived near Lavrio, at his lignite mine. He kept it there for many years and after the war he returned it to Panagis, who eventually gave it to his son, Minas, who still has it.
After Testa, a Wehrmacht officer lived in their house. No one remembers his name or anything else about him, but he too was not so bad. He mainly used the house to sleep. Costas nearly got into a lot of trouble because he drew a caricature of Hitler inside the toilet bowl. (He has done a number of really remarkable sketches and watercolors drawn from his experiences during the occupation.)
Throughout
the occupation the Emmanuel boys attended school
During
this time of hunger and deprivation, Grandmother Irini found out that the
interests of British civilians in Greece were represented by the Swiss. She
was able to convince the Swiss Legation in Athens that she and her children
were actually British subjects who had lost their papers, were stuck
in Athens because of the war, and were waiting to return to her husband, a
British farmer in East Africa. The Swiss posted a notice on the house at
Ambelokipi, announcing that it and its residents were under Swiss protection.
Also, they distributed limited amounts of
food supplies to those under their protection
Like many other Greeks, the Emmanuel children were members of the National Liberation Front (EAM), the political wing of the resistance movement (numbering about 2,000,000 out of 7,000,000 Greeks). They painted slogans against the occupying forces and for the allies on the walls of Athens, acted as couriers between different resistance cells, distributed pamphlets and leaflets, and listened to the BBC and passed on the news.
Greece was liberated from the Germans in September 1944. When the British forces arrived Costas found work at the No.1 Supply Depot in Piraeus as a clerk in charge of food supplies for the civilian population.
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