Ancestry 15 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Rehabilitation

He made the correct decision; he did the right thing. He returned home, where his wife and children were fervently waiting. His in-laws, Kotis and Dominique, had passed away within a few days between each other shortly after his banishment, and, God only knows, how Vasiliki coped alone with the three underaged girls and sustained themselves with the meagre savings Yiannis left behind, and the produce of their garden. But after that enlightened decision, the lives of all concerned would gradually change for the better and, ultimately, be restored to a normality akin to that of the pre-war years.

Less than a year after his return, in 1950, their last child, Dominique, known to everybody as Domna, was born. The elder of her sisters, Aliki, had left for Athens not long after Domna’s birth to study and become a nurse and only occasionally visited her home village ever since. The long distance from the family home, then half-a-day’s coach journey, and her rather despotic nature somehow checked the growth of closeness and a sense of familiarity. In phone conversations and during her visits, I used to call her ‘Aunt’ Aliki and listen quietly to the pedantic lectures she was giving to family assemblies in a strict tone of voice. On the other hand, Domna & Litsa, feeble characters as they were, were simply called by their nicknames, as we do with close friends. The rather atypical in old Greece names of Yiannis’ and Vasiliki’s four daughters, Aliki, Stella, Dominique, even that of Mother Theodora, after generations of families naming their children after a grandparent, as it was and still is a common practice in Greece, suggests a long ago forgotten and time-worn connection with the Frankish and Catholic element of the population of Constantinople of old, a faded trace from the depths of the history of Byzantium and its glorious capital.

The path to the daily round, the way back to the teacher's career and what we call everyday life, the desirable state of equilibrium, peace and security, which was abruptly disrupted by the political forces that emerged and prevailed after the conclusion of the Civil War, in that gloomy night of Yiannis’ arrest and, afterwards, during the months of incarceration and exile, forces acting fiercely and paying no heed to the impact on human lives (the discontinuities major historical events cause to human life can be profound), that path Mr. Yiannis and his family strived to walk again on his return was not paved with rose petals. As a humble aspiration as the reappointment to his teacher’s position in a public school might have been, it required, first and foremost, the notorious "Certificate of Healthy Social Convictions". Schools are workshops where young souls are engineered, consciences shaped and formed, young human beings “prepared for life ahead” –as they say. The political class, having asserted itself on the ruins of post-war Greece, sought to establish a new order, aiming primarily at serving the interests of the national ruling class, its wealth largely unscathed by the war (as it is often the case with the richest strata of society in periods of disasters and depression), and, of course, its foreign sponsors. Therefore, it contrived that these young souls are educated with respect to a set of preconceived notions and standards, selectively drawn from a biased, distorted view of history, adapted to the country’s new position in the new world order. The demands exerted on the educational system were aiming, amongst others, at the formation of a concrete national consciousness, unsmeared by communist or radical ideas, whilst maintaining the illusion of a “special people,” direct descendants of a glorious past.

The issue of a such ‘to whom it may concern’ certificate (essentially “certifying” one’s alignment with the dominant ideology) had first to be authoritatively approved by the higher echelons of State Security after an exhaustive search of someone’s past, then checked, stamped and counter-signed by several layers of the state hierarchy, which comprise the notoriously cumbersome Greek bureaucracy, and, finally, sent back to the point where the applicant formally requested it, typically the local police station, for a countersignature, before it was handed to the successful applicant. It was the sine qua non for public sector employment, amongst several other declarations and certificates that government agencies regularly demand as necessary supporting documentation to proceed with any kind of application, sometimes at periodic intervals, often from other government agencies, but with the applicant as the hapless intermediary; in an endless exchange of papers and stamps, seals and signatures, too many stamps and signatures from too many bureaucrats. All this by and large pointless individual effort was often a necessary condition for getting on with life for many modern Greeks between their birth and death. But, Mr. Yiannis, a citizen also of this "Kafkaesque" state, was further burdened by a dubious past, which forced him to oscillate between nonchalant public servants, seemingly with no end in sight, thus exacerbating an already difficult family and financial situation.

In the months that followed his exile, with the cogs of bureaucracy spinning at a familiar desperately slow pace, Mr. Yiannis, the ex-headmaster, still without a job and a regular income, was forced to sell pomegranates from his trees in the public markets of the western outskirts of Thessaloniki. Eventually, the desirable certificate with a ministerial seal of approval was dispatched, thanks mainly to a decisive intervention by a certain Petros Garoufalias, MP and minister of the "centrist" governments of that time; a peer, a fellow countryman and former classmate of Mr. Yiannis’ father from Arta. He was reinstated and reappointed as teacher, and resumed his teaching at the Bosphorus school in the working-class district of Ampelokipi, in the industrial west of Thessaloniki. His place in the local community, the respect by the people of his village and by the pupils of his school and their parents, a respect he valued highly throughout his life, was regained effortlessly. In the field of fundamental everyday human interactions and the essential in education parent-student-teacher relationship, there was no room for bias and prejudices. No further political obstacles were erected by the State Security in his career, no grievances from members of public were raised. His prestige in the local and teacher’s communities and his privileges as a teacher and headmaster were fully restored to the pre-war levels.

Ancestry 14 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: In Exile

What happened during the days of his detention in the Security “dungeons” of Olympus Street until his banishment was lost in the mist of time and family oblivion. That he was tried by one of the ad hoc military courts set up by a government, gripped by an anti-communist frenzy, to persecute and occasionally sentence to death communists and the like, as enemies of the state and order, remains unknown. In the throes of the Civil War, unrepentant communists were executed summarily, even without any due judicial process at all. Therefore, it could only be hypothesized that a trial was set up for the primary school teacher, the supposedly "enlightener", in the minds of a few extremists, however, an instructor-propagandist and agitator, who spread pro-communist propaganda and, consequently, anti-national ideas, and possibly participated in clandestine conspiracies to overthrow the established order, no matter how incomprehensible to the mostly illiterate folk of the village his speeches were and, hence, inconsequential. One would have assumed that if such a trial took place, some kind of suspension, a reprimand or even an acquittal would have been most likely be granted, a verdict that would have accounted for his honorable past, his family circumstances, his contribution to the community, etc. Nevertheless, such a judicial venture and outcome would be an oxymoron; such a refined process unimaginable under the circumstances. An indictment, which for the authorities had the advantage of serving as a deterrent, would be more plausible given the prevailing situation.

Within the same year of his arrest after an indefinite period of incarceration, in contrast with any notional, if not constitutional, human rights, he was exiled, along with a batch of other politically like-minded fellows, to the practically inaccessible island of Lemnos, a few days journey by car and then ship from a northern Greece port. There, Mr. Yiannis and a handful of hitherto unacquainted “comrades” spent nearly two years in an ad hoc, squalid camping site under wretched conditions, savaged by lice. It was like a second or, rather, third military service he had to grapple with, away from wife and children, out of work and with no money; in a dark alley with no end in sight and the future ahead a vacuum. It was a predicament that could bring pain and despair in every human being, no matter how strong and stoic. From those days of his exile, a black-and-white, weather-worn photograph of him survived. He was standing next to a professor, as short in stature and bald as Mr. Yiannis, at a pebble sun-drenched beach possibly taken after they had enjoyed swimming in the sea. "They sent us on summer vacation, really!" he would later joke. The short and bald professor became one of his closest friends. Indeed, in places like the camp that was hosting the exiled intellectuals, close friendships are established on the rugged grounds of mutual plight, of mental and physical suffering. English translation. 

After several months of a pointless temporal deadlock in exile, inconsequential for the welfare of the country, but detrimental to the lives of those banished to a god forsaken corner of Greece: in a camp where the days were frittered away with unnecessary military drills and hazing by the guards, marches, endless weeding, and other pointless daily chores, considered by the absurd and uncouth NCO’s in charge as having educational value for the enemies of Greece, who were supposedly threatening the welfare of the nation with their deleterious dogmas, the purveyors of the red communist menace, of course. With Mr. Yiannis' egoism wounded, himself physically and mentally shattered, an existentialist choice was presented to him at a time the Civil War was reaching a painful denouement for the communist rebels; a choice that would decide the future of his life and that of his family. The ideas he embraced at some stage, perhaps, in the heat of an enthusiasm brought about by liberation, embraced, nevertheless, with reservation even doubt, without ever these ideas constituting in his mind a concrete worldview or a rigid unshakeable doctrine, those ideas he had to renounce: verbally and in writing, in front of officials. He was called upon to erase any remnants of such ideas and visions and ideological sentimentalities from his consciousness, as much as such a mental metamorphosis is possible in human beings. He signed the notorious “Declaration of Repentance” that would result into his immediate discharge from exile, and furnish him with an official certificate of purified and ‘healthy’ social views.

"Wash your sins and transgressions! Resuscitate Yourself!" It cost nothing materially, it was nothing more than a signature and an oath of allegiance to the (equally vague, one must say) national ideals. Perhaps, the denouncement of a vision and the ideas for a socialist and just future (after all unclear and hypothetical especially for an underdeveloped country) and the rejection and erasing of a past of perilous activism and militancy towards a noble goal, might have been spiritually humiliating for a few conscientious minds. But gaining back of one’s life by far outweighed a spiritually ambivalent loss. The gain, lest we forget, of a unique life with an expiry date, was glorious and priceless. A good chunk of the rest of his life would be brought back into his arms and will.

I do not believe  English translation. grandfather Yiannis subscribed verbatim to the contents of “Declaration of Repentance” he signed wholeheartedly, from as far as I have got to know him. Who could have read, in those hours of veiled remorse and repentance, the thoughts of the humiliated and persecuted. The feelings and longing for a return home and family would have prevailed over anyone’s emotional state and reasoning. A stubborn association to a cause, as loose as grandad’s, with ambiguous goals, already questionable by several quarters, even by former ardent and devoted supporters of that cause, a fruitless intransigence for the sake of a political struggle that no one knew where it would be leading, was deemed meaningless and it would not help him or anyone concerned, under the established status quo. In the view of most there was not a shred of shame in his action, but it was absolutely justified. He merely did something great-aunt Magdalene did not or was not given the opportunity to do, and she ended facing the firing squad. Mr. Yiannis signed up to save his life from exile, rescue his family from poverty and the continuing persecution. So did most of his comrades in the prisoner’s camp of Lemnos, and so did his short and bald professor friend, who upon his return later opened a school in Thessaloniki. Where, thanks to that profound friendship founded on the hardships of their exile, he offered Mother her first job in teaching after graduation from the Pedagogical Academy.

Anectry 13 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: The Arrest

Nazi collaborators and informers were rounded up and pilloried in the streets. Mr. Yiannis’ daughters, perched on the windowsills behind the shutter grilles, secured for better or worse by Vasiliki, witnessed a sad procession of “traitors” in front of their house on its way to the schoolyard, their dragging feet on the dry dirt of the streets raising a cloud of dust behind. Uncle Leonidas, the grocer, stood out tall and husky, leading a band of fellow villagers and guerrillas of the Liberation Army who had dragged those "traitors" from their homes. Some hearts of the former beat eagerly in anticipation of some justice and retribution, the hearts of the latter were nearly broken by anguish, in fear of the worst, their faces pale in horror under the winter morning sun. The guerrillas of the “People’s Liberation Army” would not be taking lightly any crime that would have cost lives in the hands of Germans –they knew that much; summary executions of informers and collaborators took place after a rudimental process from make-shift courts, sometimes on the flimsiest of evidence or on biased testimonies from vigilantes. Mr. Yiannis participated in these shaming and pillorying in a rather measured and restrained manner. In the People’s Courts that had taken place in the small village square, he might have been appointed chairman or moderator, he might have been summoned as a witness, or he might have been acting as a prosecutor -the least likely. Whatever happened to the most prominent of the German "collaborators", amongst those escorted under the eyes of Mother and her sisters and tried in the small square, I could not find out. Few knew, and even fewer witnessed their fate in the aftermath of these trials, and any attestations would have been buried under the anti-communist fear that gripped Greece in the aftermath of the liberation. Rarely would the punishment, in such cases, have been commensurate with the misdemeanors or even "crimes" committed, in an ambience of bias and anxiety, and a general lack of moderation and equanimity from the two extremes of the political spectrum, which ended up being belligerents in the ensuing Civil War. The tensions were high, strong emotions of anger and revenge prevailed and, like a black storm, they darkened reason. There were few in the small rural communities of Magnesia and the surrounding villages that their active collaboration with the Germans and snitching would have cost lives of fellow villagers, even fewer were directly involved in war crimes against civilians; and those would have been handed over to the rebels to be summarily executed. Others, with minor misdemeanors and extenuating circumstances, petty servile confidents or, simply, obsequious lackeys of the occupiers, who frequented their headquarters and camps for some business, had likely been allowed to return home after some reprimands, some wagging of the finger, as in naughty schoolchildren, or, at worst, some spitting and cuffing, that is the mildest possible forms of public lynching, supposedly cathartic for all parties involved.

The local authorities, police and security services of post-occupation Greece were made up of par excellence ideologically ignorant ignoramuses, vassals of an already subservient and dependent on foreign power political system; several among them were possessed fanatics and paranoid of a looming communist threat or simply paid agents, their job merely being spying on fellow citizens. Some, in this rather menacing to the common folk pack, discovered in the various "enlightening" lectures of Mr. Yiannis, which were no more than superficial school-level speeches addressed to a semi-illiterate audience, unmistaken communist propaganda elements, emanating by dark forces, with the Communist Party and the Democratic Army being their long arm. They were considered, therefore, threats to the socioeconomic system and the “way of life” imposed onto the general populace by the establishment, a servile government and its American sponsors.  The boundaries between truth and false propaganda were murky. Mr. Yiannis was branded as, at least, sympathetic towards the left movement after liberation, with the communists at its core threatening with social upheaval and revolution, although he himself had never been an active member or associate or even conspicuously supporting the Communist Party -the number one bogeyman for those striving to preserve, tooth and nail, the national and international status quo.

The "national unity" government had a few former National Liberation Front members progressive actors (“progressive” in the broadest sense of the term) alongside several liberal and open-minded ministers. One of those ministers, a family friend from the same hometown, appointed him superintendent of schools in the area at the end of the war, the onset of a national reconstruction effort. It was a promotion. He no doubt possessed the qualifications, while he was also recognized in that largely volatile political climate as "progressive", professionally, "enlightened", a charismatic teacher by his counterparts and the few educated people in his social circle. The tide of liberation and the progressive visions with socialist hues that accompanied it, thanks to the new political landscape that seemed to have started taking shape after the war, began to recede, and the socialist movement with nebulous or unrealistic aims in the post-war Greek society was disintegrating. The hitherto described as "reactionary" forces, by and large rooted in fascism, Nazism, and ultra-nationalism, were now finding their nerve and determination, further encouraged and funded by the well-known foreign factor. On the other hand, the "spheres of influence" in the post-war division of Europe had already been decided at the highest levels of the hierarchy of the planet between the great powers that won the war. They began, without necessarily a broader acceptability and credibility or moderation and even a democratic mandate, but with extreme zeal and determination and few scruples, to proceed with the plans of their own counterrevolution: to quickly regain the lost ground in the consciences of the common folk and mark victories in the struggle of ideas and the distribution of wealth. Their influence was expanding rapidly: on the lower and middle strata of society, the people of a country exhausted by war, on urban populations affected by unemployment, privation and hardship, the principal concerns being their survival amidst the rubble and the gradual rebuilding of their lives on what was left, instead of an ill-defined socialist future. Eyewitnesses of the grandfather's "enlightening" speeches, from that other side, which after the war started erecting embankments against the “communist tide” and went on the counterattack, existed, and lurked from many quarters of the local society. There were policemen in abundance, there were former and current informers, civilians frightened or greased by the authorities, vengeful former collaborators and black-marketeers, victims of pillorying and abuse by the guerrillas of the Democratic Army.

English translation. A spring evening of 1947, late, with the Civil War in full swing, national security agents knocked on the door of Yiannis’ home. Such heavy knocks late at night by “Security Guards” appeared in the family life of Yiannis and others like him, in a way as something inevitable at this historical conjuncture, as an anticipated consequence under the circumstances of one’s actions and political footprint until then. Mr. Yiannis had already been blacklisted, in the minds and files of vindictive or "loyal" characters, who, nevertheless, did not necessarily possess any firm political opinions or ideology or even traces of a political conscience. These are the apolitical shadows of every regime, either "useful idiots" or opportunistic individuals motivated by self-interest, and who tend to side with those in power and serve them for survival and profit. After all, political power, especially of the authoritative type, likes to anchor itself firmly on the pedestals it has erected and to eliminate any small or large, real or imaginary, threats that can potentially challenge it.

In this environment, few informers sprang around, known and marked in the consciences of ordinary people. Through the gossiping that followed the arrest of grandfather a few were named and exposed to no purpose: a certain H, a coach driver from a neighboring village, or J -another local bus driver, but, especially, G, a well-known scumbag and owner of the café-pool club at the intersection, where the coach from the city stopped; all were central figures in spying and snitching, thanks to a strategic business location and verbiage of drinkers in the café or from the daily murmuring of passengers in the coach, having established links and in cordial relations with the police and security officials, who, in turn, relied on such snitching to demonstrate effective policing and establish civil older. In short, these were the shady characters who muttered and "confirmed" to the willing and smug ears of the Security, the supposedly pro-communist, propagandistic activity of grandfather.English translation. 

The girls were fast asleep that night when the door thundered, but the knocks and the kerfuffle that followed woke them up. Yiannis was in his pajamas, Vasiliki in her nightgown. It was shortly after a meagre evening meal -yoghurt and bread. Everything happened callously and hastily. A security guard with a rifle on his shoulder grabbed him from the shoulder, with no excuses or declarations of rights, just incoherent threats, and ushered him towards the “Jimmy” truck whose engine was rattling outside; in front of the acacia tree at the edge of the small front yard and the three concrete steps leading to the front door, while Yiannis’ girls watched in horror from the crack in the door of their room. Bewildered, with no idea what was going on, without daring to pop up to ask, Vasiliki remained silent, numb by surprise and fear. Feeling the cold night outside, she impulsively ran behind them, as they were lifting him onto the truck, and managed to throw on her husband's shoulders one of the woolen cardigans she had knitted for the winter.

She was strong enough for either hysterics or whining, while she knew that protesting would have been pointless and it could even have caused harm: you are not supposed to argue with the authorities in Civil War Greece, in any shape or form. She stood expressionless, firm as a rock, almost imperious, apparently undaunted by the uncertain and turbulent times ahead, next to her old parents, rushed out of their beds from their elder granddaughter instinctively reacting to the inexplicable commotion. No one in the family was aware of the precise “how and why” of all this, nor what was about to come, where they would take him, what they would do to him. Nor did anyone know what course their lives would follow from that moment on, and how long that course would last in the darkness. There was no compass no more: the old parents, the three daughters, the handicapped Giorgos, their household, without Mr. Yiannis' wages, was left high and dry.English translation. 

The American “Jimmy” disappeared in the darkness of the night, with only the very close neighbors having come to realize what that whole episode had been about. The Security gang led grandfather, along with a handful of other hapless souls from the same security black-lists they picked up on the way, to a detention center in Olympus Street, in the old Vegetable Market of Thessaloniki, near the Government House. He was imprisoned in an underground cell or ‘dungeon,’ a bodrum as Vasiliki described it. She paid frequent visits to Yiannis during the days of his detention there, carrying baskets with food. A small window of the underground cell facing upwards from an elevated corridor, opened to the visitor’s cell above for a few words of conversation with Vasiliki and the eldest daughter Alice. For the two younger girls and for their virginal psyches, the environment and conditions of detention, the brutal faces of uncompromising security guards, the pitiful spectacle of their teacher father who, they knew, left one night for “some business”, would not be becoming, but unwelcome features in their nightmares.

Ancestry 12 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: German Occupation

The misfortune that befell the family with Giorgos’ disability, and their shame, did not deter Yiannis and Vassiliki. In the peaceful interval before the war and the Occupation, they persevered to have more children: to perpetuate the family name and life. After Giorgos, Alice was born. She turned out to be the most dynamic and the, ultimately, domineering, and authoritative character in the family; three years later, in 1938, Mother and her half-twin sister who would grow to be rather meek and malleable personalities, certainly weaker and more insecure than their elder sister. Daily life in the village carried on as normal without many incidents, with Kotis and Dominique occupying the small old house built by the "Resettlement" Agency in the years of population exchanges, Mr. Yiannis, Vassiliki and their children in the more spacious, newly built house in one corner of the one-acre family plot. Yiannis’ main occupation was the teaching at local primary schools, but, as a side job, he was assisting the ageing Kotis with the bahçe and the wheat field, whilst maintaining and improving the two houses and the plots of land, as well supporting Vassiliki with the care of Giorgos, hidden from the prying eyes of fellow villagers.

The relatively serene and undisturbed family life was abruptly interrupted by the onset of war in the winter of 1940; a winter that was to mark a heroic epic in Greece’s modern history, endless accounts of which we were lectured at school. Grandfather Yiannis, along with Apostolis, Leonidas, and the other able-bodied young men from the village were conscripted and headed to the mountains of Albania to fight the invading Italians of Mussolini. They returned victorious after a few months, in their skanky fatigues, overwhelmed by lice, some disabled by severe frostbites, but most of them, thank God, safe and alive, into the peaceful realm of an everyday life in Magnesia. They had fulfilled their duty to their homeland and its people.English translation. 

The countryside of Thessaloniki was only scarcely affected by the war that got in full swing in Europe upon their return. In the villages, where the bulk of labor was committed to producing for own and family consumption, where the necessities for a man’s sustenance, milk, bread, vegetables, eggs, were rarely lacking from the dinner table, upheavals like the Greco-Italian war, and even the German Occupation that ensued, did not significantly affect lives, which, by and large, were immersed in the stillness of daily routine –at least from a materialistic point of view. The lifestyles were basic and elemental, the requirements and demands few, most households self-sufficient. They remained so: their lives were easily adapted to the circumstances that war and privation brought about. Yet, they fared better than the nearby city folk.   

Then, the Germans arrived. They emerged as grey figures amongst the hustle and dust of motorized battalions, the crackling of their boots on the streets dried and hardened by the summer sun behind securely locked shutters. Thessaloniki, its port and railway, its agricultural and industrial surroundings acquired some significance at that stage of the war, before the invasion of the USSR, although occupying Greece was probably a footnote in Hitler's "regional strategy" and grander domination plans. The house of Yiannis and Vasiliki, as well as the house next-door, where uncle Leonidas with his wife Fani and their children lived, was commandeered by the Germans, which, however, turned out to be not as ominous as it sounds. In practice, it meant that German officers from the local garrison would use one or two of their rooms for their sleep and toilette. The relations of those officers with Yiannis, Kotis, Leonidas, and other men of the village, with few exceptions, formed into something typical of the symbiotic, yet unwarlike relationship between the conquered, a fatalistically introvert community helplessly subjugated by force, and a foreign conqueror. An attitude was formed, that of tolerance or unwilling obedience by the powerless and unarmed, whose rhythm of life was somewhat unexpectedly upset, towards a powerful and conceited invader, who, fully aware of his power, commanded and imposed orders unchallenged. The occupier grabbed at will whatever they needed, in an explosive atmosphere of whispers and anxiety from the enslaved side and orders commanded by brutal foreign voices, with the sporadic non-compliance suppressed by force.

English translation. Then there were the few, the "collaborators" and profiteers of doom, who not only obsequiously bowed their heads, but actively supported and cooperated with the occupier: they sucked up to them, they extorted the populace, bought from the needy at humiliatingly low prices to resell with huge profits; they surrendered to the conqueror not just “land and water”, but also some unyielding human souls. At every sharp bend of history opportunism lurks, whether driven by cowardice and the instinct for self-preservation or motivated by greed.

Despite the oppressive atmosphere that spread over the village, Mr. Yiannis' daughters, especially the twin pretty sisters, Mother and Stella, became objects of sympathy from the Wehrmacht officers who dwelled in the family home. Apart from the petty teasing in a language incomprehensible to them and their parents, the officers regularly offered candies and chocolates, and these treats were greeted by the two children with the joy of those deprived of such luxuries. In the merciless and faceless souls of conquerors, barely mentioned in historical narratives that mostly overlook the individuality of characters of common people, there lurks somewhere hidden, genuine souls and manners of a timeless humanity.English translation. 

Eventually, the Germans, as they had arrived at the tranquil, peace-loving village, so they departed: without as much “fire and steel”, without mass executions and killings and atrocities witnessed elsewhere. What could they burn and destroy in such an unremarkable village, apart from the bridges of Gallikos and Axios rivers nearby, and the railway lines that passed by the outskirts of the village? Whose killings and what destruction would the Germans benefit from, in a village of vegetable farms, at a fair distance from the mountains from where the guerilla army commenced their forays? What point would there be in the senseless obliteration of livelihoods when most of its inhabitants bowed down to their orders without much ado and continued with their lives, whilst some of them, prominent or not, collaborated with the enemy -even with zest?English translation. 

Nevertheless, the retreat and eventual withdrawal of the occupiers did not bring peace and order "overnight", against the expectations of many of the villagers. The grumbling tolerance towards the Germans was transformed, through whispers and news that overflowed throughout the country from radio broadcasts, from newspapers that passed from hand to hand, from conversations and political fermentation in cafes, into a sympathy for the guerrillas-cum-liberators; for those hitherto invisible, otherworldly, legendary characters of the EAM-ELAS organizations who resisted and fought the Germans. The villagers did welcome them, perhaps instinctively, as sole legitimate representatives of the masses of peasants, workers, and intellectuals, along with few enlightened members of the petit-bourgeoisie -at least during those drunken times. In the towns and villages, the bliss of liberation carried them away, the morale and their hopes for the future were elevated. Kotis greeted them, grim and expressionless behind his gray mustache, with his left fist raised in front of the front door of the “Resettlement” house. He was a rather apolitical man, by no means influenced by socialist ideas or allured by a “People’s Republic” communist future. In fact, he was totally ignorant of such notions. On the other hand, his son-in-law, Mr. Yiannis, the teacher, the de facto intellectual figure of the village, gave solemn speeches at gatherings of peasants and guerrillas, fronting his village community in his school yard and the village square: in popular plenums pulsating with the joy of liberation. Yet, his political sermons had no significant impact to the illiterate or semi-literate consciences, neither did they inspire any detectable enthusiasm for the new, but rather nebulous future, he was advocating for.

Peppered were those exultant and jubilant speeches of Mr. Yiannis, with charming words, such as a “People’s Republic” or "Power to the People", as they were aligned with the slogans, but generally ill-defined, un-crystallized and opaque political objectives of EAM-ELAS and the Communist Party behind it. Rather foggy, nevertheless, for the mostly illiterate populace, even perhaps for himself. Their content was rather vague and idealistic. His speeches were as exultant as when celebrating with his pupils and their parents the Resurrection of Christ at the end of the Greek Easter, but devoid of agitational content. No matter, however, that these speeches acquired for the ears of many people a pro-communist tinge at a time of relentless propaganda and ideological war. The threat of a communist movement, or rather a revolution, that would shake up the established order in Greece had already been identified before the end of the war by the so-called reactionary powers and propagated accordingly. It was consolidated as a “real and present” danger in many souls and minds, at a turning point in history when everything was in flux, where everyone was trying to pick up themselves and whatever remained of their lives. A few intellectuals amongst them were striving to put political thoughts in order, grasp certain ideas and values and form a credible worldview, emerging on the ruins and the poverty the war left behind. Stalin's Soviet Union, whose Red Army had marched as far as Berlin, was envisaged by a handful of conscientiously progressive minds, as symbol of a possible, viable, real socialism, a beacon of a bright historical future for humanity. The most daring amongst them even tried to propagate such beliefs and ideas, at a time when a global ideological struggle were reaching a historical climax. Yet, at this historical junction, who could have foreseen the ensuing armed conflict and the bloody civil war that would bring a poor, devastated country further down to her knees?