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.