THE TEACHERS AND ARIS: A CIVIL WAR STORY
THE TEACHERS AND ARIS: A CIVIL WAR STORY
Description
The Greek Civil War (1944-49) was one of the bloodiest civil conflicts of the modern era, and grew out of the various resistance movements of World War II, during which Greece was under direct Axis occupation. Known in Greek as the "Emfylios," the Civil War saw the Greek Government army (backed by The United Kingdom and the United States) fight against the Democratic Army of Greece (backed by Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria), as the latter tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to take over Greece. The losses on both sides were enormous, with tremendous violence inflicted upon civilian as well as military populations. In villages, the corpses of brutally-murdered victims were left on public display to "teach" passers-by and to warn them against taking the wrong side. In this interview, we travel with a young girl, Sophia, from the village of Dafno Fokidas as she goes with her mules to buy supplies in a neighboring town. What she sees along the way will remain etched in her memory forever. On the night of Easter, she comes face to face for the first time with Aris Velouchiotis (b. Athanasios Klaras), the Communist leader of the Greek People's Liberation Army -- known by its acronym, "ELAS." A figure who was larger than life, Velouchiotis struck her with both fear and awe.
Part of Collections
12 Podcasts
THE 1940S
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Dhmhtrhs Mosxos
Interviewee
- Sofia Skrekh
Podcast Producer
- Dafnh Matziarakh
Sound Designer
- Iasonas THeofanou
- Dhmhtrhs Palaiogiannhs
Sound Editor
- Spyros Lymperopoulos
Video Director
- Stefanos Mpertakhs
Voiceover
- Δάφνη Ρεμούνδου
Music
- William Ryan Fritch
I remember as a child, when the church bell would ring, let’s say at twelve o’clock at night, and they would announce: “You must gather with the mules at the school because we will go to Lidoriki.” The market was there which had oil, soap, salt. They wanted salt mostly, for cooking. And they got us up at night. Now, to prevent my brothers from going, since boys were being taken by the guerilla fighters, my mother would send me. I was young.
We loaded the salt at night. From there we had to take it to another place. And from there the others would get it, and transfer it to the rebels’ headquarters. We were children then. We would get up, and I remember the first night I had gone at night to the thing, I was bent over. As we went, there was rock at some point as I was riding on the mule. I went like this to fall over, and there was somebody behind me who was older, and held me with his shepherd’s crook, and I jumped up, I was just a young child.
We went then, we had gone to Krokylio then, that night. We loaded and we left. On the road there were these young guerilla boys - they called them “gavriades”. These “gavriades” if you did something, whatever, they would kill you on the spot. “We will see the so-called teachers! We will see, move along, we will see the teachers!” they were saying. I was a child, and I said, what teachers?
As we moved along the road, we saw: A mother and a daughter, and they had them naked. Stabbed, with slabs on their chest, with salt, with the braids like this, hanging on the front. These were for us to see, to scare us. And that’s why they wanted us to see them.
As we moved along, I remember, the planes were coming from above, they were going after the guerrillas then and airplanes were coming from above. And the guerrillas told us then: “Hide in the trees!” We went to hide and we left our mules. The airplanes saw us but didn’t strike, because they probably thought that we were people from the villages, and they didn’t care to strike us.
We left in order to get the salt to the village. They said: “You will not take it to the village, we will take it up to the mountain.” We, now, we were just small children.
One woman who did most of the organization, was enlisted with the guerrillas, and she said: “Leave them, they are children. We were three young ones there. “Let them go”, she said.
But he replied: “We will let them go, but they go back down a different road, so they are not followed.”
We just replied: “OK.” We didn’t actually know the other road back. Instead of going back to our village, we were going towards the other village. All three of us said, we didn’t know where we were.
We sat down; it was midday. From the time we left at night, at twelve o’clock, we were then returning around noon, the next day. And as we were sitting under a tree, we fell asleep. As we fell asleep, as one girl was sleeping, a snake went into her foot. She felt it, she got up, she jumped up, she said: “Go! It’s a snake!” We just abandoned the mules, we took off. We went to the village without the mules. We followed the river to find our way back. I went to the village, I was just a young thing.
Apparently, I was in shock from seeing those teachers. My mother put me to bed. By that time, it was daytime. There were these two aunties of mine and my mother sitting there, and they were saying: “Something happened to the girl, the girl is not well.” I got up, pardon me, as I was, let’s say, I wasn’t aware, I pulled down to pee indoors, in front of them.
My mother said: “What are you doing?”
My aunt then said: “Don’t talk to the child. Something happened to the child, don’t talk to her.”
I got up, I went out, to the street, I began to actually leave. I then realized, when I got to the fountain, that something is not right. I turned back, I guess I started coming round to my senses.
I got up to the house, I burst into crying, I told my mother: “The teachers!” I kept saying.
“What teachers, my child?”
“The teachers!” That is what had stuck with me. And it has still stuck, the image of these teachers.
In the meanwhile, the government forces came. Our village is on the lower part. Its steep, low. The army was here. Inside the village now, there were guerrilla fighters. They rang the church bells, let’s say, they kept ringing them: “Get into your houses, because there will be a battle!” where they would strike the guerrillas.
Now we used to have guerrillas in our house. Because they came to every house. We had to feed them and also hid them. After the strike, my mother said: “Now what? Where? Go down, to the ground floor.” There was a woman with the guerrillas who was pregnant.
My mother told her, she said: “You stay, I say you are one of us. You will wear...”
“No”, she said. She was in military uniform, as you say, these guerrilla outfits, where they had the caps, I remember, the whole thing, they had guns.
She said: “No, I will not stay.”
She told her: “Stay, my girl”, she said. Her belly was like this.
“No!”
They got up. The army was striking from above now, the guerrillas from the other side. There was inside the village, you couldn’t even move, get out, you were scared.
The guerrillas got up and left. We could see the bullets now hitting them. The government forces had slaughtered everyone inside, in the “forbidden” place, as we called it. They killed everyone.