Based on true events – a story in sequels
PART 6
Hunger and hope: childhood memories of the occupation
When the Germans occupied Athens, they appointed a government and a mayor as occupiers. They were not obliged to do so, but it seems they wanted a semblance of normality and continuity of daily life for the people. This effort to maintain an apparent order was also reflected in the way they dealt with the black market that quickly developed. Despite their measures, however, daily life changed dramatically.
Immediately, black market practices began and the malicious and profiteers began to hide everything, to hide food, because they wanted to sell it later in the market at outrageous prices. Then you would go to the market to buy half an oka - because back then we used the Turkish oka system for the weight of goods, we didn't have kilos back then - of beans and you would give an entire house for them. You would go to buy olive oil and you would give another house. Or your jewelry, or whatever you had, even what you didn't have.
Every time the Germans caught oil traders on the black market, they gave them the death penalty. Do you know where they took them? They hung them in Syntagma Square from the gallows and it was an example for other black market traders. The people who saw the spectacle were shocked and disgusted. I saw it too as a child. But on the other hand, I think some people also had a sense of justification, because they had suffered from the black market traders during the Occupation. My mother, for example, sold all her jewelry. To save a little oil, a little beans, a little flour, a little chickpeas. Whatever she could find, she gave all our jewelry. The situation was out of control. The Germans couldn't find all these people, we learned about their existence by word of mouth. My mother would hear that someone somewhere was giving beans and would take out all her rings.
And we, little children, went every day, but every day and, not only us, the entire population, went to Brahami. This area that is now called Agios Dimitrios and has now become a city and has been united with Athens, was then a vast field and we cut grass. We lived on grass. It was me, my sister and another girl who went there, because my brother was only four years old and we didn't take him with us. He couldn't understand, he was just hungry and he cried day and night.
We were older, we could understand and we didn't cry, we could be patient. "I don't have anything to give you, children," my mother would say in despair. "I don't have anything." We were patient too. And if we found an orange, we would eat it with the peel to fill ourselves up, to feel full, we wouldn't even throw away those yellow parts. And our mother had to find food for our brother, she would take the food out and give it to him from her mouth to stop the crying. Many times we would take a bag and a knife and, together with a girl who was the same age and lived in our yard, we would go with my sister to the fields.
But once we got lost and lost. We were lost for a long time, walking for an hour or two off course. We couldn't see any familiar places or any major road, no cars, nothing. Because back then there was only one road we knew, Veikou Street in Koukaki - everything else was dirt roads. Imagine that the tram on Dimitrakopoulou Street had tracks on a dirt road. Then, it went past the Odeon of Herodes Atticus by the theater and went down to Thiseio. I learned this when I grew up and went to high school and walked the other direction from my house, towards the center, not towards the fields and that's when I saw all the tram tracks.
When I was in elementary school, I didn't walk much, because the school was very close to my house. When the bell rang for recess, we would go out of school, there was no danger then. Outside the school, there was the bun seller who sold sesame buns and the chestnut seller who sold chestnuts, if you could give him ten drachmas. But my father didn't even have those ten drachmas. So, when I left school, I would run straight home and my mother would cut a loaf of bread, pour some water on it to soften it and add sugar and I would eat it for breakfast. That bread was very nice. When the bell rang again for lessons, I would hear it from my house and run back to school.
So the time we got lost, we arrived at the cemetery of Brahamios. We three young girls entered the cemetery and on top of the graves we found some huge grasses. With our childish innocence and the desperation of hunger, we saw something that seemed like a solution – we didn’t understand at the time why the adults avoided collecting grasses from there. It was tall, lush grass that grew directly on the graves. Back then we didn’t have marble graves, they were just dirt. We didn’t realize how full our bags were! And we returned using the same path we got lost on.
But we were smart enough to think about it and agree not to say we found them in the cemetery, otherwise our mothers would throw them away. When we got home, my mother and the other mother said, “Wow! What beautiful greens these are! Where did you find them?” “We lost our way and went a little sideways into a field and what can I tell you, mom…” I told her. “It seems people hadn’t seen them… We quickly filled them up and took them.” They believed it. We boiled them and everything was fine.
And now that I think about it, after all these years, what was wrong with those grasses? It's just an idea. They were well-fed because no one cut them and they kept growing. As for the grave, the grave is very deep, there's nothing until the coffin melts and where can the root reach down there, where the soil has fallen like a small mountain? I was the one who urged them, I said to them, "We'll cut these grasses, they have nothing, what do they have? They don't grow on the body of the deceased. Don't talk at all, just cut them so we can fill our bags and continue on our way." No one saw us because no one was there, because all the big women were very cautious.
We only went once, because our mothers were worried that we would get lost and wouldn't let us take the same route again. Sometimes we would go for greens and with our mothers, we would go to the same places that everyone else went to, and after a while there was nothing left on the ground. This was because the adults didn't want us to stray from those fields that everyone always went to.
But once, two mothers, mine and a neighbor, set out for greens, and as they were going, they found an asphalt road, because in all the areas there was an asphalt road as a central avenue. From afar they saw something black shining on it, all the asphalt was black and glittered in some parts. They believed that some kind of animal had passed by and left footprints or at least their waste, because there were shepherds there who passed by with their animals. And when they went there, what did they see? They were black raisins! A cart must have passed by and they fell on it. Because at that time the carts were open and it seems that a sack would have been torn and opened. They collected them, turned back and, instead of greens, brought raisins. They filled the bags, there was a pile. That day the mothers returned happy.
I have pictures of people who died of hunger, I saw these pictures every day. We didn't die because of my mother, who was a hero in this case. She ran to find us food, despite her illiteracy, despite the fact that all her life she was a closed person, did not make friends and was devoted only to her family. The need during the Occupation woke her up and made her cunning.
First of all, even if it wasn’t her idea – another woman introduced her to it – she did something that saved us. At that time we didn’t have IDs or anything. The occupying troops gave us a ration card for each family and every day you could get food for as many people as there were in your family. If there were five people, five slices of bread, six people – six slices, two people – two slices. Each bakery was ordered to declare the families it served, but there was no control. My mother declared six people in the bakery with the surname Kalymnios. But a neighbor told her: “You can go to the other bakery where they don’t know you and declare six more people with your own surname.” So she did with the surname Xypolyta and so each of us got two slices of bread a day. We survived on these slices because in one oven, six slices of bread made one loaf and in the other oven they made another loaf, so we had two loaves of bread a day. That way, she had a little more bread to give to my little brother and also to eat a bite herself.
The rations were only for bread, there was nothing else in the shops. There were a few small food shops but all the shopkeepers had hidden their food, so the black market traders had made a fortune. Some of them may have collaborated with the Germans, but most were not powerful and did their trade secretly. Those who collaborated with the Germans were not mainly the small black market traders, they were the people who collaborated at a political level, but they were called “dosilogoi” and their job was to betray their fellow human beings to the Germans.
The black market traders were just crooked merchants, they let people starve to death but they didn't betray them to the Germans and the Germans didn't like them very much. From the first day of the Occupation, a disastrous and shameful day, all goods became scarce and all food was lost. But on the day the Germans left, the merchants stopped hiding food, on October 12, 1943. On that day it was as if everything suddenly sprouted and food appeared everywhere.
My mother had a cousin who lived in Kypseli and was married to a man from Macedonia. He would go back and forth to all the villages of Macedonia to collect food. These people still had their land, they could sow and they could eat food. The countryside did not suffer the disaster that Athens suffered. We in the big cities went hungry. Where to sow and where to plant? On the tiles? So this man would go and bring food. My mother therefore walked on foot, from Neos Kosmos to Kypseli and there she would put down her jewelry to get a few beans, a few chickpeas.
My mother, God forbid, was a very sad person, whatever she took, she didn't eat it herself, she shared it with the yard. She would put a little oil in the cup of Greek coffee, take it to the neighbor and say to her: "Come, put even a drop in your food." Whatever she had, she shared. That's how our entire yard survived.
(goes on)
photo by conner, https://pixabay.com
