LITERARY LOCATION: Kalavryta Museum, Kalavryta, Greece

DIRECTIONS: Drive north from Athens to Diakofto, then up into the mountains.

Despite being occupied many times by invaders, Greeks have always proudly maintained their culture. Stella Leventoyannis Harvey didn't know how much resistance fighters would fit into her first novel, Nicolai's Daughters, until she visited Kalavryta. On December 13, 1943, German forces had massacred all the males in Kalavryta over the age of thirteen and locked the women and children in the school and set it on fire. Many of the women and children were able to escape the blaze, but only thirteen males over the age of thirteen survived. "The novel found its soul in that tiny mountain village," Harvey says.

In Kalavryta, approximately 1,000 houses were looted and burned. Some 700 civilians were killed during what the Germans called Operation Kalavryta. Twenty-eight communities - towns, villages, monasteries and settlements - were destroyed. "I listened to the testimonials of the victims recorded in the Kalavryta museum," says Harvey, "which had once been the village school, and I climbed Kappi Hill where the massacre happened -- considered the worst atrocity perpetrated by the Nazis in Greece during WWII -- and it was then I realized I wanted to tell the Kalavryta story."

One of the testimonials Harvey listened to in Kalavryta was by a man in his eighties. "He talked about being lined up with the other men and boys that bright December day and being asked by a German soldier how old he was. He lied about his age. He didn't know what made him lie because he had no idea what was to come. He lied almost as an act of defiance. It saved his life. He broke down during his testimonial, saying he'd felt guilty his whole life for surviving while all his friends died.

"I've often thought about that man and what the impact would be on a survivor with so much guilt to bear. In the novel, Nicolai's father's guilt is based on a different set of circumstances, but I came to realize what living with the weight of such guilt means in a person's life, first through the pain I saw in eyes of the man in the testimonial recording -- who had a difficult time looking into the camera as he spoke -- and later in the damaged human being that is my character's father."

With dual narratives from a father and a daughter, Nicolai's Daughters (Signature, 2012), profiles the tragedy-ridden Sarinopoulous family in the village of Diakofto, on the Gulf of Corinth. During visits to Diakofto twenty-five years apart, both are haunted by shameful village gossip emanating from the WW II massacre of Greeks by Nazis at nearby Kalavryta. It was a reprisal for the killing of 78 German soldiers who had been taken prisoner by Greek guerillas in October.

Nicolai's Daughters was translated and released in Greece in 2014 by Psichogios Press.

Stella Harvey's second novel, The Brink of Freedom, returns to Greece and the contemporary plight of refugees in the Mediterranean area, depicting some of the efforts made by Canadians to try to help them.

Faced with their own severe economic crisis, Greeks have difficulty responding fully to the influx of would-be refugees, many of whom try to reach the island of Lesbos, near Turkey. In the novel, a young boy goes missing from a refugee camp in Athens. After he is found with a Canadian woman, Greek police apprehend a Gypsy from Ukraine on suspicion of human trafficking. Desperate times invariably result in desperate measures.

The appearance of Harvey's novel was poignantly timely given events in the first half of 2015 when migrants flooded into Europe, primarily fleeing the civil wars in Syria. Understandably the bailouts required for Greeks to remain with the Euro made it doubly hard to swallow when Greeks knew their main main creditors were Germany and France.

"The characters are as real to me as my neighbours and friends," Harvey wrote in 2015. "I feel desperate when my characters make what I think are bad decisions. I hear myself shouting, please don't do that. Yet, they persist in being their own masters. So I have no choice but to stand by them. I weep with them when they suffer the consequences of their decisions. And I cheer for them if they find their way out of their predicaments.

"Long after the novel is complete and I've started a new project, my characters and their troubles and triumphs never leave me. Despite their quirks and shortcomings (don't we all have them?), my characters have kept me company and been as good to me as any friend or good book might be."

Born in Cairo, Stella Leventoyannis Harvey grew up in Calgary and founded the Whistler Writers Group in 2001. She launched her second novel at the festival in Whistler in 2015. Her short stories have appeared in The Literary Leanings Anthology, The New Orphic Review, Emerge Magazine and The Dalhousie Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in Pique Newsmagazine, The Question and the Globe and Mail. According to her publisher's website: "A social worker by training, Harvey ran a management consulting practice in Canada and abroad, developing business and strategic plans, implementing mergers, acquisitions and large change initiatives and helping ease the transition of employees caught in corporate downsizing."

Much of Harvey's family still lives in Greece and she visits often. Harvey's family is originally from the Peloponnese, from a town called Kyparissia, where a grandfather and a great grandfather were born. Her Greek grandfather fought in WW I and the Greek Turkish war. Her grandmother was raised on the island of Naxos, the island that features most prominently in Finding Callidora.

BOOKS:

Nicolai's Daughters (Signature Editions, 2012) $22.95 978-1897109-97-7

The Brink of Freedom (Signature Editions, 2015) $22.95 978-1927426760

Finding Callidora (Signature Editions, 2020) $22.95 978-1773240-61-9

[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit

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“Therefore, it is not said that Greeks fought like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks.” – Winston Churchill

Rudi Vrba’s illuminating memoir, I Escaped From Auschwitz, describes a rare attempt to organize an uprising in Auschwitz. Vrba knew the organizers. At the proverbial last minute, the uprising fizzled because the person chosen by the organizers to unite the various factions—a widely-respected German Jew named Fredy Hirsch—committed suicide.

There was, however, one hour-long uprising at Auschwitz. It was led by Greek Jews among the Sonderkomandos, the “special labour squads” given the grim job of gathering the bodies of gassed victims and disposing of them by cremation. When approximately 200 Sonderkomandos were tricked into entering the gas chambers to be murdered, en route to their deaths Greek men altered lyrics to Greek songs in order to alert other members of a nearby Sonderkomando group what was likely in store for them, too.

On Saturday, October 7, 1944, at around 2:30 in the afternoon, when German guards were preparing to send a second, large contingent of Sonderkomandos (mostly Greek and Hungarian Jews) to the gas chambers, a voice, most probably that of Josif Barouch, a Greek army officer from Ionnina, shouted out, in Greek: “We will make our attack, or not?”

Equipped mainly with die-hard courage and the element of surprise, the predominantly Greek prisoners used superior numbers and inferior weapons to overpower and kill their German guards. Surrounded and doomed, having taken refuge inside Crematorium III, they attempted to blow up Crematorium IV with dynamite, hoping to simultaneously escape into some nearby woods.

Compatriots in the ‘Kanada Kommando’ witnessed this uprising; a few survived. They later recalled hearing words of the Greek anthem amid the massacre of 451 prisoners that ensued. According to a 2009 publication issued by the Greek foreign ministry, Greeks in Auschwitz-Birkenau, an estimated 300 Greek Jews died in the uprising but somehow 26 survived. It lists the names of 60 Greek Jews known to have lost their lives.

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Even though it is commonly estimated that at least 80% of the Jews in Greece (approx. 67,000) were killed during the Holocaust, public awareness of the Holocaust tends to focus on events in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, The Netherlands, etc.

The only British Columbian novelist whose work has incorporated the persecution and murder of Greek Jews is Stella Leventoyannis Harvey. One of the chapter headings in her third novel, Finding Callidora (Signature 2019), reads ‘Jews in Salonika Registering at Liberty Square, Salonika.’ It’s an actual headline that appeared in a newspaper on July 1, 1942. One of the characters is heard to complain, “What does any of this have to do with us? We’re farmers trying to survive.” Harvey writes:

“They are your neighbours,” Katarina shot back before she knew she’d opened her mouth. “You have no problem drinking coffee with them, or selling our melons to them, but you won’t lift a finger to stop the Nazi pigs from taking them away to God knows what end.”

Anti-Jewish measures were introduced in Greece in April of 1941 when German troops entered Salonika. After properties were confiscated, prominent Jews were arrested and cultural treasures were destroyed. In July of 1942, all Jewish men in Salonika between the ages of 18 and 45 were assembled in Plateia Eleftherias at 8 a.m. In public view, as Christian Greeks watched the spectacle, they were flogged, forced to do gymnastics and doused with water until late afternoon.

Forced labour and ghettoization followed. Eichmann's deputy R. Gunther and Himmler's assistant D. Wisliceny arrived in Salonika in January 1943 to oversee the implementation of the "final solution". On March 14, Rabbi Koretz announced that a series of convoys would take Jews for resettlement in Kracow. The next day 2,500 Jews were herded onto forty freight cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

More convoys left March 17, 19, 23, 27; April 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 20, 22, 28; May 3, 9 (two). The 19th and last convoy left Thessaloniki on August 19. In three months, 45,649 people were sent from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz. The total number of Greek Jews sent to their death in the extermination camps has been estimated at 65,000.

In this way the great centre of Sephardi Jewry in Europe, Salonika, known as Malkhah Israel—La Madre de Israel—for five centuries, was decimated and relegated to history books. More than 90% of its Jewry were killed.

Due largely to the efforts of Greek Archbishop Damaskinos with the assistance of an extensive Greek underground movement, only 1,300 Jews were deported from Athens. Meanwhile, approximately 1,300 Jews joined the Greek partisans and took part in guerilla warfare.

Stella Leventoyannis Harvey didn't know how much about how resistance fighters would fit into her first novel, Nicolai's Daughters (Signature 2012), until she visited Kalavryta, north of Athens, near Diakofto. There, on December 13, 1943, German forces massacred all the males in Kalavryta over the age of thirteen. They also attempted to lock women and children in a school and set it on fire. Many of the women and children were able to escape the blaze, but only thirteen males over the age of thirteen survived. Operation Kalavryta resulted in the destruction of homes and monasteries in twenty-eight communities. Approximately 1,000 houses were looted and burned. Some 700 civilians were killed.

With dual narratives from a father and a daughter, Nicolai's Daughters profiles the tragedy-ridden Sarinopoulous family in the village of Diakofto, on the Gulf of Corinth. It was translated and released in Greece in 2014 by Psichogios Press.

"The novel found its soul in that tiny mountain village," Harvey says. "I listened to the testimonials of the victims recorded in the Kalavryta museum which had once been the village school, and I climbed Kappi Hill (The Place of Sacrifice) where the massacre happened and it was then I realized I wanted to tell the Kalavryta story. It’s considered the worse atrocity perpetrated by the Nazis in Greece during WW II.

One of the testimonials Harvey listened to in Kalavryta was by a man in his eighties. "He talked about being lined up with the other men and boys that bright December day and being asked by a German soldier how old he was. He lied about his age. He didn't know what made him lie because he had no idea what was to come. He lied almost as an act of defiance. It saved his life. He broke down during his testimonial, saying he'd felt guilty his whole life for surviving while all his friends died.

"I've often thought about that man and what the impact would be on a survivor with so much guilt to bear.”

One of Harvey’s protagonists is Georges Psychoundakis, a Greek resistance fighter on the island of Crete during the Second World War. He was a shepherd, a war hero, and an author, who served as a dispatch runner behind German lines and later wrote about his experience in a memoir entitled The Cretan Runner.

“Crete and Greece were greatly desired by Hitler,” says Harvey, “because of their strategic location. Occupying Greece would have given the Nazis an advantage while they forged ahead to Russia. Although Crete eventually fell, Hitler’s troops suffered many casualties and this threw off Hitler’s war plan. It is believed this was one of the reasons Hitler was forced to delay invading Russia. This delay caused the German troops to try to invade Russia during winter, a task they were ill equipped for and one that ultimately sealed their defeat.”