Yiayia's Journey Part 7

The spring of 1941 marked the start of a challenging new period for my grandparents. Fortunately on the homefront, little Chrysanthy and Anastasia were transitioning well to American public school; 3-year-old old Tasso was adjusting to wearing leg braces to correct his bone growth. But the threat of war loomed over the country Yiayia now called home. And even worse, the atrocities of World War II soon arrived on the shores of her beloved Greece. 

With the Axis invasion and subsequent occupation no one could leave Greece. And no mail could move in or out. So my grandparents scoured every American newspaper. And the English words Yiayia was learning to decipher painted a frightening picture. (Photos courtesy of Getty Images.)

The German army raising their flag on the Acropolis in Athens--a painfully symbolic statement that Greece was now under Axis occupation, 1941

The German artillery shelling the Metaxas Line, a chain of fortifications constructed along the line of the Greco-Bulgarian border, designed to protect Greece in case of invasion.

Enemy forces were committing unspeakable atrocities against Greeks on the mainland - killing them in hangings, massacres, and through systematic starvation. Although Greek civilians formed one of the most effective resistance movements in Occupied Europe, uprisings were met with swift and brutal reprisals. For a single German soldier killed, scores of Greek civilians would be murdered. 

The Allies fought to end the occupation, but their extensive bombings also destroyed once beautiful port cities. And while it was a valiant fight to the end, Crete ultimately fell to enemy forces as well. Conditions grew even more dire as the Axis powers turned their focus on the Jewish population in Greece. They began mass deportations, sending the Jews of Thessaloniki and Thrace in packed box cars to distant German death camps. 

Many Greeks tried to help their fellow Jewish countrymen hide or run, but ultimately Greece fell into an even deeper sense of despair. Separated by thousands of miles, Yiayia and Papou despaired of any word of the family they'd left behind. But none came. And suddenly the fate of Yiayia's beloved mother in Kythera and siblings in Athens became one of depressing, terrifying uncertainty. 

                                        

 This sign written in both German and Greek erected in the village of Kandanos in Crete. The German portion of the sign reads: "Kandanos was destroyed in retaliation for the bestial ambush murder of a paratrooper platoon and a half-platoon of military engineers by armed men and women." It was further proof that any uprisings were dealt with brutally, 1941

 My grandparents would scour newspapers for any news of their loved ones in Greece. What they read described a frightening new reality for the families they'd left behind. It would be four long years before they would learn if Giagia's mother and siblings were dead or alive.

 The German soldiers entered Athens in 1941. They systematically starved Greeks and killed them in massacres and hangings. It wouldn't be long before they turned their focus to the Greek people's Jewish countrymen

An especially haunting portrait of the Axis occupation. A young woman sobs during the deportation of the Jews of Ioannina on March 25, 1944. Almost all of the Jews deported were murdered on or shortly after April 11th of that year when the train carrying them reached Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

nother especially painful picture shows the registration of male Jews by Nazis at the center of Thessaloniki, July 1942