Yiayia's Journey Part 8
In 1944, World War 2 raged on. And like many other European countries, Greece
remained occupied by Axis forces with the fate of Yiayia's family woefully
uncertain. Axis forces were killing Greeks in the mainland at an alarming rate.
But life on Yiayia's native island of Kythera - in the southernmost tip of
Greece - would not be as deadly. Kythera wasn't an industrial port so there
were few bombings and uprisings.
But
enemy forces damaged roads, bridges, forests, and natural resources which created terrible
hardships for the Kytherians. They looted homes, confiscating food, weapons, and
anything of use. The German army commandeered Papou's ancestral home
where he andYiayia once lived, forcing relatives to live elsewhere. They used
the upper floors as an observation post and the main floor as a stable for
their horses.
As another conquest strategy, the Germans decimated the Greek
economy by counterfeiting currency. The drachma became worthless. And with no
money to buy food, the Greeks had to rely on bartering, the black market, or
whatever the island could produce. By the thousands, my grandparents' countrymen
and fellow Kytherians were starving. And Yiayia could not help but fear -- were
her beloved mother and siblings among them?
As she would later discover, her mother Damiani was
largely, mercifully, left alone. Her modest stone cottage in the mountainous
village of Agia Anastasia proved little temptation to the enemy. So Damiani was
left to use her gift of growing to produce the mainstays of Kytherian fields:
olives, almonds, figs, and grapes. Her goats provided milk and cheese, the
chickens and their eggs a source of protein.
Yiayia's mother would then share her bounty - scarce as
it was - with fellow villagers who would have otherwise gone without. For that
selfless act, her fellow peasants would revere Damiani for her wartime kindness
and sacrifice. And her family would dub her "the indomitable
Damiani." For there is no doubt that Damiani taught her daughter - my Yiayia - that "such is the life''. And so as Damiani gracefully
demonstrated - the human spirit had no choice but to adapt and to endure.
And soon Yiayia would be forced to do just that yet again.
Because even as she despaired for her loved ones in Greece, she had a new worry to consider. Just before 8 a.m. on December 7th, 1941, hundreds of Japanese
fighter planes attacked the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. And the next
day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war against
Japan. That declaration passed with just one dissenting vote. More than two years into the conflict, the United States
would finally join World War II. The sleeping giant had awoken. And the America
my Yiayia had come to love would never be the same again.
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