After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, And
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After the War Was Over PRINCETON MODERN GREEK STUDIES This series is sponsored by the Princeton University Program in Hellenic Studies under the auspices of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund. Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement by Loring M. Danforth Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece by Jane K. Cowan Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses edited and translated by Edmund Keeley Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece edited by Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town by Michael Herzfeld Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture by Charles Stewart The Enlightenment as Social Criticism: Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century by Paschalis M. Kitromilides C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard; edited by George Savidis The Fourth Dimension by Yannis Ritsos. Peter Green and Beverly Bardsley, translators George Seferis: Collected Poems, Revised Edition translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine by Jill Dubisch Cavafy’s Alexandria, Revised Edition by Edmund Keeley The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation by Andrew Horton The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s Greece by Katherine E. Fleming Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece by Gonda A. H. Van Steen A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean by Molly Greene After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960 edited by Mark Mazower After the War Was Over reconstructing the family, nation, and state in greece, 1943– 1960 Mark Mazower, Editor princeton university press princeton and oxford Copyright ᭧ 2000 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data After the war was over : reconstructing the family, nation, and state in Greece, 1943–1960 / Mark Mazower, editor. p. cm. — (Princeton modern Greek studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-05841-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-691-05842-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Greece—History—Civil War, 1944–1949. 2. Reconstruction (1939–1951)—Greece—Political aspects. 3. Greeks—Social conditions—1945– I. Mazower, Mark. II. Series. DF849.5.A48 2000 949.507Ј4—dc21 00-036680 This book has been composed in Sabon The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper) http://pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10987654321 This book is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Crawshaw and Mando Dalianis Contents Abbreviations and Glossary of Terms ix Introduction1 Mark Mazower One Three Forms of Political Justice: Greece, 1944–1945 24 Mark Mazower Tw o The Punishment of Collaborators in Northern Greece, 1945–1946 42 Eleni Haidia Three Purging the University after Liberation 62 Procopis Papastratis Four Between Negation and Self-Negation: Political Prisoners in Greece, 1945–1950 73 Polymeris Voglis Five Children in Turmoil during the Civil War: Today’s Adults 91 Mando Dalianis and Mark Mazower Six Left-Wing Women between Politics and Family 105 Tassoula Vervenioti Seven The Impossible Return: Coping with Separation and the Reconstruction of Memory in the Wake of the Civil War 122 Riki van Boeschoten Eight Red Terror: Leftist Violence during the Occupation 142 Stathis N. Kalyvas Nine The Civil War in Evrytania 184 John Sakkas viii • Contents Ten The Policing of Deskati, 1942–1946 210 Lee Sarafis Eleven Protocol and Pageantry: Celebrating the Nation in Northern Greece 221 Anastasia Karakasidou Twelve “After the War We Were All Together”: Jewish Memories of Postwar Thessaloniki 247 Bea Lewkowicz Thirteen Memories of the Bulgarian Occupation of Eastern Macedonia: Three Generations 273 Xanthippi Kotzageorgi-Zymari with Tassos Hadjianastassiou Fourteen “An Affair of Politics, Not Justice”: The Merten Trial (1957–1959) and Greek-German Relations 293 Susanne-Sophia Spiliotis List of Contributors 303 Index 305 Abbreviations and Glossary of Terms Abbreviations AGDNG Archeio Genikis Doiikisis Voreio Ellada Historical Archive of Macedonia, Archives of the General Directorate of Northern Greece AGDWM Archeio Genikis Doiikisis Dytikis Makedonias Archive of the General Directorate of Western Macedonia AJDC American Joint Distribution Committee ASKI Archeia Synchronis Koinonikis Istoria Archive of Contemporary Social History, Athens BA Bundesarchiv Koblenz Federal Archives BA/ZWA Bundesarchiv-Zwischenarchiv Hengelar Federal Archives, Hengelar Archive BLO British Liaison Officer CJMCAG The Conference for Jewish Material Claims against Germany DSE Dimokratikos Stratos Ellados Democratic Army of Greece EA Ethniki Allilengyi National Solidarity EAM Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo National Liberation Front EASAD Ethnikos Agrotikos Syndesmos Antikommounistikis Draseos National Agrarian Federation of Anticommunist Action EDA Eniaia Dimokratiki Aristera United Democratic Left EDES Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos National Republican Greek league ELAS Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos National People’s Liberation Army EP Ehniki Politofylaki Civil Guard (EAM) EPON Eniaia Panelladiki Organosi Neon United Panhellenic Organization of Youth x • Abbreviations and Glossary ESAG Eidiki Scholi Anamorfosi Gynaikon Special School for the Reeduction of Women FO Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office Files “Joint” see AJDC KEPP Kentriki Epitropi Peloponnisiakis Periferias Central Committee for the Peloponnese Region KKE Kommounistiko Kommo Ellados Communist Party of Greece OPLA Organosi Perifrourisi tou Laikou Agona Organization for the Protection of the People’s Struggle OSS Office of Strategic Services PAAA Politisches Archiv des Auswartigen¨ Amtes, Bonn Foreign Ministry, Political Archive PASOK Panellinio Sosialistiko Komma Panhellenic Socialist Movement PEEA Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apeleftherosis Political Committee for National Liberation PEOPEF Panelliniki Enosi Oikogeneion Politikon Exoriston kai Fylakismenon Panhellenic Union of Families of Political Exiles and Prisoners PRO Public Records Office, London SB Security Battalions SNOF Slovenomakedonski Narodno Osloboditelen Front Slav Macedonian Liberation Front SOE Special Operations Executive USNA United States National Archives, Washington, D.C. WO Public Record Office, London, War Office files Glossary of Terms andarte resistance fighter archigos political or military leader Dekemvriana December events (December 1944) dilosi declaration of repentance dilosies those who signed declarations of repentance ethniki syneidisi national consciousness ethnikofrosini national-mindedness ipefthinos village leader kapetan leader of a guerrilla band laokratia People’s rule (EAM/ELAS slogan) Historical Geographical After the War Was Over Introduction Mark Mazower In april 1941, the German army swept into Greece, ushering in nearly a decade of social disintegration, political collapse, and mass violence unprecedented in degree and scale. The country’s governmental system had been unstable before the war, but despite a volatile history of coups, military interventions, purges, and countercoups, it had never generated the intense hostility and bloodshed that were to follow. The interwar years had been a period of chronic crisis, as Greece’s parlia- mentary democracy split apart in the “national schism” between repub- lican Venizelists and royalist anti-Venizelists. A frail economy burdened by foreign indebtedness and the cost of fighting a decade of wars be- tween 1912 and 1922 had also struggled to cope with the aftermath of that earlier era of conflict—the huge influx of refugees who fled the lands of the Ottoman empire and the Black Sea shoreline. Perhaps more than one and a half million newcomers entered a nation-state yet to absorb into the governmental machinery the large new territories it had won in the north—in Macedonia and Thrace—with their Slavic, Jew- ish, and Muslim minorities. Not surprisingly, the resultant strains— between Venizelists and royalists, between refugee newcomers and so-called autochthones, between the Greek majority and non-Greek minorities—presented obstacles that the country’s political elite found it hard to overcome. The interwar economic depression brought about the downfall of the only politician of any stature: Venizelos himself. In 1936, parliamentary democracy was suspended and replaced by the right-wing dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas, a loyal royalist. Metaxas immediately set about destroying the Left, making lavish use of the anticommunist legislation passed by his predecessors. Commu- nists real and suspected, as well as union organizers, were exiled or jailed by special tribunals. All this was repression on a scale not seen before in Greece; but it paled into insignificance compared with what was to follow. In the spring of 1941, the country was split between three occupiers: the Italians held central Greece, Epiros, the Peloponnese, and the Cy- clades; the Germans held most of the remaining points of strategic im- portance, including central Macedonia (with its capital, Salonika)