The Oakland Greek Festival.

I remember the Oakland Greek Festival when I was a teenager. In the early years, the festival was held at the Oakland Auditorium. A beaux-arts building built in 1914 which consists of a 5,492-seat arena, a theatre and a ballroom. The auditorium was renamed the Kaiser Convention Center in 1984 after Henry J. Kaiser.

But back in my day, it was just the Oakland Auditorium and while the adults worked the festival, we kids were rulers of the arena. We arrived before opening helping our parents setup and then with their volunteer activity or as volunteers if we were old enough. We would leave after midnight on Friday and Saturday exhausted both thrilled by the fun we’d had, ready to return the next morning.

I remember viewing the oval cavernous space of the auditorium from the seats above and thinking it would be impossible to fill. The slightest sound carried in the empty arena. In those morning hours I could have driven a car on the floor amongst the booths, exhibits and around the central stage. Then slowly with each hour after opening, the festival would attract visitors until in the evening hours there was no elbow room left and a cacophony of voices, music and dancing filled the arena.

Some of us kids performed on the stage as dancers in Greek customs from the regions of our parents or grandparents. Others assisted in one of the booths or clearing tables in the restaurant and kafenio sections or serving food. But once finished with our shifts, we roamed the auditorium; walking the length of the arena a thousand times or climbing up into the seats above. We ate Greek food like souvlaki and roasted lamb. Nibbled on desserts, loukoumades or baklava. And we danced!! In long lines, hands linked and following steps centuries old with embellishments by the leader of the line showing off skill and creativity. For three days in Oakland everyone was Greek and shouting ‘Opa’.

I love these memories, and you can make your own. The Greek Festival while no longer at the auditorium, still happens every May and this year it is 17 – 19 May 2013, so come and be Greek!!

Click the link for information:

http://www.oaklandgreekfestival.com/festival_005.htm

Crete – A Weekend With Myths, Legends, and History

I had the honour of guest blogging at Novel Adventurers. Here is an excerpt.

The wonderful thing about visiting my family in Greece is that when I need to escape for a weekend getaway, I have hundreds of islands to select. I’d always wanted to see the Palace at Knossos, so Crete it was.

I flew in and grabbed a cab to my beachfront hotel. I spent the day swimming and as the day drew to a close and I walked along the shore listening to the gentle sound of waves lapping against the sandy beach, a single white flip-flop was tossed among the waves. I reached it and kicked it onto the beach, continued my walk, and eventually headed back to my hotel.

And if you want to read the rest…click the link.

Crete—A Weekend With Myths, Legends, and History

And if you want to read The White Flip Flop, the story this trip generated, click here to purchase a copy of

Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology

The Occupation

Η Κατοχή The Occupation

The Occupation, or Η Κατοχή (pronounced ‘ka-to-hi’) in Greece began in April 1941 when the Nazis invaded. During the first months of the Occupation, all fuel and means of transportation was confiscated. Thus no food or supplies could be transported.

Strategic industries were seized. Commodities like olive oil, cotton, leather and tobacco were transferred out of Greece. Markets were sealed under the sign of the swastika. All fuel tanks were emptied. Poultry herds and pigeons were killed by the Nazis. Farmers were forbidden to harvest their fields on pain of death. Meat, cattle, sheep, dairy herds were confiscated by the Germans. Cars, buses and trucks were seized. Shops cleaned out and goods shipped back to Germany. Rare materials, metal, leather were also taken back to Germany. Hospital and drugstores were emptied of supplies.

Extraordinary levies were placed upon the country of Greece to sustain the occupying troops. The Greek levy was determined to 113.7% of the national income of Greece. A full naval blockade was put into place by the Germans which prevented all imports into Greece even food.

Farmers had to pay taxes and sell at enforced low prices, food price controls and rationing were tightened. Fishing was also prohibited. In Greece, the Nazis policy under the Occupation was that of plundering the country to the detriment of its native population.

In the Winter of 1941 −1942 acute food shortages existed precipitating a famine. Estimates are that 300,000 died in Athens and the surrounding area. German records show a rate of 300 deaths per day in December 1941, the Red Cross estimates 400 a day, with some days at a rate of 1,000 per day.

Raisins, olives, wild greens and rationed bread were the only available staples to eat. The hills in Greece were stripped bare. Dead bodies were left on the streets of Athens. Emaciated bodies were a common sight.

Newspapers ran advice columns to aid readers on how to survive. The columns offered such advice as chewing food slowly for longer periods of time in order to fool the stomach and advising people to collect the crumbs from the table in a jar.

In modern Greek memory the word, occupation, means famine, deprivation, and starvation.

My mother lived in Greece during The Occupation. She cooked and ate dandelion greens (what in America we consider to be weeds) as long as I remember. She never threw out food and grew vegetables in our back yard.

My Greeks who survived The Occupation relate stories of children who reached adulthood without ever tasting meat and who never become accustomed to real food.

My mother still remembers the taste of the bread made from flour sent from America at the end of The Occupation. She says bread never tasted so wonderful. When she came to American her greatest disappointment was that she could never find the flour that made bread taste so good.

I visited the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Missouri. President Truman signed the European Recovery Program, commonly known as the Marshall Plan which over four years distributed food and money to assist European countries devastated in WWII. The people of Greece dedicated a statue of President Truman in Athens and sent him a helmet from the time of Pericles in gratitude. In an exhibit at the presidential library, I saw a photograph of flour sacks from American being unloaded in Greece and on display was one of the flour sacks sent to Greece. I called my mother that night to tell her I had found the flour she’d been looking for.

Zakynthos and the List of Jews in WWII

Zakynthos (Ζάκυνθος) is a beautiful verdant Greek island in the Ionian Sea famous for it’s crystal blue waters, sandy beaches, rock outcroppings, caves and diving.

Archaeological excavations have found that the island has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age. Homer first mentioned the island in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Zakynthos was the first independent democracy in Greece.

The island has been occupied by the Romans, Ottomans, Venetians, the French and British and finally returned as part of Greece in 1864. It’s darkest and perhaps greatest moment came under the Occupation.

During World War ll, Zakynthos was first occupied by the Italians, after Mussolini’s fall to the Allies, the island fell under German occupation on 9 September 1943.

Zakynthos had a population of 275 Jews at the time of the German occupation. The Nazis demanded that the mayor, Loukas Karrer provide a list of the names of all the Jews of the island. Mayor Karrer went to Bishop Chrysostomos for help. Bishop Chrysostomos pleaded on behalf of the Jews stating that they had done no harm and did not deserve to be deported. When the Nazis still demanded the names of all Jews. Mayor Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos gave the Nazis, a list stating ‘Here is the list of Jews you required’. The list contained two names, the mayor’s and the bishop’s. They then proceeded to warn the Jews to hide in the mountain villages where they were sheltered and protected by the Greeks of Zakynthos. At the end of the war, all the Jews of Zakynthos survived.

In 1978, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust center in Israel awarded Bishop Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Karrer with the title of ‘Righteous among the Nations’. This honour is awarded to non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust in spite of the risk to their own lives.

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. A day to pledge to “Never Forget’.

In remembering the Jews who perished, I also wanted to remember the Greeks of Zakynthos and their act of valour in standing up for their fellow human beings, the Jews of Zakynthos.

Greek War of Independence 1821

The 25th of March is the independence day of the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire defeated the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and Greece fell under Ottoman rule. The traditional story is that the Metropolitan Germanos III of Patras blessed a Greek flag in the Monastery of Agia Lavra on the 25 of March 1821 and ushered in the uprising against the Ottoman empire.

Greeks revolted many times over the years against Ottoman rule but the revolt began in ernest in 1821. Uprisings started in the northern parts of Greece and moved into the Peloponnese. A crucial meeting was held in the city that is now called, Aegion. Aegion is the city near the two villages that my parents come from. The Greeks fought under various leaders one of which was Theodoros Kolokotronis who became commander-in-chief of the Greek forces in the Peloponnese.

Kolokotronis Statue Athens

The makeshift Greek navy fought against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea achieving successes. Lord Byron travelled to Greece to fight on behalf of Greek independence and Greeks revere him as a national hero. He spent his own money to outfit the Greek navy and protested against Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon marbles from the Acropolis. He died of a fever In Missolonghi while preparing to attack the Turkish fortress at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth.

I remember Greek Independence Day as a day of speeches, poems, Greek food, wearing Greek costumes, Greek flags and the singing of the Greek National anthem. As a child, I learned about the ‘hidden school’ where Greek children were educated in secret in order to retain their heritage under Ottoman rule. There is a song about the moon guiding the children to and from the school where they would learn Greek. I can still see the hall festooned with Greek flags. My friends and I dressed in our traditional costumes. Each child and sometimes parents, wore the traditional costumes of the area where one’s family came from. I was taught to appreciate being Greek in an open and democratic society and to never forget the land of my parents and my heritage.

The Acropolis and the Greek Flag

Greek Flag Acropolis Athens

I love this picture. I remember the first time I went to the Acropolis. My uncle Kostas took me and my cousin Giorgos. We walked around the Acropolis warmed in the bright sunshine of a Greek summer day. At the northern end of the Acropolis was the area with the Greek flag. We walked up the steps and viewed the city of Athens below us. Then my uncle told us this story.

During the Nazi Occupation of Greece, two 19 year olds, Apostolos Santas and Manolis Glezos climbed the Acropolis on the 31 May 1941. They took down the swastika flag, that had flown since the day the Nazis had entered Athens. In its place they left the Greek flag flying. The word spread throughout Athens that the swastika had been removed. Furious, the Nazis tried the two men in absentia and placed a death sentence on them. The Nazis’ public outrage at this defiance rather than quashing resistance, further spread the news of the two men’s valiant act throughout Greece inspiring others to rise up against the Occupation.

In an interview years later, Manolis Glezos answered the question why they had done it. He responded by saying that Hitler commented that the fighting was all over now that the Germans were in Greece. Mr. Glezos said that spurred the two young men to show Hitler that it was in fact, not over.

One of the first acts after the liberation of Greece was to raise the Greek flag on the Acropolis. A simple plaque at the Acropolis commemorates the actions of the two young men.

Plaque Acropolis Athens

Every time I visit Greece, I visit the Acropolis and make sure to stay a few moments underneath that flag and remember the heroic efforts of the Greeks against an evil speeding across Europe until it met with Greece resistance. I remember two 19 year old boys who climbed the Acropolis in an act of defiance to take down the flag of an oppressor and raise the flag of their country, the Greek flag.

H. S. Stavropoulos

The Battle of Salamis

There are very few places in Greece without a view of the sea and the sea helped define the Greeks. The land mass of Greece is surrounded on three sides by water, and the two major land masses, Attica and Peloponnesus, also have water between them. The Greek terrain is rocky and mountainous, with limited trees. In fact the joke is that Greece is more suitable for goats than people. Yet, the Greeks have not only survived there and flourished but became the linch-pin for Western Civilization.

With their backs to this rocky and mountainous land, the Greeks faced outward to the sea. The deep blue of the sea fired their imagination and supported their economy. They built trade routes and founded colonies and won a sea victory defeating the Persians and thus saving the future of Western Civilization.

The legend of the 300 hundred Spartans lead by King Leonidas holding off the Persian army of Xerxes at Thermopylae is well known. What is less widely known is the Battle of Salamis, which came shortly thereafter, probably because Hollywood hasn’t made a movie yet. Even as an American-born Greek, traveling to Greece and passing the island of Salamis on the way to my parent’s villages in the Peloponnesus, my uncles, aunts and even cousins would point out that here the Greeks defeated the Persians in the greatest sea battle.

After fighting at Marathon and being aware of the Persian threat to Greece, the Athenian politician, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to build a fleet of 200 triremes.

Triremes are galley ships with three rows of oars on each side. The triremes were fast and agile. In fact a full-sized replica, Olympias, with an unskilled volunteer crew was able reach a speed of 9 knots and execute 180 degree turns in one minute with an arc no wider than two and a half ship-lengths proving that ancient accounts of the capabilities of these ships was not exaggerated. The Greek ships were outfitted with rams on the bow, resembling an armored beak on the front of a ship used to puncture the hull of an enemy ship.

During the Persian invasion, now general, Themistocles set up a subterfuge to lure the Persian fleet into the Strait of Salamis. The Greek fleet of triremes occupied the strait between the mainland of Greece and the island of Salamis. The Persian ships entered to find a line of Greek ships. Seeming to flee at the advance of the Persian ships, the Greek ships moved back to better position themselves. The Persians sailed further into the strait in pursuit. One of the Greek ships then moved forward and rammed a Persian ship beginning the naval battle. The rest of the Greek ships then sailed towards the Persian fleet and engaged them. The Greek ships formed a wedge and split the Persian line of ships in two. An exact number of Persian ships destroyed is not available but historians believe 300 is a good estimate.

The significance of the battle is that it marked the turning point in the war between the Greeks and Persians. From this point on Greece remained free from invasion by the Persians. Athens flourished and developed philosophy, science, democracy and laid the foundations of Western Civilization. The legacy of Ancient Greece and the Golden Age of Athens became reality by the decisive victory of the Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis.

And what about those Spartans? Their holding off Xerxes allowed Athens to be evacuated and the fleet under Athenian general Themistocles to assemble at Salamis. Their heroic sacrifice bought the Greeks time and saved Western civilization.

Funny thing is, I wasn’t born in Greece, but I cannot live without being close to the sea. I live in Northern California, in the Bay Area, where from any hilltop in my city, I can look across the Bay, through the Golden Gate and the Pacific beyond. I could never live in a land locked area. In fact I feel claustrophobic if I cannot see open sea. Greek blood does flow through my veins after all.