My grandfather George Stoukas went to the United States in 1935 at the age of 20 as an economic immigrant and worked in a restaurant in New York. After raising money, he returned to Greece after twenty years to start a family. He often told us about his life in America and especially about the mental pain he experienced, watching from afar both World War II (1939-1945) and the civil war that broke out in his homeland Greece shortly after the end of World War II and which lasted from March 1945 to August 1949. The grandfather already had the experience of watching from afar the events of World War II, listening to Greek radio stations in New York and reading local Greek newspapers because his English he was not so good that he could watch the American press.
His family in Greece lived in Ioannina, a town in Northwestern Greece, which suffered a lot from German occupation. The grandfather learned from the sparse correspondence he had with his paternalhome - the letters to go and come took over a month - as he told us, about the loss of friends and relatives due to the war and that membes of the Jewish community of Ioannina, numbering over 2000 people, had been arrested and taken to the concentration camps of the Third Reich, where they were subsequently exterminated. He was devastated with all this news because, being so far away, he could not support his own and his friends and help his homeland, in many areas of which people starved to death.
His joy at the end of World War II, as he told us, was followed by his great sorrow and anguish for the ensuing civil war. He often cried and wondered why the Greeks had to split in two and kill each other. Everything had been dismantled during the German occupation. Why are now people found who took up arms and turned against their compatriots? Is it justified that he thought of losing so many human lives, because some people believed that with weapons they could create a better and fairer world? Together with other Greek immigrants, he tried to work through American organizations but also through the Greek Orthodox Church to find ways to help the homeland. They collected food, money and medical supplies and sent them to the Greek embassy. My grandfather was literally shocked, as he told us, when his brother wrote to him that his best friend Nikos was killed in a clash between rival sides. However, in addition to these, as he told us, he also considered tragic the fact that the Greek civil war had somehow been transferred to the Greek communities in America, as some took the side of one side and others the other and were constantly arguing with each other.
All these events marked the life of my grandfather, who, as long as he lived, did not stop repeating that the people who did not experience the horror of war in their lives are really lucky and even luckier those who did not have the lived-experience of a civil war .
Rationale:
I selected the personal account of my choice being inspired by the website: "Biafran War Memories", specifically from the first-hand account "I Was Married to a Biafran" but also by the war that has been going on in Ukraine for the last 40 days, due to the Russian invasion. All this brought to mind my grandfather's stories about World War II and the Civil War in Greece, which I quote in my personal account. I am convinced that differences between states must be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue and not through wars, which cause the death of thousands of innocent people and major damage to public and private infrastructure. We live in the 21st century, where science in all fields is flourishing and technological civilization has made huge leaps. It is a pity, then, that all these achievements do not affect the human minds for the good of humanity. War destroys humanism and leads to the prevailing of barbarism. We should always give peace a chance.
As far as the stylistic features are concerned, I followed the method of oral history, which is based on recording the personal testimonies of people who have experienced some events either up close or far and present them in their own way and in their own simple words. In my account though I used my memory and I presented the accounts of my grandfather as I remembered them from when I was a child, since he died when I was 14 years old.
Comments