War and Destiny

By George Mavro

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I just couldn’t bear to see what he was going to do to my father because I had never seen anything like that before.” Eleni Sfoundouris was twelve years old when, on the 10th of June 1944, when her parents, her two younger sisters and her grandfather were killed. She says even today, her memories of that day are vivid. She still remembers the fear and the guilt for having survived. On that fateful day, SS troops went door to door and massacred 218 Greek civilians in Distomo. It was part of a retaliation measure for a partisan attack on Nazi soldiers. Today “Distomo”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distomo_massacre stands as a symbol of Greek suffering during the World War Two Nazi occupation. Sufferings many Greeks say have never been officially recognized nor compensated for by Germany. http://www.euronews.com/2015/05/08/greece-draws-battle-lines-over-war-reparations-from-germany/ By the time the Germans retreated from Greece. In October of 1944 over half a million Greeks from a population of 7 million, as a result of the Nazi occupation. During WW2 the German occupation forces were constantly attacked and harassed by the Greek resistance. In turn they committed terrible acts of retribution against the Greek populace. Besides the 300,000 Greeks that starved to death during the winter of 1941-42 due to German negligence and not caring if the Greeks lived or died. During the course of the occupation, 80,000 Greek civilians were executed, over 1300 towns and villages were destroyed and over a million were left homeless by Axis reprisals for what the resistance did to the Axis forces. My mom's family who were US citizens at the time was also left homeless after the Germans had burned their home and I remember her stories about the war. Besides the war against the Germans War and Destiny touches on the atrocities and suffering of the Greek populace under German occupation. My soon to be released sequel The Resistance continues the saga of the fight against the Axis in occupied Greece

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“”They took my family outside on the street and killed them with a machine gun. And my mother’s brain was spread out on the street. It was my grandmother who found them.” I
was terrified when the German came into the house and threatened my father”, Eleni says. “So I jumped out of the Window.”