"Eleni"

Eleni: A Savage War, A Mother’s Love, and A Son’s Revenge: A Personal Story
By Nicholas Gage

Village culture has traditionally provided the framework in which Greeks understand the world, and it is an honor to be able through the investigations of the author to be drawn into an understanding of the culture of the village Lia in Northern Greece. Lia is a village in the Mourgana Mountain range near the Albanian border. The story begins in the early 1940s and follows the events of the Gazoyiannis family from their pre-WWII peaceful existence to the uprising of the Communist party, through WWII, and finally through the brutality that came with the civil war between the Communists and the Conservative Nationalists.

It is the story of a mother trying to raise four girls and a boy in the midst of this intense time of struggle without the help of her husband, who is working in New York.

Russia was the only Allied country to suffer more than Greece during WWII with over 8% of the population dying either directly from the hand of the Germans or indirectly from starvation due to the plundering of their resources (Broome, 1996). However, what startled me most was the internal conflict that was brewing in Greece even during the Greeks proud moment of resistance to Mussolini’s forces in 1940 and the subsequent German occupation in 1941. Internal fighting between EDES (Conservative Nationalists) and ELES (Communists) had already begun, and after the collapse of the country in WWII they intensified their efforts to take over the vacuum of power that had been created in Greece.

The Gazoyiannis family ends up being in the center of this conflict as the Communist forces root themselves into the Mourgana Mountains. Eleni had the sense to flee Lia in June of 1947 when she feared that the Communists were coming back, but her husband in America writes:

“You have no business going anywhere. If they’re fighting in the spring right above the house, you stay in your home with your children. After all who are these andartes (the Communist fighters)? They’re Greeks, fellow villagers some of them, fighting for their rights. I have worked for my living all my life and never bothered anyone. Why should they bother my family?”

When the Communist indeed come back Eleni’s father flees without even saying good-bye to his daughter, her brother-in-law selfishly refuses to be burdened with the responsibility of some of Eleni’s children, and finally when a kind friend offers to take Eleni’s two oldest girls (knowing that the Communists will most likely draft them into service), Eleni rushes home to get them ready. However, her husband’s instruction not to flee the city, and the indecency of allowing her daughters to travel with a non-related male who they had no business even talking to according to village custom, made her change her mind.

For most Western females her decision is astounding, yet, the village culture, is not so easily discarded for Eleni even in the midst a time when the chief principle is one of self-preservation.

Under the occupation of the Communists, life in Lia becomes a nightmare. The Gazoyiannis home is chosen as the headquarters for the party, and eventually they are kicked out of their home. The two eldest daughters are forced to be conscripted as soldiers (and wear pants…shocking!), and only the brilliant act of Eleni of pouring boiling water over her daughter Olga’s foot and when that is unsuccessful in crippling her, the hot coals of the fire burned onto the foot by the grandmother, are able to save at least one of the children from being drafted. The deterioration of trust between the villagers who have lived their entire lives in close proximity to one another is most tragic as they betray each other for the sake of their own survival.

The controversial "pedomasoma" or literally “the gathering up of children” policy stated that all children between the ages of three and fourteen in the occupied regions of northern Greece would be collected and sent to “people’s democracies” behind the Iron Curtain in order to protect them from conservatives. When Eleni was told that she was expected to send her youngest son Nickoli away she understood that she needed to escape from the village. Though their were guards stationed around the perimeter, skirmishes almost nightly nearby with the conservative troops, and mine fields surrounding the village slopes she conspires with a relative to plan the escape.

The details of the escape will not be discussed, but from the beginning of the novel the author never hides the fact that his mother ended up being tortured and killed by the Communists in her own village but is successful in saving her family.

I was hesitant to read this book initially, as the author (a former New York Times investigative reporter) conducts his entire investigation of the events of the village in the hope of discovering who is culpable for his mother’s murder. However, the confrontation between the author and the one responsible for his mother’s death does take place at the end of the novel, and he prevails in embodying the spirit of his fierce yet loving mother.

In a simple, secluded village, we find a cosmos. The abyss of the human soul and the tragedy of civilians in the midst of a revolution come to life in this historic novel.