The story of the people of Vamvakou, a village in the Lakonia region in the Peloponnese, is truly fascinating by any measure. But the story of the village’s revival may be an even greater one, as local people are attempting to resurrect the village and bring it back to vibrant life.

Once a picturesque, lively, historic town on the slopes of Mount Parnon, as a result of emigration Vamvakou had turned into a ghost town in the new millennium; as of 2008 there were only nine residents left in town.

In fact, the first school in the entire Lakonia region was established in Vamvakou in 1832, according to the book “The History of Vamvakou,” written by Phaedon Koukoules and published in 1907.

Vamvakou is 36 kilometers (22 miles) from Sparta and 210 kilometers (130 miles) from Athens. It was built in the fifteenth century at an altitude of 900 meters (2,953 feet) on the slopes of beautiful Mt. Parnon. It is the birthplace of the Coumantareas and Exarchos families, who played important roles as fighters in the War of Greek Independence.

It was also the home of shipping tycoon Ioannis Coumantareas, who lived from 1894 to 1981, and modern Greece’s great benefactor, shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, who was born in 1909 and died in 1996.

The Rebirth of Vamvakou

Two years ago, five friends who hail from Vamvakou made the brave and life-changing decision to take on the revival of the village of their ancestors. Haris Vassilakos, Anargyros Verdilos, Eleni Mami, Tasos Markos and Panagiotis Soulimiotis then set up the “Vamvakou Revival” Social Cooperative Company.

Knowing that shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos’ origins were in Vamvakou, they began by approaching the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) for support.

The Vamvakou project naturally has a tremendous symbolic and emotional significance for the Niarchos Foundation. SNF President Andreas Drakopoulos embraced the project immediately, and the foundation began providing support to the group.

The Vamvakou Revival team has worked tirelessly since its inception to systematically design and implement a five-year plan, aiming at the sustainable development of the village. The group also is even planning for the return of former residents, and offering incentives to new people to move to Vamvakou and begin a new life there.

The main relocation incentives will be the creation of new job positions and the assurance of modern living conditions in the picturesque village. The ultimate goal is that in a few years, young people and families with children will move to Vamvakou, and the school which was shut down in 2008 can reopen.

“One of the reasons for the crisis in the economy, society and values Greece is facing is the detachment from our roots. We have forgotten where we started, our origins, and left the village to its fate… Our aim is to make Vamvakou an example to be followed, a model for the rest of the country,” the group says.

“When the school bell rings in the village again, that’s when we can talk about a new Vamvakou and a revival plan with a measurable result! Until then, we must work, work, work.” the group members added.

The first steps for the rebirth of Vamvakou are in the process of being realized, taking advantage of the natural wealth of Mount Parnon. The team is preparing to welcome the first visitors to the village this summer. They are already organizing outdoor activities such as trekking, cycling, guided tours, and free creative activities for children, offering visitors, young people or initiates a complete sports experience and recreation.

At the same time, the groundwork for the operation of a restaurant-cafe and a traditional guesthouse is well underway.

A community of former Vamvakou residents in Bangor, Maine, U.S.A.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century dozens of thousands of Greeks emigrated to the United States to escape the poverty of their homeland and build a better life for their families. Vamvakou residents were no exception.

In the historical study “The Greeks of Bangor, Maine,” writer Paul Smitherman, a member of the Bangor Greek Orthodox community, traces Vamvakou immigrants who arrived in the last decade of the 19th century until the early 1920s, when immigration was severely curtailed.

Smitherman points out that the failure of the currant market in the Peloponnese was the main reason people from the region left to seek a better life in America.

According to the study, George N. Brountas was Bangor’s very first Greek immigrant. He was born in Vamvakou and emigrated to Boston in 1892, then moved on to Bangor in 1897. He made his living in his first few years in Bangor by selling fruit from a pushcart.

He was known to push his cart thirty miles each day, but his hard work and his pleasant personality made him a popular figure around town. In 1906, he invited his sister, Georgia,  and her fiance Harry Servetis, to immigrate from Vamvakou and join him in Bangor.

In 1907, Brountas opened a candy store with the money he had saved, and the store soon turned into The Brountas Restaurant. By that time, so many more Greeks from the Peloponnese village had arrived in town that in the Boston area, Bangor was known as “Little Vamvakou.”

People from other parts of Greece began arriving in the area as well, starting up businesses and establishing a strong Greek community. Smitherman lists the some of the family names and the businesses owned by Greeks.

The Aloupis, Brountas, Chiaparas, Mourkas-Kesaris, Skoufis, Vafiades, Vomvoris and Zoidis families owned restaurants. The Brountases and Repas families had confectionery shops and restaurants, the Haliotises were produce wholesalers, and Mr. Predaris was a shoe shop owner. The Limberis family owned and operated a movie theater, and the Skoufis family owned a variety store.

In 1926, area Greeks established the St. George Eastern Orthodox Community of Bangor, and construction was completed on St. George Orthodox Church on Sanford Street in 1930. The church continues to hold services to this day, and its congregants are not only the descendants of the very first Greeks from Vamvakou and elsewhere, but immigrants from other Orthodox nations and American converts to Orthodoxy.

One of the church’s treasures is a black and white photo of a group of Vamvakou immigrants and second-generation Greek-Americans on a trip they made back to the old home village in the late 1940’s. The names are handwritten on the back of the photo, and among them there is a “Nikos Niarkos,” who was possibly a member of the wider Niarchos family.

The pledge to make Vamvakou a prototype for the future

“The village was tested by history and was hit by immigration and the financial crisis. It is now asking for our own participation to write a new page,” the five friends of the “Vamvakou Revival” team say.

SNF President Andreas Drakopoulos is backing the group all the way, but he wants to take it a step even further. “The Vamvakou Revival is a very ambitious project which, we believe, it is a collective need today, perhaps more than ever, to return to our roots with respect and hope.

“Our roots happen to be in Vamvakou, as it is the village from where my sister hails as well as our Founder, Stavros Niarchos. Respecting its tradition and history, we are hoping that life will return to Vamvakou and a model village will develop, opening a new path with the expectation that other similar towns will follow in Greece.”

The tiny Greek island of Erikousa, in the Ionian Sea north of Corfu, has kept a secret for a very, very long time. A story which includes not only tragedy, but kindness and bravery as well, as the islanders joined forces to save a family of Jews from certain death in the Holocaust.

The story, an engrossing peek into a little-known chapter of World War II, was revealed in the book “Something Beautiful Happened” by Greek-American journalist and author Yvette Manessis Corporon in 2017.

Her work describes how the people of Erikousa hid a Jewish family — a tailor named Savvas Israel and his daughters — from the Nazis during the German occupation of Greece. Even though every single person on the island knew Israel and his family were hiding on the island, not one islander ever gave them up, and the family survived the war.

Jewish people had lived on the nearby island of Corfu for 800 years before the Germans occupied the island in 1943. By the summer of 1944, nearly 2,000 Jews from the area had already been transported to concentration camps and had died there.

As the Nazis were rounding up all the Jewish citizens of the island, Israel, who was a well-known tailor in the Jewish quarter of Corfu, and his entire family somehow managed to escape the carnage. The family then took refuge on the island of Erikousa.

Once they set foot on Erikousa they were immediately taken in by the locals. They were given food, as well as new clothes to hide their Jewish identity. The island’s priest even gave up his home so that Israel and his family could live there.

The islanders took other extraordinary measures. They went to the church and burned all the records there so the Nazis wouldn’t be able to determine who was Greek and who was Jewish. The Israel family were the only Jews on the island.

While German soldiers never actually occupied the small island of Erikousa, they would come periodically from nearby Corfu, searching homes for valuables — and for Jewish people. The islanders would even take turns to look out for German boats approaching the island.

Among the people who helped save the family was author Manessis Corporon’s grandmother. “She went from living a quiet life… to one of defiance, danger and resistance, risking her own life and those of her children to defy the Nazi soldiers and help save the lives of a Jewish man and his girls,” Manessis Corporon writes.

Israel remained living on the island of Erikousa after the war, but died several years later. With no Jewish cemetery or rabbi anywhere nearby, the villagers buried him just outside the Christian cemetery.

Seventy years later, the Greek-American author has finally told this remarkable story of courage, and, after painstaking research, tracked down Savvas Israel’s descendants — eventually finding them in Israel.

Their heart-rending, tearful reunion on the island of Erikousa in June of 2017 was living proof to her that evil truly doesn’t always win.

The 325-foot yacht “Christina O,” formerly owned by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, can be yours for a trifling $100,000 per day.

With new updates completed in 2015 and 2018, Valef Yachts is now chartering the ship for €90,000 ($100,000) per day for the upcoming peak summer months and €80,000($90,000) during the low season.

The yacht rental also comes with additional fees and deposits for food, fuel, and other amenities.

The yacht owes its fame to the great personalities and historic figures who sailed on the ship as guests of the Greek shipping magnate.

Winston Churchill, King Farouk of Egypt, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly are some of the people who enjoyed the luxurious hospitality of the “Christina O.”

The old Canadian war frigate had been converted into a yacht by the Greek shipowner in 1954 at a cost of $4 million at the time; Onassis had initially bought it for just a few hundred thousand dollars.

It was originally christened “Christina,” after the shipping tycoon’s daughter; when Onassis died in 1975, he left the yacht to her, his only surviving child. Christina Onassis then donated it to the Greek state to be used as a presidential yacht. The storied ship was renamed “Argo” by the Greek government at the time, but sadly it was soon abandoned and was left to rust.

In 1998, Greek shipowner John Paul Papanicolaou, a friend of the Onassis family, bought it and renamed it, adding the “O” to the original name of the ship. Papanicolaou refurbished the boat from 1999 to 2001, spending over $50 million, according to reports at the time.

Since 2005, the “Christina O” has been available for charter at a cool €450,000 per week.

Papanicolaou’s heirs sold the legendary vessel when he passed away in 2010.

It was April 6, 1941 when armed forces from Germany launched a massive attack on Greece’s northern border after the Italian army had earlier failed miserably in its attempt to invade Greece.

Adolf Hitler’s original plan was to send his Italian allies to take over the “little country” in the Mediterranean so that he could gather his troops to prepare for the ambitious campaign to attack Russia in the spring. The Italians tried to enter Greece without a fight on October 28, 1940, but they received a resounding “OXI” from Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas.

The Italians subsequently attacked from the Albanian border, but the outnumbered Greek army not only managed to defend the country, but pushed the attacking army further back to Albania and occupied more territories, dealing a powerful blow to the Italian forces.

In the spring of 1941, the German war machine was preparing for a fierce attack against Russia. In the eyes of the Nazi generals, Greece was a detail which needed to be sorted out before the Russian campaign. Little did they know about the Greek fighting spirit, which was soaring high after the victorious war on the Albanian front.

“Operation Marita” – as Germans called the attack on Greece – brought the Nazi forces to the Bulgarian border. They included entire Panzer divisions which were meant to move north to Russia soon afterward.

Meanwhile, Greece had asked for Britain’s help to stop the Germans. The kingdom sent 62,000 commonwealth troops, who were put into position along the Haliacmon Line while the Greeks chose to occupy the well-fortified Metaxas Line.

However, the Greek First Army remained on the Albanian front, in case the Italians might see their removal from Albania as a sign of weakness.

On April 6, Field Marshal Wilhelm List led the German army to attack and the Battle of Greece began. The Germans first hit Prilep with Panzer tanks, accompanied by bombing from the Luftwaffe, and cut the area off from the rest of the country. Then they moved to Monastir, with a plan to attack Florina on April 9.

This move was a major threat to the British flank and could have easily cut off the Greek troops in Albania. In the east, the Germans attacked Yugoslavia and made their advance through the Strimon Valley. To make matters worse, the northeastern region was weakened by a lack of sufficient numbers of troops.

The German army advanced quickly through Yugoslavia and headed toward Thessaloniki and defeated Greek troops at Doiran Lake. They captured the city by April 9. However, the Greek armed forces managed to do serious damage to the advancing Nazis from their strongly fortified locations in the mountains.

Fort Roupel – which was incorporated into the Metaxas Line – held out against the German attack and was only abandoned by its men after the surrender of the Greek army in Thessaloniki. The valor of the outnumbered Greek soldiers who fought there was later praised by even the German generals.

When the Germans had successfully cut them off from the rest of the country, the Greek Second Army surrendered to the attackers on April 9. After their surrender, any real resistance on the east side of the Axios River ceased.

Continuing their advance, the Germans made a push for Monastir Gap, where they attacked on April 10. With no resistance from the Yugoslavs in the gap, they decided that it would be a good opportunity to attack the British near Vevi.

Once at Servia and the Olympus pass, the Germans were halted by the British. The British forces there had orders to hold Pineios Gorge at all costs until other British troops had a chance to move to the south.

At this point, the Greek First Army found itself cut off in Albania by the German forces. Instead of surrendering to the Italians, their commander decided to surrender to the Germans on April 20. The next day it was decided that the British would withdraw to Crete and Egypt.

The Commonwealth troops were attacked on April 24, but they managed to hold their position for that entire day until they were pushed back. On April 27, German troops managed to bypass the flank and they entered Athens.

After the Germans conquered Athens, the battle of mainland Greece was over for all intents and purposes. The Allies evacuated, and during the evacuations the German troops managed to capture seven to eight thousand of their soldiers.

At the end of the evacuation the British had escaped with a total of some 50,000 men.

The Battle of Crete started on May 20, with Commonwealth troops and the Greek Army resisting the German parachutists in the first primarily airborne invasion in military history. By June 1, the Germans had conquered Crete, albeit after suffering a tremendous number of casualties.

The aftermath of the Battle of Greece and praise of Greek bravery

Over 13,300 Greek soldiers were killed during the Battle of Greece, another 62,660 were wounded and 1,290 went missing. In defending Greece against the Axis, the British lost 903 soldiers, with another 1,250 wounded and an astounding 13,900 captured.

After the Nazis had captured Greece, it was decided to split the nation up between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. The Axis stopped their campaign in the Balkans when they captured Crete.

These victories, however, would come at a heavy price for the Germans. Because of the Battle of Greece and the other battles in the Balkans, the invasion of the Soviet Union had to be delayed. This meant that the German troops would probably end up fighting not only the Soviet Army but the brutal Russian winter as well.

By any measure, Greece’s resistance to the Axis forces had been remarkable. From the time of the first Italian attack on October 28, 1940 until June 1, 1941 when Crete fell, it took a total 216 days to conquer Greece militarily.

The much larger and militarily powerful nation of France fell to the Germans in only forty-three days, while Norway resisted for a total of sixty-one days. Poland put up fierce resistance for  thirty days, Belgium eighteen, and Holland fell in only five days.

The nations of Denmark and Czechoslovakia surrendered without firing a shot against the Germans.

The protagonists of World War II, both allies and enemies, spoke highly of the valor shown by the Greek soldiers. Russian leader Joseph Stalin, in an open letter read on Radio Moscow during the war, said “the Russian people will always be grateful to the Greeks for delaying the German army long enough for winter to set in, thereby giving us the precious time we needed to prepare. We will never forget.”

Russian Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov wrote in his memoirs: “If the Russian Peoples succeeded in raising their tired bodies in front of the gates of Moscow, to contain and set back the German torrent, they owe it to the Greek People, who delayed the German Divisions all the time needed. The gigantomachy of Crete was the climax of the Greek contribution.”

Hitler’s chief of staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel stated during the Nuremberg trials: “The unbelievably strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay, the outcome of the war would have been different in the eastern front and in the war in general.”

Adolf Hitler himself spoke about the valiance of the Greek fighters in 1944 to famous German photographer and cinematographer Leni Riefenstahl, as she related in her memoirs.

Hitler told her, “The entrance of Italy to the War was proven catastrophic for us. Had the Italians not attacked Greece and had they not needed our help, the war would have taken a different course. We would have had time to capture Leningrad and Moscow before the Russian cold weather set in.”

In 1941, in a speech made at the Reichstag, Hitler also paid tribute to the bravery of the Greeks: “It must be said, for the sake of historical truth, that amongst all our opponents, only the Greeks fought with such endless courage and defiance of death.”

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said of the Greeks who fought the Germans: “Until now we would say that the Greeks fight like heroes. From now on, we will say that heroes fight like Greeks.”

Remnants of Mykonos of centuries ago were revealed after excavations conducted by the  Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades in collaboration with the Municipality of Mykonos.

According to Mykonos Voice, the excavations on the site in front of the Aghios Nikolaos chapel revealed the foundations of the old Yalos pier and the islet on which the chapel was built, connected by a bridge linking the two sites.

At the same time, the excavation brings to light the Medieval settlement of Kastro next to Paraportiani and the Medieval Tower next to the church called Pyrgiani is proceeding at a rapid pace.

Municipal council member Miltiadis Atzamoglou said that “The finds that come to the surface offer important information about the life of the island’s inhabitants at that time. At the same time, they improve the area aesthetically and further highlight the historical value of the traditional settlement of Chora of our island.”

On April 6, 1896, the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, at the Panathenaic Stadium with athletes from 14 countries participating and Greek Spyros Louis winning in the marathon run.

The International Olympic Committee met for the first time in Paris in June 1894 and chose Greece as the site of the inaugural modern Olympiad, appropriately since Greece is the place where the Olympic Games originated.

The ancient games are believed to have started in 776 BC in Olympia, in Peloponnese,  where athletes competed in one event: a foot race. Over the years, other events were added, including chariot racing, boxing, wrestling, and the pentathlon.

Participants, who were young men from Greek city-states and colonies, often competed in the nude, as a way to celebrate the human body. The last ancient Olympics are thought to have taken place in 393 AD.

At the first modern Olympics, only men participated. Specifically, 241 male athletes representing 14 nations competed in 43 events.

Greek runner Spyros Louis won the marathon run, sending the home crowd into a frenzy. America’s James Connolly became the first modern Olympic champion when he won the triple jump on the opening day of the Games. For his achievement, he received a silver medal and an olive branch.

Host Greece, France, Great Britain, and Germany had the largest number of athletes participating. However, it was the United States that took home the most medals (11), followed by Greece (10) and Germany (6).

Overall, America placed first, second or third in 20 events while Greece scored in 46 events and Germany placed in 13 competitions.

The first Olympiad closed on April 15, 1896.

The statue of Aphrodite of Milos, which was discovered on April 8, 1820, changed western culture in the 19th century, creating a certain ambivalence about the idea of female beauty.

Aphrodite – the goddess of love for ancient Greeks – had been depicted by artists of that time as a woman of exceptional beauty. The Aphrodite of Milos statue is one of the most beautiful interpretations of the goddess and is believed to be the work of sculptor Alexandros of Antioch.

The nineteenthth century was a time when artists and writers were rejecting the perfection and the timelessness of classic art. The statue of Aphrodite of Milos – or “Venus de Milo” as it is known by many – embodies the modern world’s ambivalence toward classical beauty.

The existing enigma of what Aphrodite’s hands were doing has also been a subject of extensive study and countless interpretations since its discovery.

Experts believe that the original statue depicted the Greek myth of “The Judgment of Paris” and Aphodite is holding an apple in one hand. According to the myth, Eris, the goddess of discord, is angry for not being invited to a feast and crashes the party with a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides upon which was inscribed “For the fairest one.”

Goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite all staked claims to the apple. Zeus refused to act as judge, declaring instead that the mortal Paris of Troy would do the job. All three goddesses tried to bribe the mortal judge, but Aphrodite’s bribe – Helen, the most beautiful woman on Earth – won. The statue is thought to depict Aphrodite admiring her prize.

So, in essence, the statue of Aphrodite of Milos shows the results of a beauty contest, the first in Western Civilization.

Several art historians, academics and artists have claimed that the beauty of Aphrodite of Milos lies in her missing arms, i.e., in her very imperfection. Salvador Dali created the “Venus de Milo with Drawers,” a half-size plaster reproduction of the famous marble statue altered with pompon-decorated drawers in the figure’s forehead, breasts, stomach, abdomen, and left knee.

Yet in so many ways, and for many artists, the perfect harmony in body proportions and facial features has shaped the idea of female beauty since the discovery of the marble statue.

According to experts, the Aphrodite of Milos inspired women of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century to aspire to an unrealistic ideal of beauty. These unrealistic beauty standards conveyed to the public propelled the modern cult of beauty.

Modern society places a high value on physical appearance, and beauty has become a factor in determining worth. Beauty pageants in particular propel the convention of judgement based on appearance.

Examining the standards of beauty in ancient Greece and comparing them to current beauty standards, it can be argued that despite the passing centuries, beauty standards have remained remarkably similar.

The main similarity lies in the belief that there is a single ideal of flawlessness to be achieved. With or without arms, the symmetry, proportion, and harmony found in the Aphrodite of Milos have been essential elements in our determination of beauty.

The discovery of the statue on Milos

The day of April 8, 1820 found Milos Island farmer Giorgos (or Theodoros) Kentrotas digging in ancient ruins in his field in order to unearth some stones he needed.

Kentrotas instead found pieces of a marble statue which turned out to be one of the most famous statues in the world — the Aphrodite of Milos.

Providentially, French naval officers happened to be conducting excavations for ancient artifacts nearby at the very same time. When the pickax of the Greek farmer hit something unusual and he dug out a piece of a marble statue, two French navy sailors who were participating in the excavations took notice.

Kentrotas sensed that his discovery was valuable, and tried to place the dirt back over the marble statue again, fearing that the French would take it.

However, the French were not fooled by the farmer. They gathered around his digging spot and urged him to dig further. Kentrotas complied and kept digging until all the pieces of precious marble were unearthed.

The fragments of the sculpture were moved to Kentrotas’ sheepfold, while the French had already begun to communicate with consuls and ambassadors of their homelands in the cities of Constantinople and Smyrna.

French naval officer Olivier Voutier was in charge of the excavations for antiquities on the island of Milos. He had studied archaeology, so when he saw the discovery, he realized the immense value of the statue and informed his compatriots that he did not have enough money to buy it.

Along with the Aphrodite statue, the French discovered two dedicatory plaques and a base plinth with an inscription of the name of the sculptor. The  missing arms of the statue were oddly never found.

The French began official negotiations for purchasing the Aphrodite of Milo statue soon after its discovery. The initial price offered was 400 piasters, known in Greece at the time as grosi (γρόσι), the currency used by the Ottoman Empire until 1844.

Other parties then entered the negotiations, making procedures more complicated. The Ottomans and French Admiral Jules Dumont d’Urville made competing offers for the priceless antiquity, which resulted in the delay of the transfer of the statue to France.

The French finally won, and the surviving pieces of the Aphrodite of Milos were safely placed aboard a ship to be transferred to France. The beloved statue has been displayed at the Louvre Museum ever since.

Greece is relaxing its strict regulations regarding its rich underwater heritage and has recently announced that it will allow divers to tour the sites of certain ancient shipwrecks.

Until now, only archaeologists and divers with special permits could marvel at and explore the ancient finds in the deeps of the Aegean Sea due to fears that their countless antiquities would be looted.

The first ancient shipwreck to be opened to the general public is near the island of Alonissos, in the northern Aegean. Divers will soon be allowed to tour the magnificent shipwreck of Peristera, named for the uninhabited Greek island opposite Alonissos where it was discovered in the early 1990s.

The cargo ship was laden with thousands of amphorae, or vases, most likely containing wine, when it sank in the late fifth century BC.

Non-divers will be able to experience the site through virtual reality in a nearby information center on land.

Thousands of ancient vases, the vast majority of them intact, lie in layers at the Peristera shipwreck site. Fish, sponges and other sea creatures have made the amphorae their home over the millennia, adding color and life to the site.

In some places, the ancient ship’s cargo towers above divers as they swim along the perimeter of the wreck.

Amazingly, the ancient shipwreck still keeps many mysteries to itself. Only a small part of it has been excavated, and experts have yet to determine how or why the ship sank, or what other treasures it might have carried beneath the estimated 4000 amphorae it carried in its hold.

The Akathist Hymn, which is chanted on the first five successive Fridays of Lent in the Eastern Orthodox Church, is a profound devotional poem dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Devotional hymns to the Theotokos are as ancient as the first Christian church. The Byzantine Empire from its very inception in Constantinople during the fourth century, closely allied itself to the Virgin Mary, and always sought Her protection and intercessions.

The Akathist Hymn, which in its present form is the work of many different ecclesiastical hymnographers, existed even before it was formally accepted by the Church in 626 AD.

The Kontakion “To the Invincible Champion… we ascribe the victory” was added at that time. It came to be known as “The Akathist Hymn” because of the following miracle, which was attributed to the intercession of the Theotokos.

The Emperor of Byzantium Heracleios was starting out on an expedition to fight an incursion of the Persians on their own lands, when there suddenly appeared barbaric hordes, consisting mostly of Avars, outside the walls of Constantinople.

The siege lasted several months, and it was apparent that the outnumbered troops of the Queen City were becoming desperate. However, as history records, the faith of its people made the impossible, possible.

The Venerable Patriarch Sergius, accompanied by clergy and the Byzantine official Vonos, marched unceasingly along the great walls of Constantinople, holding an icon of the Theotokos, which bolstered the faith of the defenders of freedom when they saw it. And the hoped-for miracle came soon after.

Suddenly, as the chronicler narrates, a great storm with huge tidal waves destroyed most of the enemy fleet, and a full retreat from Constantinople ensued quickly thereafter.

Seeing this miracle take place before them, the faithful of Constantinople spontaneously ran to the Church of the Theotokos at Vlachernae on the Golden Horn. With the Patriarch Sergius officiating, they prayed all night, singing praises to the Virgin Mary — without even sitting down. Hence the title of the Hymn “Akathistos”, which means in Greek “not seated.”

Although the Akathist is a strictly Orthodox service which originated from a historical event involving Byzantium, it has been highly honored by other Christian denominations. The deeply emotional poem has been metrically translated by outstanding poets in English, Latin, German, Russian, Rumanian, Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish and other languages.

The great appeal of the Akathist Hymn is due to the lyric quality of the composition as well as the simplicity of the plot: the happy mystery of the Incarnation of the Logos of God. This is the theme of a recent presentation on the study of “The Bible as Literature” at Indiana State University by scholar Emmy Karavellas.

She said that it relates to man’s absolute need to glorify and praise what is sacred, and especially the Incarnation of the Lord through the Virgin Mary. This tendency of mankind to incarnate the supernatural — and “immaterialize” what is material — gives people a sense of deliverance, which we all seek and yearn for in our lives.

Year after year, people crowd the Orthodox churches on Friday evenings to listen to this wonderful service which has the power to bring human beings closer to their Creator and whose music, rhyme and meter instill in them a spiritual euphoria.

The iconic hymn has also been sung by popular Greek singer Glykeria.

Each year on April 15, hundreds of different stories are related about the most famous maritime tragedy in modern history. It was on this day in 1912 that the Titanic, the largest British passenger liner ever constructed, sank in the North Atlantic Ocean after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.

Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making it one of modern history’s deadliest commercial marine disasters during peacetime.

Another story, certainly less well-known and without the glamour of the world-famous film adaptations, is the tale of four Greek men whose fate is forever intertwined with that of the giant ship. They were the only Greek passengers to ever sail on the Titanic.

Panagiotis Lymberopoulos, Vassilios Katavelos, Apostolos Chronopoulos and Demetrios Chronopoulos all came from the same village, Agios Sostis in the Messinia region. The last two men were brothers.

Like many of the passengers, the four friends were young – the oldest one was only 33 years old – and they wanted to go to America in search of a better life. Tragically, their dreams, like those of so many others who perished on that starry night, never came true.

They all died in the most famous shipwreck in maritime history, and the bodies of the two brothers have never been found.

Lymberopoulos was the owner of a small factory in New York who had traveled back to Greece to visit his homeland for his son’s baptism. Despite his wife’s warning, he decided to return to America after the baptism — and he took the Chronopoulos brothers with him.

Lymberopoulos was the only one who managed to be on one of the lifeboats since his knowledge of English helped him find his way to the deck. However, the lifeboat he was on was never found. The tragedy of his death was compounded by the fact that he had changed his ticket, along with Katavelos, just so the four could travel together on the Titanic.

A small memorial erected outside the local church in their village in Messinia serves as the only memorial their families will ever have of the men. It is also a small piece of the history of the Titanic disaster, and an eternal reminder of the unforgiving sea.

The Greek parliament on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a motion which demands that Germany pay more than 300 billion euros in reparations for World War I and World War II.

A large majority of Greek lawmakers supported giving a mandate to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to seek reparations from Germany.The Wednesday vote marks the first official parliamentary decision on the Tsipras 2015 campaign pledge to raise the emotionally charged issue.

The motion calls on the government to “take all the necessary diplomatic and legal action in order to claim and fully satisfy all the demands of the Greek state for World War I and II.”

During the 12-hour discussion on Wednesday, the government did not say how much money it intended to ask from Berlin. The vote follows a 2016 House committee report, which estimates the amount at between 270 and 309 billion euros.

Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis spoke of  “a historic moment for the Greek Parliament,” telling reporters that it is the government’s duty to issue a “note verbale” to the German government, the first step in demanding reparations according to international law.

The European Parliament and the parliaments of the European Union member states will be duly informed, he added.

Seeking the damages is a “moral, political and historic obligation which the current Parliament could not but honor,” Voutsis said, adding that the demands were never forfeited and remain “active.”

Berlin has repeatedly said that there is no issue of pending war reparations to Greece. German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert last October said that that the issue of war reparations to Greece is an issue that is legally and politically closed.

“We have actually discussed this issue many times. Our position is that the issue of German reparations has been legally and politically regulated definitively. Nothing has changed in our position,” Seibert explained.

The statue of Alexander the Great was raised in central Athens on Wednesday morning by workers from the municipality of Athens.

The statue is located at the intersection of Amalias and Vasilissis Olgas (Queen Olga) avenues in downtown Athens, just a few meters from the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

However, the stunning 3.45-meter (11.5 foot) high statue was not created recently.

The equestrian statue of Alexander was made by the sculptor Giannis Pappas in 1993, but it was never positioned in a central place in the Greek capital.

The statue was obtained by the country’s Minister of Culture, which later handed ownership over to the Municipality of Athens.

Ever since Pappas died in 2005, until now, it had found a home in the garden of Pappas’ workshop in the Zografou neighborhood, in an area which belongs to the Benaki Museum.

It took twenty-six years for the statue to be positioned in central Athens, probably due to political and other reasons. Such a move could be interpreted by some as a provocation which would not have helped in the negotiations for the name-deal between Athens and Skopje.

The statue presents the great Greek warrior astride his beloved horse, Voukefalas (Bucephalus).

The official ceremony and the unveiling of the statue of Alexander will take place on Friday.

George Gordon, Lord Byron is one of the first and best-known philhellenes, who actively participated in Greece’s War of Independence, eventually losing his life in Missolonghi on April 19, 1824.

Born in 1788, George Gordon, who had the title of Lord Byron, became the leading figure of British Romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century. He lived a full life in every aspect and died young for a cause he loved, which made him into even more of a romantic legend than he had been while a living poet.

Young, handsome and aristocratic, Byron lived exuberantly and had innumerable romances and scandalous relationships — although his acts of selfless heroism became part of a wider historic struggle.

For Greeks, Λόρδος Βύρωνας, as he is called, epitomized the concept of philhellenism because he died at the age of 36 for the freedom of a homeland that was not even his own.

Byron was also a bitter opponent of Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon sculptures, denouncing the “theft” in the poem “The Curse of Minerva.”

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Early years

George Gordon Byron the 6th was born on Jan. 22, 1788 in London, into an aristocratic family. At the age of ten he inherited the English Barony of Byron of Rochdale from his uncle, thereby becoming “Lord Byron.”

He was born with a problem in his right leg which left him with a limp that followed him throughout his life and affected his character and work. His life changed drastically when he became a peer of the realm.

In 1803, Byron fell in love with his cousin Mary Chaworth. This unfulfilled love found creative expression in his first love poems. From 1805 until 1808, Byron attended  Cambridge University, with sexual scandals and excesses becoming a prominent part of his student years. Horseriding, boxing and gambling were also added to his pastimes and addictions.

At the age of 21, Byron entered the House of Lords, and in the following year he began his long journey to the Mediterranean, where he would write one of his most famous poems, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” which described the impressions of a young man traveling in unfamiliar lands.

During his tour of the Mediterranean in 1809, Byron visited Greece for the first time and immediately fell in love with the country. After meeting Ali Pasha, the Ottoman ruler at the time, poet traveled all over the country and visited all the monuments of Greek civilization.

At the same time, Lord Byron was falling in love with the daughter of the British consul Theodoros Makris, and he dedicated his famous poem “Daughter of Athens,” written in 1809 to her. He stayed in Greece for another ten months, following various adventures such as swimming in the Straits of the Hellespont (better-known as the Dardanelles), imitating the feat of the ancient Greek hero Leander.

In 1811, while suffering from malaria, Byron decided to return to Britain. He lost his mother as well during that year, but the publication and success of “The Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” along with a series of new sex scandals and stormy romances, helped him overcome his grief.

His subsequent poetry collections brought him even more money, which he spent profusely on distractions and sexual adventures, with his debts accumulating accordingly once more.

As a way of escaping ephemeral relationships, he married Ana (Annabella) Isabella Milbank, a highly educated and cultivated woman, in January of 1815, and in December of that year their daughter, Augusta Ada, was born.

The marriage did not last long, however, as in January of the following year the union ended, with Anabella leaving Byron. The once-dissolute poet soon returned to a life of debauchery, epitomizing the quintessential “troubled romantic poet.”

Self exile, and selflessness, in Greece’s War of Independence

In April of 1816, in a particularly hostile atmosphere caused by his nonstop scandals, which forced him to avoid appearing in public, Byron left England, never to return. He traveled to Geneva, where he befriended the writer Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary.

In Italy, Byron he continued his erotic adventures, which were captured in his collection “Don Juan.” Being in Italy, he actively supported the liberation movement which had broken out there.

Sometime during 1823, Byron received an invitation to actively support the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman rule. He spent a tremendous amount of his personal fortune to repair ships in the Greek fleet and he even set up his own military squad, composed of fighters from Souli.

After staying for six months in Cephalonia, he decided to move to Morias in the Peloponnese, but he finally stayed in Missolonghi. While there, he contacted Alexandros Mavrokordatos, to whom he donated another large installment of his personal fortune for the furthering of the Greek revolution.

At the same time, Lord Byron acted as a channel of communication between Greek fighters and British philhellenes in the creation of the first revolutionary loan, as a member of the London Philhellenic Committee.

Seeing the political controversies which had already erupted among the leaders of the Greek rebels, Byron called for the exclusive use of money for the liberation of the nation, instead of being used for political purposes.

Along with his concern for the military course of the Greek Revolution, the English aristocrat assumed the role of the bridge between the chieftains. He points out in one of his letters: “As I come here to support not a faction, but a nation and to work with honest people rather than speculators or abusers (charges that are exchanged daily among the Greeks), it will take much effort to avoid and I understand that this will be very difficult, because I have already received invitations from more than one of the parties fighting, always on the grounds that they are the true representatives of the nation.”

In a letter to a trusted friend in September 1823, Byron further complained: “The Greeks seem to be at a greater danger among them, rather than from the enemy’s attacks.”

After attempting for so long to mediate the infighting among the leaders of the Greek Revolution, Byron suddenly fell ill in February of 1824. The great philhellene, perhaps the greatest there ever was, died on April 19, 1824 in Missolonghi, at the young age of 36.

The lamentations after the great poet’s death came not only from among the Greek freedom fighters who saw him as hero of their own people, but also in England, where the distinguished romantic poet was mourned publicly.

Dionysios Solomos – Greece’s national poet, who also wrote the National Anthem – eventually composed a long ode to the memory of Lord Byron, certainly one of the greatest admirers the nation Greece has ever had.

                                       (Makarezos, Pattakos, Papadopoulos)

For the army colonels who overthrew the government and established a seven-year long cruel dictatorship, April 21, 1967 was the day of the Revolution and the rebirth of the Greek nation. For most Greeks, however, it is a date they would like to be able to forget.

For the people who were jailed and tortured, it is a date which brings back dark memories and nightmares, even after half a century. The same applies for the families of those who were killed by the junta.

Many politicians, as well as Constantine, the young king of Greece, feared that the army would most likely intervene to get Greece out of the political turmoil of the mid 1960s. It was expected that it would be the generals; however, it was three lower-ranking officers who took everyone by surprise when, in the space of one day, they took over power.

It was Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos and Colonel Nikolaos Makarezos who ordered the tanks to roll in Athens. Greek soldiers took over the most crucial areas of the capital, then arrested all the key politicians and Lieutenant General Grigorios Spandidakis, the Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army.

Tanks rolling at Athens’ Syntagma Square

On the morning of April 21st, 1967, Greeks woke up to a nightmare: the ominous rumble of tanks, occasional rifle shots and military hymns playing on the radio. Then came the sinister announcement on the radio: “The Hellenic Armed Forces undertake the governance of the country”.

After the politicians, many individuals,  both prominent figures and ordinary citizens, who belonged to Greece’s Left, were arrested in a methodical manner. The 10,000 names had already been placed on a list by the military. Those rounded up included personalities such as composer Mikis Theodorakis and other lesser-known artists and academics.

The excuse of “the colonels” as the junta was described by many – was that Greece was in grave danger of falling into the hands of the communists. The “black-listed” 10,000 individuals were sent to prison or to the Yaros island concentration camp. The least fortunate of all the thousands of political prisoners suffered brutal tortures, leaving them marked for life.

The junta suspended 11 articles of Greece’s Constitution to establish the regime. Freedom of speech ceased to exist, with strict censorship rules instituted for radio, newspapers and, later, television.

At the same time, many Greeks became informants to the police, spying on their neighbors. Anyone could get arrested if someone told the police that the “culprit” had spoken badly about the colonels and the regime.

Colonel Papadopoulos leading a folk dance

As a smokescreen to hide all their shameful acts against their own people – what then-U.S. Ambassador Phillips Talbot had called “a rape of democracy” – the dictators started a campaign of public works, such as building new schools, hospitals, factories, stadiums and roads. That made them likeable to some Greeks, but it was not enough to make up for what was happening in the country.

Realizing that they were isolated from the rest of Europe, and condemned by most Greeks and especially those who were in self-imposed exile, the junta made some efforts to be more democratic, more human, more likeable. They held huge public celebrations on the April 21st anniversary and other feasts attended by thousands of Greeks.

The resistance inside Greece and abroad continued throughout the seven long years of the colonels’ rule. Politicians, intellectuals, artists and academics who lived abroad joined their voices to tell the world that the colonels were violating human rights and were holding Greece captive inside their ruthless regime.

When the junta finally succumbed to the anger of the repressed Greek people and the outcry from around the globe, they decided to call elections. First, Colonel Papadopoulos appointed Spyridon Markezinis as Prime Minister of Greece, and then appointed himself President of the Republic.

Some people believed that they would be democratic elections, unlike the rigged 1968 referendum to change the Constitution. No one will ever know what could have happened if it hadn’t been for the uprising of the Polytechneio.

In November of 1973, a few hundred students and other Greek citizens, fed up with the repression of the regime, occupied the building of the National Technical University of Athens and called for the colonels to leave power. The events of November 17, when the premises of the university were brutally cleared out by the military, left several dead.

The turmoil gave an opportunity to hardliner Colonel Dimitrios Ioannidis to topple Papadopoulos on November 25 — with yet another coup. His ambitious plan to overthrow the President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, so that Greece and Cyprus could unite, caused the Turkish invasion of the island on July 20, 1974. Only three days later, Ioannidis resigned, finally opening the way for Constantine Karamanlis to return to Greece and form a democratic government.

The nightmarish seven-year long dictatorship of the colonels had finally ended for Greece — but the plight of Cyprus had only begun, as the northern part of the island is still occupied by Turkey to this day.

by Leslie Absher

When I was just a baby, my father was sent to Greece for his first field assignment with the CIA. It was the summer of 1966 when we arrived, nine months before the military coup in Greece. The day the colonels took over the government, I was playing in the garden and singing Greek nursery songs. I had no idea that ordinary people were about to be arrested and detained in secret prisons all over Greece.

It wasn’t until years later, when I was in my twenties and we no longer lived in Greece, that I learned about the close relationship between the CIA and the military dictatorship. By then, I knew Dad was working for the CIA.

Questions about his role in the Greek coup plagued me. Had he known about it beforehand? Had he helped set it up? My questions, along with the fact that he had lied to me as a child, telling me a series of cover stories — that he worked for the State Department or the Pentagon, and not the CIA — made me feel I couldn’t trust him.

When I turned forty, I realized I could go on not trusting him or I could try and learn the truth once and for all. If we were ever going to have a relationship — a real one — I had to find out once and for all. Was he a nerdy civil servant just collecting information, or an arrogant, vicious secret agent bribing government officials and beating prisoners?

It was late October when I found a parking spot and headed toward UC Berkeley’s main library. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I thought. Daughters aren’t supposed to investigate their own fathers. We’re supposed to talk and visit and be in each other’s lives. None of that applied to me and Dad. Our monthly phone calls were usually about the weather or our cats. He never asked about my wife, Susan.

Inside the library, my shoulders tensed as I made my way toward the Greek History section. As I scanned the long shelf before me, a thin blue book jumped out: “The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels.” I slid the volume out and dropped into a chair to read. According to the author, there were many rumors regarding the coup. One was that a group of generals had plotted to take over, and another blamed the CIA. The author said that neither of those rumors was true. If the CIA had played no role, then neither had my father. A balloon of hope rose inside me.

When I was a child, I trusted my father. He was good. Upright. He was the one who held my hand as we waded into the sea. When it got too deep for me to stand, I climbed onto his back. His neck smelled like coconut oil. As a girl of five, I clutched him like a starfish, letting him take the brunt of each wave with his pale and hairless chest. I felt only the gentle rise and fall of each swell. But when a big wave rose up, I ducked quickly behind his shoulders. I trusted him to protect me.

I returned to the stacks, found another book, and flipped to the index. Dad’s name wasn’t there, and I exhaled. Then I suddenly saw the name of one of his Greek-American CIA buddies. I remembered John from growing up. He was funny. I liked him. I flipped to where John was mentioned, and what I read made my stomach drop.

According to the author, it was John who gave the dictators the green light to invade Cyprus in 1974. After the Greek army landed on the island, Turkish troops followed right behind. People died, and families were torn apart. It’s still a divided country — and Dad’s good friend John had played a key role in that debacle.

I dragged myself around for the rest of the afternoon, going to student appointments and helping high schoolers with essays.

The next morning, I opened my laptop and Googled Dad’s name. An interview from ten years earlier popped up. “Intelligence is my favorite subject,” Dad had told the interviewer. The words stung, because I wanted him to say that I was his favorite subject. Or my sister was, or something personal. But he didn’t talk about us.

The interview covered Dad’s work in Vietnam. The journalist said Dad had “zipped around his province in a helicopter, and when necessary called in B-52 strikes against suspected NVA [North Vietnamese Army] troop concentrations.” Dad had ordered bombs to be dropped? I felt queasy. But the next sentence stopped me cold.

“I ran an interrogation center in Vietnam,” Dad said.

I stared at the page. An interrogation center? Wasn’t that spy code for “torture chamber”? My skin felt like ice. Grim scenes ran through my mind — of dank cells, prisoners who refused to talk, who got slapped around by men who lied and played mind games. Or worse.

“I never saw any brutality,” Dad had told the journalist. I didn’t believe him.

I sat numbly staring out the kitchen window until I heard Susan padding up the stairs.

“My dad ran an interrogation center in Vietnam,” I said as she entered the room. “I just read it in an interview.”

We locked eyes.

“He said he didn’t see any brutality.”

Maybe Susan would say that what Dad had said was possible, that not all CIA interrogations involved torture. As a trial lawyer, she came home each day after spending hours scrutinizing the real world. When her clients were at fault, she advised them to settle. I trusted her read of world events, her analytical mind, and her sense of ethics.

“No brutality at an interrogation center in Vietnam?” she asked. “That’s hard to believe.”

I knew she was right.

Back at the UC library the next week, I picked up a book I had ordered and settled into an overstuffed chair to read. The moment I opened the book, the library with all its college comforts fell away, and the Greek colonels and their dirty practices came alive.

During the junta, prisoners were held on small, barren islands. In the first year alone, almost 3,000 people were detained. Many were hung upside down while guards struck their feet with wooden sticks or metal pipes. As I read, each scenario fed into the next and the next, like one long and continuous nightmare.

I searched for information about who actually did the torturing. It was the Greek security and military police, not the CIA. The father I had hoped to find re-surfaced inside my heart.

But as I drove back to Oakland, my “good father” faded away. The torture wasn’t abstract. It had happened in Greece, my first home, the place I felt I most belonged. The CIA may not have tortured individuals, but did they know about it or authorize it?

I parked the car and went into the kitchen and started to clean. I moved from counter to sink, furiously slamming dishes around. In the process, I knocked over a bottle of cooking oil. A huge puddle flowed onto the floor.

Susan came into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Torture,” I said, as I knelt down and started swiping at the oil with a wad of paper towels.

Susan made a move to comfort me. I shook my head. I couldn’t soften to receive her embrace. I lifted the sopping towels, heavy and dripping with yellow oil, stormed over to the trash, and heaved them inside.

Later, I looked out the window at the pine trees which reached high into the sky above our house, trees that had kept me company since I first moved to California to live with Susan. Today, they were silent, distant witnesses, offering nothing.

While prisoners were getting beaten, I had been playing inside my garden, singing Greek nursery songs. For years, I had idealized my childhood, holding fast to a romanticized notion of the country and my life. Now, a truer picture surfaced. And it wasn’t pretty. I needed to dig deeper.

On a university website, I found an interview with a government official who had worked at the US embassy during the dictatorship. He said the US had known a coup was imminent. What’s more, he said that there was proof of it.

I thought back to what Dad had always told me — “We didn’t know what the colonels were planning. We were focused on other things.” But this State Department official said that that wasn’t true; it was a lie. He said that there were Greek-American CIA officers who were sympathetic to the colonels and that some of them might have known the coup was about to happen, but decided not to report it. I thought of John.

Fingers of heat fanned out on the back of my neck.

I went to the State Department’s website and scrolled through a cache of declassified documents. Most were dry accountings. I was about to give up when I came across a memo dated before the coup which said that a group of colonels had been meeting for years, and that in one of these meetings Greece’s soon-to-be dictator warned that, if the political situation continued to deteriorate, “drastic action, a dictatorship, will be needed.”

I stopped reading. My hope that the CIA, and by extension, my father, was innocent, was now over. Whoever wrote this memo knew what the colonels were up to and did nothing. Feelings of blame and anger stormed inside me. At Dad. At his colleagues. The CIA. The State Department. They all blended into one culprit.

“You have to ask him,” I thought. My arm felt heavy when I picked up the phone.

“I found declassified documents about Greece,” I said when Dad answered. My hands shook. “There’s a State Department field report that says the colonels were plotting a coup. You said we didn’t know about that, but we did.”

Dad’s deep baritone voice stayed even. “That’s not what I said. What I said was that we didn’t have any specific information about a specific group of colonels. We had a lot of suspicion in those days. There were always military plots.”

No, I thought. This was about a specific meeting of the specific colonels who launched the coup.

“There’s something else,” I said, moving on. “An embassy official has a theory about Greek-American intelligence officers.” John’s name hung in the air, unspoken. “He says a group of Greek-American officers might have known about the coup but decided not to tell anyone.” I wasn’t supposed to be doing this—disturbing the pile of Cold War rubble that had been sitting quietly inside both of us for years.

“This guy can say what he wants,” Dad said. “You’re asking a lot of questions about the colonels. Why are you so interested in them?”

I thought back to Athens, to our yard of white pebbles, to the fish pond with its fat golden fish, and to the pine trees of our quiet back yard.

“Because it’s part of my life,” I said. “Because we were there.”

I told Susan about the call later. “He lied to me,” I said.

“He isn’t allowed to say what he did,” she said. “He’s trained to deny it, to offer plausible cover stories.”

Over the next few days, I tried to sort through our conversation. It was a State Department document that said the colonels had been plotting a coup. It wasn’t from the CIA — so perhaps Dad really didn’t didn’t know about it.

The two agencies are notorious for not sharing information with each other. And maybe he didn’t keep up with the latest declassified documents about Greece. But then, why change his story? Did he change it — or just clarify it?

Not long afterward, I was sitting in my car after a student appointment when Dad called. It was raining hard. We spent a few minutes talking about nothing, and then Dad said, “Say, can I ask you something?”

“Okay,” I answered.

“What made you so mad at me years ago?”

It took me a second to figure out what he might have meant. “You mean growing up?”

“Right. What was that about?”

My heart hammered inside my chest. I wasn’t prepared for this. How did I say, You were absent, preoccupied. Your work always seemed more important than me?

“It was kind of an accumulation of things,” I stammered.

“Can you tell me more about that?”

My list of lifelong disappointments — grievances I’d told therapists, and friends, and Susan, but never Dad — stretched wide inside me. The constant relocations. Burying himself in work after Mom died. Never bothering to meet my girlfriends except that brief lunch with Susan that started with a stiff handshake. The fact that he hadn’t come to my wedding. But that felt too scary. Dad was waiting. I had to say something.

“There was that time a few years after I graduated from college when you and I made arrangements to meet at a café. Do you remember that?”

“Okay,” Dad said, sounding unsure.

“On my way, I stopped at a pay phone and checked my answering machine. There was a message from you. You weren’t coming. You just drove on through. No visit. No interest in my life.”

My eyes stung with tears.

“I’m sorry,” Dad said. He paused. “I should have made the time.”

I stared out the windshield at the watery image of Oakland — cars going by, people rushing around. I’d lived here for the past ten years, but it suddenly wasn’t the same city anymore. It was new. Everything was.

A few months after that conversation, Susan and I made plans to attend a cousin’s wedding in San Antonio. I called Dad to see if he wanted us to visit, because his house was only a few hours away and we had rented a car.

“Sure,” he said, surprising me. “That would be great!”

On the day of our visit, Susan and I drove to the Marriott, where Dad had arranged a room for us. A moment later, Dad pulled into a spot next to ours. I got out and walked toward him. He was still tall and imposing, the way he was during my childhood, but now he used a cane. It had been almost five years since we’d seen each other.

We smiled at each other warmly and came together for a hug. After we hugged, tears welled up, and I looked away, which made me catch only the tail end of the hug he gave to Susan.

The three of us made our way into the hotel. Dad shuffled up to the front desk, made the arrangements, and the concierge handed us our room card.

“I’ll wait for you guys in the car,” Dad said, and headed back outside.

Susan and I wheeled our bags down the hallway.

“I can’t believe how well things are going,” I whispered.

“I know.”

We opened the door to our room and stepped into a spacious, light-filled suite.

Susan stopped abruptly. “Wow,” she said.

I followed her eyes to the middle of the room and saw a single king-size bed. Not two beds. One. I stared at the bed and what it meant.

The rest of our visit went smoothly. For the very first time in so long, things felt good between us.

A few years later, Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He called to say he had only weeks to live. I had spent years researching the coup — reading books and websites, interviewing people. I had even gone to Greece. But things were better then between me and Dad.

And now he had cancer. I flew to Texas to say goodbye. I held his hand and whispered that I loved him.

After he died, I stopped researching the junta. I told myself that whatever he had done in Vietnam or Greece or elsewhere was his business. But I still couldn’t let it go. I wrote an essay that said everything I wanted to say — about my love for Greece and Dad, but also about my unresolved questions about the CIA and torture. I sent it to an online Greek news site, and they accepted it.

After it posted, I got an e-mail from someone named Steve.

“I just read your essay. I knew your dad well,” it said.

My pulse raced.

“I met your dad when I joined the CIA. We spent hours talking in Greek and reviewing the state of play in Greece. He was a class act, and one of the officers who truly loved the country.”

Then Steve said something that stunned me.

“I want to assure you that your dad and the other officers serving there were not directly involved in any form of torture. We collected intelligence in response to requirements, but torture or coercion is not in our genes. The agency has changed. Pre–9/11, there were rules. Post–9/11, the gloves came off.”

Doubt flared inside me. Steve was in the CIA. Of course, he would defend the agency. I kept reading.

“Did the right-wing dictatorship practice torture? Undeniably, yes. Did we know about it? I am sure that we did. Could we have stopped it? Our mission was to report on the situation in Greece. US policymakers at the time elected to support the regime.”

Steve and I talked via Skype later that day. I watched his face, and scrutinized his words. I believed him. In a follow up email, he added, “Your dad was a thoughtful, sincere individual. We all trusted his judgment.”

I stared at the screen. This was the father I had searched for. The one I knew to be true, but for so long had doubted. I would never know everything. Instead, I would have to find a way to live with not knowing. But maybe this was enough.

I read the lines again. “Your Dad was a thoughtful, sincere individual. We all trusted his judgment.” The words went straight to my heart. And this time, I let them.

Leslie Absher is an American writer and journalist.

P.S. All names used in the piece are fictitious

The historic Greek city of Missolonghi on Sunday marked the 193rd anniversary of the Exodus of 1826 with a parade and church liturgy in the presence of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopis Pavlopoulos.

The siege of the town by Ottoman Turkish forces lasted one entire year. The surviving 10,500 inhabitants of the city eventually made the heroic “Exodus of Missolonghi” on April 10, 1826, adding another dramatic chapter to the history of the Greek War of Independence.

It is estimated that 3,000 Greek men were killed during the Exodus of Missolonghi. The 6,000 women and children of the city were taken as slaves and sold in the slave markets of Constantinople and Alexandria. The Ottoman-Egyptian casualties amounted to 5,000 men.

However, the Ottoman victory actually proved to be a Pyrrhic one, as the barbarity of Ibrahim’s troops, contrasted with the great heroism of the Greek people, generated a new wave of philhellenism throughout Europe.

Missolonghi was finally liberated from Ottoman rule on May 11, 1829. In 1937, it was recognized as a “Holy City” due to the mass slaughter and martyrdom of its citizens, and Palm Sunday was designated as the anniversary of the Exodus.

“Our heroic ancestors teach and inspire us, the Greeks throughout the world, to defend, together and on terms of unbroken unity, our country, our freedom, our national issues and our nation’s rights,” declared Prokopis Pavlopoulos, President of the Hellenic Republic.

Referring to the message of the beseiged Greeks who had died in the city while defending their freedom, Pavlopoulos stressed that it still demonstrates the need for all people to unite in the defense of humanity, democracy and justice, especially social justice, on the basis of the complete body of international law.

He stated that this is true especially during crisis-ridden, turbulent times for humanity.

“Furthermore, particularly during this time when the future of our great European family is at stake, they teach and inspire every thinking European regarding the need to defend the European edifice against those that seek to do it harm, openly and without concealment, while at the same time seeking to undermine European democracy and European culture,” the President added.

A brand-new analysis of fossils recovered in the 1990’s in the village of Nikiti, northern Greece, supports the controversial idea that the apes which gave rise to humans evolved in south-eastern Europe instead of Africa.

The 8 or 9-million-year-old fossils had first been linked to the extinct ape called Ouranopithecus. However, a team led by David Begun from the University of Toronto’s Department of Anthropology has recently analyzed the remains and has determined that they likely belonged to a male animal from a potentially new species.

Charles Darwin proposed in 1871 that all hominins, including both modern and extinct humans, descended from a group in Africa, and this is the most widely accepted theory today.

On the other hand, Darwin also speculated that hominins could also have originated in Europe, where fossils of large apes had already been discovered, and the new analysis supports this theory.

While Begun does not believe the Nikiti ape was a hominin, he speculates that it could represent the group from which hominins directly evolved.

The research team led by Begun had determined in 2017 that a 7.2-million-year-old ape called Graecopithecus, which also lived in what is now Greece, could possibly be a hominin. In this case, the 8 to 9-million-year-old Nikiti ape would have directly preceded the first hominin, Graecopithecus, before hominins migrated to Africa 7 million years ago.

According to a report in the journal New Scientist, Begun foresees that this new concept will be rejected by many experts who believe in African hominin origins, but he hopes that the new scenario will at least be considered.

Begun presented the research last month at a conference of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Sources: New Scientist, bigthing.com

The Greek parliament is considering a bill that will make the legalization of private structures located inside archaeological and historic sites easier, according to reports on Wednesday.

The proposed provisions, brought forth for debate by the Greek Environment Ministry, will apply to areas including the medieval city of Rhodes, Hora on the island of Patmos, the Old Town of Corfu, and part of the archaeological site of Delphi in central Greece, Kathimerini reports.

According to the proposed procedures, interested parties who desire to legalize buildings or structures must submit an application to the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE). The final decision for legalization will then rest with the Culture Ministry of Greece.

The Armenian community of Greece commemorated the 104th anniversary of the Armenian genocide with a protest march in the center of Athens on Wednesday.

The march started at Syntagma Square and concluded at the Turkish embassy, where marchers presented a petition calling for the recognition by the Turkish state of the “genocide of 1,500,000 innocent Armenians in 1915 by the Turkish state” and the return of “illegally occupied historic Armenian territory to the Armenian people, their rightful owner.”

Messages of support were conveyed at the protest march by representatives of the youth parties of SYRIZA, New Democracy, Independent Greeks and the Movement for Change (KINAL) representative Pavlos Christidis.

Memorial prayer in Thessaloniki

A memorial prayer was held at the Orthodox Sanctuary of the Armenian Church of the Virgin Mary in Thessaloniki on Wednesday, in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, under Archimandrite Stepanos Pasayian.

Vice-Governor of Thessaloniki Region Voula Patoulidou pointed out that 104 years which have passed since April 24, 1915, the day considered the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, and she highlighted the symbolism of the historical events.

Patoulidou said that “although a long time has passed since then, no one has forgotten the facts, while others insist on silence on the events, or direct international attention elsewhere.” She added that “the victims know all the particulars and how the extermination of the Armenians by the Young Turks movement was evilly designed to the last detail.”

Source: AMNA