August 2022

Why is it that summer seems to fly, while winter takes an age to drag by? Possibly an unanswerable question, although doubtless many people have their theories.

I am just back from Athens, to which place I have not been for many months. Good friends made me a present of a stay in a very posh hotel situated about 700 metres from the Acropolis. I’ve been to the Acropolis at least three times over the years, so did not go again: at this time of year one can hardly move for eager visitors, and the way up is something of a death trap for those who are no longer in their first youth: the steps are extremely slippery, I recall. 

Nevertheless, it was a great treat to have breakfast in the roof garden with a splendid view of the Acropolis just there, if you get my drift. All creamed-honey in the early morning light: if those columns could only speak! The waitresses were young, pretty, and invariably cheerful. I said to one of them that work is always work, but that the quality of the environment makes a big difference. Of course she agreed.

What I did do was go over old tracks, and so wandered at an easy pace towards the centre, taking in the remains of the place where Byron is supposed to have stayed: he, too, had a good view of the Acropolis. I wonder whether he was one of the people, passionate about the Classics, who burst into tears at the sight. Today’s tourists seem not to be prone to the same fits of emotion. Speaking of tourists, Greece has no need to worry at this point, as central Athens and the Plaka seemed very crowded, a fact that did not do much for my ever-escalating misanthropy.

I also stopped at the Athens Cathedral, an imposing presence, with purple banners still commemorating the 200 years since the start of the Greek War of Independence, when the Greeks were finally successful in rebelling against the Turks. Of course matters did not end there: inside the Cathedral one can find the last resting place of Patriarch Gregory V, murdered by a Turkish mob during the Greco-Turkish war of 1921-23. Conflict has rumbled and grumbled continually ever since, and is still going on.

Then I set out on a hunt for the Jewish Museum, last visited in the 1980s. Then it was situated near Hadrian’s Arch, and I remember that husband and sons had to don the yarmulke on entering. Now the Museum is situated in nearby Nikis Street, and resides in a beautifully renovated neo-classical building. The collection takes up four floors, and is very informative and impressive. It is also deeply sad, and the visitor learns of the destruction of an extremely rich culture.

Until the Second World War, there were approximately 100,000 Jews in Greece. Now there are probably as few as 6000. During the war, Greece was occupied by three countries: Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, which established separate zones of control. Jews seemed generally able to carry on as normal under Italian and Bulgarian occupation, but the Germans were, of course, a different matter, and were relentless in their persecution in their areas: Thessaloniki and Crete were the areas that suffered most, with about 90% of Thessaloniki’s Jews fetching up in Auschwitz.

The Museum provides lots of detail about these awful happenings, and also fills the yawning gaps in my knowledge of the whole dreadful and complicated business. Greek Jews fought very bravely on the Albanian front, for example, and later about 9000 were actively involved in the Resistance against the invaders. Halkida, in central Greece, is the site of the earliest established Jewish community in Europe, and produced a Jewish hero. Mordecai Frizis was a Hellenic Army career soldier who fought in the First World War, the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, and in the Greco-Turkish War. By the time the Italians attacked from Albania in 1940, he was a colonel. It was on this front that he met his death while encouraging his soldiers to fight on. There is a statue of him in Halkida.

Predictably, there is a list of Greeks deemed Righteous Among the Nations by the government of Israel. Although not a Greek, Princess Alice, mother of the late Duke of Edinburgh, was married to Prince Andrew of Greece; she lived in Athens for many years, and devoted the last half of her life to philanthropy, so much so that she left nothing when she died. She is on the list because she sheltered a Jewish mother and her five children during the war: she saved the family, in short.

So, as usual, my trip to Athens gave me lots to think about.

Now I am back home, with second son and family holidaying here before their big move to Warsaw in mid-month.