The
Hellenic Society Prometheas
Τη γλώσσα μου έδωσαν Ελληνική
Το
σπίτι φτωχικό
στις αμμουδιές
του Ομήρου.
Μονάχη
έγνοια η
γλώσσα μου
στις αμμουδιές
του Ομήρου.
www.Prometheas.org Οδυσσέας Ελύτης
Newsletter
April 2009
Prometheas Events
·
O
ΕΟΡΤΑΣΜΟΣ ΤΗΣ
25ης ΜΑΡΤΙΟΥ
ΣΤΗΝ
ΟΥΑΣΙΓΚΤΩΝ
Εφέτος,
όπως κάθε
χρόνο, οι
ομογενείς της
περιοχής
Ουάσιγκτων
γιόρτασαν μέσω
της οργάνωσης
του πολιτιστικού
συλλόγου
ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑΣ και
τη σύμπραξη των
άλλων συλλόγων
της περιοχής,
την εξέγερση
των Ελλήνων
για την απόκτηση
της εθνικής
Ανεξαρτησίας
τους.
Οι
ομογενείς
προσήλθαν
μαζικώς (κοντά
τετρακόσια
άτομα) στην
μεγάλη αίθουσα
του ναού της
Αγίας Αικατερίνης,
την Κυριακή, 22
Μαρτίου στις 6 μ.μ.,
για να
γιορτάσουν την
μοναδική αυτή
επέτειο όπου
μια δράκα
άνθρωποι οπλισμένοι
με θάρρος
ξεσηκώθηκαν
ενάντια σε μια
κραταιή
αυτοκρατορία,
με την απόφαση
ή να νικήσουν ή
να πεθάνουν.
Και το
κατόρθωσαν το
απίστευτο:
νίκησαν την
Οθωμανική
Αυτοκρατορία!
Και τη νίκησαν
ενάντια στη
θέληση και των
Μεγάλων
δυνάμεων της
Ευρώπης, που την
ήθελαν στη
θέση της, γιατί
έτσι τους
συνέφερε.
Τη
γιορτή άνοιξαν
με ομιλίες
τους ο
πρόεδρος του ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑ,
κύριος
Λευτέρης
Καρμίρης, και ο
πρεσβευτής μας
στην
Ουάσιγκτων
κύριος
Αλέξανδρος
Μαλλιάς.
Όπως
είναι γνωστό, η
θητεία του
κυρίου Μαλλιά
στην Ουάσιγκτων
λήγει. Με την
αναφορά σε
αυτό το γεγονός
στη διάρκεια
της ομιλίας
του, ο
Πρεσβευτής μας
καταχειροκροτήθηκε
από τους
παρευρισκόμενους
για τα
πεπραγμένα της
Ελληνικής
αντιπροσωπείας
στη διάρκεια
της θητείας
του στην
αμερικανική Πρωτεύουσα.
Ένα από αυτά
είναι ότι
μετέτρεψε την
Πρεσβεία μας
σε κέντρο
πολιτιστικών
εκδηλώσεων,
αλλά και
ανταλλαγής και
επαφής με τις
αντιπροσωπείες
άλλων χωρών. Μέσω
αυτών των
εκδηλώσεων, η
επαφή του κ.
Μαλλιά με τους
Έλληνες της
περιοχής ήταν
συνεχής.
Επίσης –αυτό
προς τιμή του
συλλόγου
ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑΣ–,
ευχήθηκε να
δημιουργηθούν
και άλλοι
σύλλογοι όπως
ο ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑΣ
και σε άλλες
πόλεις και
πολιτείες της
Αμερικής.
Κύριος
ομιλητής της
ημέρας ήταν ο
καθηγητής του
Πανεπιστημίου
Μακεδονίας
κύριος
Ευάγγελος Αθανασόπουλος,
ο οποίος ήρθε
από την Ελλάδα,
προσκεκλημένος
από τον
ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑ,
ειδικά γι’
αυτόν το σκοπό.
Η
παρουσίαση της
Ελληνικής
Επανάστασης
από τον κ.
Αθανασόπουλο,
έγινε με βαθιά
γνώση των
γεγονότων και
κριτική σκέψη.
Δηλαδή, δεν
είπε μόνο
ωραία λόγια,
αλλά με
αναλυτική
διορατικότητα
και κατά
καιρούς με
χιούμορ,
αναφέρθηκε σε
αυτήν με τρόπο
διεξοδικά
πειστικό και
διδακτικό. π.χ.,
πόσοι
γνωρίζουν ότι
η λέξη καριοφίλι
προέρχεται από
την ιταλική
μάρκα
κατασκευής των
περίφημων
εμπροσθιογεμή
όπλων Caro e figli
(Καρο ε φίλλοι),
δηλαδή το
όνομα των
βιομηχάνων,
που είναι, σε
μετάφραση: Αγαπητός
και υιοί!
Στην
παρουσίασή
του, στην οποία
μίλησε από
μνήμης, ο κ.
Αθανασόπουλος
χρησιμοποίησε
με πολλή επιτυχία
οπτικοακουστικά
μέσα, τα οποία
είχαν μεγάλη απήχηση
στο
ακροατήριο. Την
ομίλια ακολούθησε
πρόγραμμα με
πατριωτικά
τραγούδια από
τη χορωδία της
εκκλησίας των
Αγίων
Κωνσταντίνου
και Ελένης, με
χορούς από το
χορευτικό
συγκρότημα
Επιστροφή στις
Ρίζες, και
δεξίωση.
Ευχόμαστε
στον ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑ
και στους
ομογενείς της περιοχής
Ουάσιγκτων και
του χρόνου! Και
στον κύριο
Μαλλιά
επιτυχία και
στην επόμενη
θέση του.
Ρήγας Καππάτος
With
the opportunity of the celebration of the Independence Day of
Other Events
·
Wednesday,
April 1, 7:00 PM Movie: “Qadir, an Afghan Odyssey
Ripley Center Lecture Hall, Smithsonian Associates, 1100 Jefferson
Drive, SW
Director: Anneta Papathanassiou
Running Time: 79 minutes
After nine years in Greece, Qadir, an Afghan
immigrant, manages to get his green card. He decides to temporarily
return to his homeland to search for his parents, and discover whether they are
dead or alive after the Taliban regime. Winner of the Best Documentary Award at
the 2008 Roma Fiction Fest.
Tickets: www.residentassociates.org <http://residentassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=217228>
·
March 10 –
·
Also
at the Shakespeare Theatre (March 10 –
April 12, 2009): An exhibit/ Light
from Darkness: An Encounter with Ion by Greek Artist Apostolos
Koustas
·
April
9 – 26: “Lysistrata” of Aristophanes at Rosslyn
Spectrum (1611 N.
·
May
15,
Other Announcements
Christine
Sarbanes, wife of former U.S. senator, dies at 73
She taught
Greek, Latin at
Christine Sarbanes, a retired
educator and wife of former U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, died Sunday of cancer at
her
Mrs. Sarbanes, who taught Latin and Greek at
A native of
She later earned a bachelor's degree in Literae Humaniores from St. Hugh's College,
Christine Sarbanes
After graduation, she began
teaching Latin at
Since 1960, she had been married to Mr. Sarbanes.
Plans for a memorial service were incomplete today.
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Sarbanes is survived by two sons, Michael A.
Sarbanes of
Website of the month
·
http://www.thenationalherald.com/frangos/videos.cfm?id=3
·
http://ny.greekreporter.gr/?p=94
·
http://www.greekwebradio.gr/ (Radio
·
www.afnam.org: The American Friends of the New Acropolis
Museum (AFNAM) has launched its official website
Books of the month
·
“Hellenisms: Culture, identity and ethnicity
from antiquity to modernity” by Katerina Zacharia,
Ashgate Publishing (2008)
·
“The
tomb of Agamemnon” by Cathy Gere (2006)
Misc Articles
From
February 18, 2009
What made the Greeks laugh?
Mary Beard on the
familiar stand-bys of ancient humour and the schoolboy antics of murderous
dictators
In
the third century BC, when Roman ambassadors were negotiating with the Greek
city of Tarentum, an ill-judged laugh put paid to any hope of peace. Ancient
writers disagree about the exact cause of the mirth, but they agree that Greek
laughter was the final straw in driving the Romans to war.
One
account points the finger at the bad Greek of the leading Roman ambassador,
Postumius. It was so ungrammatical and strangely accented that the Tarentines
could not conceal their amusement. The historian Dio Cassius, by contrast, laid
the blame on the Romans’ national dress. “So far from receiving them decently”,
he wrote, “the Tarentines laughed at the Roman toga among other things. It was
the city garb, which we use in the Forum. And the envoys had put this on,
whether to make a suitably dignified impression or out of fear – thinking that
it would make the Tarentines respect them. But in fact groups of revellers
jeered at them.” One of these revellers, he goes on, even went so far as “to
bend down and shit” all over the offending garment. If true, this may also have
contributed to the Roman outrage. Yet it is the laughter that Postumius
emphasized in his menacing, and prophetic, reply. “Laugh, laugh while you can.
For you’ll be weeping a long time when you wash this garment clean with your
blood.”
Despite
the menace, this story has an immediate appeal. It offers a rare glimpse of how
the pompous, toga-clad Romans could appear to their fellow inhabitants of the
ancient Mediterranean; and a rare confirmation that the billowing, cumbersome
wrap-around toga could look as comic to the Greeks of South Italy as it does to
us. But at the same time the story combines some of the key ingredients of
ancient laughter: power, ethnicity and the nagging sense that those who mocked
their enemies would soon find themselves laughed at. It was, in fact, a firm
rule of ancient “gelastics” – to borrow a term (from the Greek gelan, to laugh)
from Stephen Halliwell’s weighty new study of Greek laughter – that the joker
was never far from being the butt of his own jokes. The Latin adjective
ridiculus, for example, referred both to something that was laughable
(“ridiculous” in our sense) and to something or someone who actively made
people laugh.
Laughter
was always a favourite device of ancient monarchs and tyrants, as well as being
a weapon used against them. The good king, of course, knew how to take a joke.
The tolerance of the Emperor Augustus in the face of quips and banter of all
sorts was still being celebrated four centuries after his death. One of the
most famous one-liners of the ancient world, with an afterlife that stretches
into the twentieth century (it gets retold, with a different cast of characters
but the same punchline, both in Freud and in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea),
was a joking insinuation about Augustus’ paternity. Spotting, so the story
goes, a man from the provinces who looked much like himself, the Emperor asked
if the man’s mother had ever worked in the palace. “No”, came the reply, “but
my father did.” Augustus wisely did no more than grin and bear it.
Tyrants,
by contrast, did not take kindly to jokes at their own expense, even if they
enjoyed laughing at their subjects. Sulla, the murderous dictator of the first
century BC, was a well-known philogelos (“laughter-lover”), while schoolboy
practical jokes were among the techniques of humiliation employed by the despot
Elagabalus. He is said to have had fun, for example, seating his dinner guests
on inflatable cushions, and then seeing them disappear under the table as the
air was gradually let out. But the defining mark of ancient autocrats (and a
sign of power gone – hilariously – mad) was their attempt to control laughter.
Some tried to ban it (as Caligula did, as part of the public mourning on the
death of his sister). Others imposed it on their unfortunate subordinates at
the most inappropriate moments. Caligula, again, had a knack for turning this
into exquisite torture: he is said to have forced an old man to watch the
execution of his son one morning and, that evening, to have invited the man to
dinner and insisted that he laugh and joke. Why, asks the philosopher Seneca,
did the victim go along with all this? Answer: he had another son.
Ethnicity,
too, was good for a laugh, as the story of the Tarentines and the toga shows.
Plenty more examples can be found in the only joke book to have survived from
the ancient world. Known as the Philogelos, this is a composite collection of
260 or so gags in Greek probably put together in the fourth century ad but
including – as such collections often do – some that go back many years
earlier. It is a moot point whether the Philogelos offers a window onto the
world of ancient popular laughter (the kind of book you took to the barber’s
shop, as one antiquarian Byzantine commentary has been taken to imply), or
whether it is, more likely, an encyclopedic compilation by some late imperial
academic. Either way, here we find jokes about doctors, men with bad breath,
eunuchs, barbers, men with hernias, bald men, shady fortune-tellers, and more
of the colourful (mostly male) characters of ancient life.
Pride
of place in the Philogelos goes to the “egg-heads”, who are the subject of
almost half the jokes for their literal-minded scholasticism (“An egg-head
doctor was seeing a patient. ‘Doctor’, he said, ‘when I get up in the morning I
feel dizzy for 20 minutes.’ ‘Get up 20 minutes later, then’”). After the
“egg-heads”, various ethnic jokes come a close second. In a series of gags
reminiscent of modern Irish or Polish jokes, the residents of three Greek towns
– Abdera, Kyme and Sidon – are ridiculed for their “how many Abderites does it
take to change a light bulb?” style of stupidity. Why these three places in
particular, we have no idea. But their inhabitants are portrayed as being as
literal-minded as the egg-heads, and even more obtuse. “An Abderite saw a
eunuch talking to a woman and asked if she was his wife. When he replied that
eunuchs can’t have wives, the Abderite asked, ‘So is she your daughter then?’”
And there are many others on predictably similar lines.
The
most puzzling aspect of the jokes in the Philogelos is the fact that so many of
them still seem vaguely funny. Across two millennia, their hit-rate for raising
a smile is better than that of most modern joke books. And unlike the
impenetrably obscure cartoons in nineteenth-century editions of Punch, these
seem to speak our own comic language. In fact, the stand-up comedian Jim Bowen
has recently managed to get a good laugh out of twenty-first-century audiences
with a show entirely based on jokes from the Philogelos (including one he
claims – a little generously – to be a direct ancestor of Monty Python’s Dead
Parrot sketch).
Why
do they seem so modern? In the case of Jim Bowen’s performance, careful
translation and selection has something to do with it (I doubt that
contemporary audiences would split their sides at the one about the crucified
athlete who looked as if he was flying instead of running). There is also very
little background knowledge required to see the point of these stories, in
contrast to the precisely topical references that underlie so many Punch
cartoons. Not to mention the fact that some of Bowen's audience are no doubt
laughing at the sheer incongruity of listening to a modern comic telling
2,000-year-old gags, good or bad.
But
there is more to it than that. It is not, I suspect, much to do with supposedly
“universal” topics of humour (though death and mistaken identity bulked large
then as now). It is more a question of a direct legacy from the ancient world
to our own, modern, traditions of laughter. Anyone who has been a parent, or
has watched parents with their children, will know that human beings learn how
to laugh, and what to laugh at (clowns OK, the disabled not). On a grander
scale, it is – in large part at least – from the Renaissance tradition of
joking that modern Western culture itself has learned how to laugh at “jokes”; and
that tradition looked straight back to antiquity. One of the favourite gags in
Renaissance joke books was the “No-but-my-father-did” quip about paternity,
while the legendary Cambridge classicist Richard Porson is supposed to have
claimed that most of the jokes in the famous eighteenth-century joke book Joe
Miller’s Jests could be traced back to the Philogelos. We can still laugh at
these ancient jokes, in other words, because it is from them that we have
learned what “laughing at jokes” is.
This
is not to say, of course, that all the coordinates of ancient laughter map
directly onto our own. Far from it. Even in the Philogelos a few of the jokes
remain totally baffling (though perhaps they are just bad jokes). But, more
generally, Greeks and Romans could laugh at different things (the blind, for
example – though rarely, unlike us, the deaf); and they could laugh, and
provoke laughter, on different occasions to gain different ends. Ridicule was a
standard weapon in the ancient courtroom, as it is only rarely in our own.
Cicero, antiquity’s greatest orator, was also by repute its greatest joker; far
too funny for his own good, some sober citizens thought.
There
are some particular puzzles, too, ancient comedy foremost among them. There may
be little doubt that the Athenian audience laughed heartily at the plays of
Aristophanes, as we can still. But very few modern readers have been able to
find much to laugh at in the hugely successful comedies of the fourth-century
dramatist Menander, formulaic and moralizing as they were. Are we missing the
joke? Or were they simply not funny in that laugh-out-loud sense? Discussing
the plays in Greek Laughter, Halliwell offers a possible solution. Conceding
that “Menandrian humour, in the broadest sense of the term, is resistant to
confident diagnosis” (that is, we don’t know if, or how, it is funny), he
neatly turns the problem on its head. They are not intended to raise laughs;
rather “they are actually in part about laughter”. Their complicated “comic”
plots, and the contrasts set up within them between characters we might want to
laugh at and those we want to laugh with, must prompt the audience or reader to
reflect on the very conditions that make laughter possible or impossible,
socially acceptable or unacceptable. For Halliwell, in other words, Menander’s
“comedy” functions as a dramatic essay on the fundamental principles of Greek
gelastics.
On
other occasions, it is not always immediately clear how or why the ancients
ranked things as they did, on the scale between faintly amusing and very funny
indeed. Halliwell mentions in passing a series of anecdotes that tell of famous
characters from antiquity who laughed so much that they died. Zeuxis, the
famous fourth-century Greek painter, is one. He collapsed, it is said, after
looking at his own painting of an elderly woman. The philosopher Chrysippus and
the dramatist Polemon, a contemporary of Menander, are others. Both of these
were finished off, as a similar story in each case relates, after they had seen
an ass eating some figs that had been prepared for their own meal. They told
their servants to give the animal some wine as well – and died laughing at the
sight.
The
conceit of death by laughter is a curious one and not restricted to the ancient
world. Anthony Trollope, for example, is reputed to have “corpsed” during a
reading of F. Anstey’s comic novel Vice Versa. But what was it about these
particular sights (or Vice Versa, for that matter) that proved so devastatingly
funny? In the case of Zeuxis, it is not hard to detect a well-known strain of
ancient misogyny. In the other cases, it is presumably the confusion of
categories between animal and human that produces the laughter – as we can see
in other such stories from antiquity.
For
a similar confusion underlies the story of one determined Roman agelast
(“non-laugher”), the elder Marcus Crassus, who is reputed to have cracked up
just once in his lifetime. It was after he had seen a donkey eating thistles.
“Thistles are like lettuce to the lips of a donkey”, he mused (quoting a
well-known ancient proverb) – and laughed. There is something reminiscent here
of the laughter provoked by the old-fashioned chimpanzees’ tea parties, once
hosted by traditional zoos (and enjoyed for generations, until they fell victim
to modern squeamishness about animal performance and display). Ancient
laughter, too, it seems, operated on the boundaries between human and other
species. Highlighting the attempts at boundary crossing, it both challenged and
reaffirmed the division between man and animal.
Halliwell
insists that one distinguishing feature of ancient gelastic culture is the
central role of laughter in a wide range of ancient philosophical, cultural and
literary theory. In the ancient academy, unlike the modern, philosophers and
theorists were expected to have a view about laughter, its function and
meaning. This is Halliwell’s primary interest.
His
book offers a wide survey of Greek laughter from Homer to the early Christians
(an increasingly gloomy crowd, capable of seeing laughter as the work of the
Devil), and the introduction is quite the best brief overview of the role of
laughter in any historical period that I have ever read. But Greek Laughter is
not really intended for those who want to discover what the Greeks found funny
or laughed at. There is, significantly, no discussion of the Philogelos and no
entry for “jokes” in the index. The main focus is on laughter as it appears
within, and is explored by, Greek literary and philosophical texts.
In
those terms, some of his discussions are brilliant. He gives a clear and
cautious account of the views of Aristotle – a useful antidote to some of the
wilder attempts to fill the gap caused by the notorious loss of Aristotle’s
treatise on comedy. But the highlight is his discussion of Democritus, the
fifth-century philosopher and atomist, also renowned as antiquity’s most
inveterate laugher. An eighteenth-century painting of this “laughing
philosopher” decorates the front cover of Greek Laughter. Here Democritus
adopts a wide grin, while pointing his bony finger at the viewer. It is a
slightly unnerving combination of jollity and threat.
The
most revealing ancient discussion of Democritus’ laughing habit is found in an
epistolary novel of Roman date, included among the so-called Letters of
Hippocrates – a collection ascribed to the legendary founding father of Greek
medicine, but in fact written centuries after his death. The fictional
exchanges in this novel tell the story of Hippocrates’ encounter with
Democritus. In the philosopher’s home city, his compatriots had become
concerned at the way he laughed at everything he came across (from funerals to
political success) and concluded that he must be mad. So they summoned the most
famous doctor in the world to cure him. When Hippocrates arrived, however, he
soon discovered that Democritus was saner than his fellow citizens. For he
alone had recognized the absurdity of human existence, and was therefore
entirely justified in laughing at it.
Under
Halliwell’s detailed scrutiny, this epistolary novel turns out to be much more
than a stereotypical tale of misapprehension righted, or of a madman revealed
to be sane. How far, he asks, should we see the story of Democritus as a Greek
equivalent of the kind of “existential absurdity” now more familiar from Samuel
Beckett or Albert Camus? Again, as with his analysis of Menander, he argues
that the text raises fundamental questions about laughter. The debates staged
between Hippocrates and Democritus amount to a series of reflections on just how
far a completely absurdist position is possible to sustain. Democritus’ fellow
citizens take him to be laughing at literally everything; and, more
philosophically, Hippocrates wonders at one point whether his patient has
glimpsed (as Halliwell puts it) “a cosmic absurdity at the heart of infinity”.
Yet, in the end, that is not the position that Democritus adopts. For he
regards as “exempt from mockery” the position of the sage, who is able to
perceive the general absurdity of the world. Democritus does not, in other
words, laugh at himself, or at his own theorizing.
What
Halliwell does not stress, however, is that Democritus’ home city is none other
than Abdera – the town in Thrace whose people were the butt of so many jokes in
the Philogelos. Indeed, in a footnote, he briefly dismisses the idea “that
Democritean laughter itself spawned the proverbial stupidity of the Abderites”.
But those interested in the practice as much as the theory of ancient laughter
will surely not dismiss the connection so quickly. For it was not just a
question of a “laughing philosopher” or of dumb citizens who didn’t know what a
eunuch was. Cicero, too, could use the name of the town as shorthand for a
topsy-turvy mess: “It’s all Abdera here”, he writes of Rome. Whatever the original
reason, by the first century BC, “Abdera” (like modern Tunbridge Wells,
perhaps, though with rather different associations) had become one of those
names that could be guaranteed to get the ancients laughing.
Stephen
Halliwell
GREEK LAUGHTER
A study of cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity
632pp. Cambridge University Press. £70 (paperback, £32.50). US $140 (paperback,
$65).
978 0 521 88900 1
|
Για πάντα
φίλοι, Ελληνες
και Βρετανοί
βετεράνοι Tου Νικου Kωνστανταρα Ο ένας
οργάνωσε και εκτέλεσε
μια από τις πιο
τολμηρές
επιχειρήσεις
κομάντο του Β΄
Παγκόσμιου
Πολέμου. Ο
άλλος ήταν ο πρώτος
Ελληνας
αλεξιπτωτιστής
και πήρε μέρος
στην ανατίναξη
της γέφυρας
του
Γοργοπόταμου.
Αλλος μετέφερε
κομάντος και
εφόδια με
καΐκι στην
Ανατολική
Μεσόγειο, κάτω
από τη μύτη των
Γερμανών.
Αλλος πετούσε
μαχητικό
Χαρικέιν
στους
ουρανούς της
Βορείου
Αφρικής, της
Ιταλίας και
της
Γιουγκοσλαβίας.
Ζούσαν στο όριο
της ζωής με τον
θάνατο. Είδαν
τους
συντρόφους τους
να πέφτουν
νεκροί, πρώτα
στη μάχη και
κατόπιν στη
μάχη του
χρόνου και των
ασθενειών. Στις 9
Μαρτίου, 65
χρόνια μετά το
τέλος του
πολέμου, Ελληνες
που είχαν
πολεμήσει στο
πλευρό των
βρετανικών
δυνάμεων
συναντήθηκαν
πάλι με τους
παλιούς
συμμάχους,
αντάλλαξαν
αναμνήσεις
και ήπιαν ένα
ποτήρι κρασί. Η
συνάντηση
έγινε στην
κατοικία του
Βρετανού
πρέσβη με
πρωτοβουλία του
στρατιωτικού
ακόλουθου,
συνταγματάρχη
Πολ Λοτζ. Ειδικές
Επιχειρήσεις «Ζούμε σε
έναν καλύτερο
κόσμο, χάρη στις
δικές σας
θυσίες», είπε ο
πρεσβευτής
Ντέιβιντ Λάντσμαν,
καλωσορίζοντας
αυτή τη
«διακεκριμένη
και μοναδική
ομάδα
ανθρώπων». Οι
περίπου
τριάντα βετεράνοι
-εθελοντές
όλοι- ήταν μέλη
του Σώματος
Ειδικών
Επιχειρήσεων
(το SOE, το
οποίο
εξελίχθηκε
στις μυστικές
υπηρεσίες της
Βρετανίας), της
Ειδικής
Μοίρας Ναυτικού
(Special Boat Squadron), της
Βασιλικής
Αεροπορίας
και του Ιερού
Λόχου. Ο Θέμης
Μαρίνος,
πρωτεργάτης
στην
ανατίναξη του
Γοργοπόταμου
και ο πρώτος
Ελληνας
αλεξιπτωτιστής
κομάντο,
μίλησε με
χιούμορ και μετριοφροσύνη
για το πώς
στρατολογήθηκε
στο SOE πολύ
πριν το μάθει ο
ίδιος.
Εκπαιδεύτηκε
στη σχολή
ανορθόδοξου
πολέμου έξω
από τη Χάιφα
της Παλαιστίνης
και μόνο όταν
βρέθηκε στον
Γοργοπόταμο
τον Νοέμβριο
του 1942
πληροφορήθηκε
ότι ήταν μέλος
των ειδικών
δυνάμεων της
Βρετανίας. Για
τους
συμπολεμιστές
του, ο τελευταίος
επιζών της
επιχείρησης
που ένωσε για λίγο
τους αντάρτες
του Αρη
Βελουχιώτη
και του Ναπολέοντα
Ζέρβα,
κατέληξε απλά:
«Φίλοι για
πάντα». Ο Ιάσων
Μαυρίκης,
παλαίμαχος
του Ιερού
Λόχου και της
μοίρας «Μ» της
Ειδικής
Μοίρας
Ναυτικού,
συμμετείχε
στη διοργάνωση
της εκδήλωσης.
Ως μέλος της
μοίρας συμμετείχε
σε
επιχειρήσεις
εναντίον των
Ναζί στα Δωδεκάνησα,
τη Λήμνο, την
Κρήτη και τη
Θεσσαλονίκη.
«Πιστεύαμε
στην τελική
νίκη και μέσα
στις πιο
σκοτεινές
μέρες του
πολέμου. Ακόμη
και όταν ο
Ρόμελ έβλεπε
την Αλεξάνδρεια
μέσα από τα
κιάλια του»,
είπε. Ψαράδες
και πειρατές Ο Ρήγας
Ρηγόπουλος
ήταν
κυβερνήτης
ενός επιταγμένου
καϊκιού
σφουγγαράδων,
οι οποίοι
αποτελούσαν
και το πλήρωμά
του. Ως μέρος
του
Αγγλοελληνικού
Στολίσκου (Anglo-Hellenic Flotilla) μετέφερε
πολεμιστές
και εφόδια στο
Αιγαίο και την
Ανατολική
Μεσόγειο, με
ταχύτητα 8
μίλια την ώρα. «Μας
είπαν ότι ο
πόλεμος ο
δικός μας θα
ήταν ανορθόδοξος,
ότι θα είμαστε
πειρατές.
Σηκώναμε την
τούρκικη
σημαία στα
τούρκικα
ύδατα και σε
αυτά που ήταν
υπό γερμανική
κατοχή
παριστάναμε
τους ψαράδες»,
διηγήθηκε ο
Ρηγόπουλος.
«Μια μέρα ένας
άλλος
καπετάνιος
κατέλαβε ένα πολύ
μεγαλύτερο
γερμανικό
πλοίο, σαν
πειρατής, με
ρεσάλτο. Μας το
έφερε εκεί που
γιορτάζαμε το
Πάσχα, σε τουρκικά
ύδατα, υπό την
προστασία του
Αλλάχ». Ο
αντιπτέραρχος
Κωνσταντίνος
Α. Χατζηλάκος,
πρόεδρος του
Συνδέσμου
Βετεράνων
Αεροπόρων 1940-1945 (RAFA Αθηνών), ο
οποίος
πολέμησε κάτω
από τον
επιχειρησιακό
έλεγχο της
Βρετανικής
Αεροπορίας
μετά την κατάληψη
της Ελλάδας
από τους Ναζί,
σημειώνει ότι
ο σύνδεσμος ξεκίνησε
το 1975 με 250 μέλη.
«Σήμερα μόνο
έξι πιλότοι
εκπροσωπούν
την ομάδα μας...
Κάθε χρόνο
λιγοστεύουμε». Μια ζωηρή,
κωμική και
ατρόμητη
οικογένεια Το πνεύμα
της εποχής
κατέγραψε ο
σερ Πάτρικ Λι
Φέρμορ, ο
θρυλικός
κομάντο των
κρητικών
βουνών και ο
πιο διακεκριμένος
Βρετανός
συγγραφέας
ταξιδιωτικών
περιπλανήσεων
της εποχής μας,
όπως τον
αποκαλεί ο
βρετανικός
Τύπος. «Οταν
άρχισε ο Β΄
Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος
εγώ
περιπλανιόμουν
στη Ρουμανία...
Κάποιος
τραγουδούσε ένα
τραγούδι,
νομίζω
λεγόταν “Τρέχα
κουνελάκι, τρέχα”.
Δεν
τραγουδούσε
πολύ καλά»,
ξεκίνησε ο
94χρονος Λι
Φέρμορ,
διαβάζοντας
ένα κείμενο
που είχε
γράψει για τη
συνάντηση. «Εχω
ένα πρόβλημα
με τα μάτια μου και
πιθανώς να τα
κάνω μούσκεμα»,
είπε με
χαμόγελο.
Περιέγραψε με
βροντερή φωνή
πώς
στρατολογήθηκε
ως
ανθυπολοχαγός
πληροφοριών
στην Κρήτη και
πώς εκπαιδεύτηκε
στη σχολή
ανορθόδοξου
πολέμου έξω από
τη Χάιφα. «Οι
εκπαιδευόμενοι
ήταν όλοι
Κρητικοί.
Γνώριζαν τα
όπλα πολύ
καλύτερα απ’
ό,τι εγώ», σχολίασε
με ιρλανδικό
χιούμορ. Δεν
αναφέρθηκε
στον αρχηγικό
ρόλο που
έπαιξε στην
απαγωγή του
Γερμανού
διοικητή της
Κρήτης, στρατηγού
Χάινριχ
Κράιπε, το 1944, μια
αποστολή η
οποία έγινε
παγκοσμίως
γνωστή ως μια
από τις πιο
τολμηρές επιχειρήσεις
του πολέμου.
Για τους Κρητικούς
συμπολεμιστές
του –για τους
οποίους ήταν
γνωστός ως
«Μιχάλης» ή
«Φιλεντέμ»–
θυμάται: «Στο
τέλος είμαστε
όλοι μέλη μιας
μεγάλης
οικογένειας.
Μιας ζωηρής,
κωμικής και
ατρόμητης
οικογένειας.
Φίλοι για
πάντα». Ο Λι
Φέρμορ
αναφέρθηκε
στη συμμετοχή
του Ελληνικού
Ιερού Λόχου
στην κατάληψη
του Ρίμινι. «Αυτό
που είχε
τραγουδήσει η
Σοφία Βέμπο,
έγινε πραγματικότητα,
εκατό
χιλιόμετρα
από τη Ρώμη».
Αρχισε να
τραγουδάει με
σφιγμένη
γροθιά: «Δεν
έχει διόλου μπέσα
/ κι όταν θα
μπούμε μέσα /
ακόμη και στη
Ρώμη γαλανόλευκη
/ θα υψώσουμε
σημαία
ελληνική».
Τελειώνοντας,
αναφώνησε:
«Αυτές ήταν
αξέχαστες
εποχές, όπως η σημερινή
μέρα. Είθε το
πνεύμα τους να
ζει για πάντα!» Και
προέτρεψε την
παρέα να
τραγουδήσουν
πάλι. |
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