September 14th
- In Frikes today at 18.00 a service was held in memory of those
young, Ithacan men killed due to the ramifications of the German U-boat
capture in the bay of Frikes 59 years ago during W.W.II The small group
of young Communists, led by Yiorgos Moraitis, threw a grenade into the
hole, disabled the crew and took charge of the submarine. One Kioni
local of that time, Zaharate Vlassopoulou, remembers "My mother
said we should all go up into the mountains. The Germans will retaliate." And they did. Most of Kioni took refuge in the mountains while the Germans
bombed the village. "We stayed in the mountains, dancing under
the moon for days. For us young girls, me and my sisters, it was exciting,
we had a good time, but when we returned to Kioni, many of our houses
were turned into rubble." It was the first time the war had
violently touched Ithaca. " Until then I had no real idea about
war, I was 16 years old." The yearly Memorial was well attended,
especially by those who survived that historic time, all retelling their
stories and memories of their days of War.
During the last
speech which insisted that Communism prevails above all and PASOK prevails
over nothing, objectors in the crowd voiced their opposition loudly
to the politically volatile assertions made by the speaker. After shouts
of dissension and manic gesticulations, the crowd dispersed, leaving
tourist onlookers perplexed, to say the least, at what had just transpired.
As is the Ithacan way, the crowd then went to Penelopes Restaurant for
refreshments and the telling of more heroic tales while war anthems
of the time blared from the speakers. All of Frikes was transported
back to a time that was and all the words of anger, forgotten. For now.
