WHAT STARVING GREEKS ATE DURING THE NAZI OCCUPATION

 It is a lingering nightmare for the few remaining survivors, including me, the ghastly memories of suffering, starvation, and widespread death during the Nazi occupation of Greece, between April 1941 to October 1944. 

As the German forces marched into Athens in April 1941 and raised the swastika at the Parthenon, the citizens of the capital and the rest of the Greeks knew little of what was in store for them.  Soon, however, the Nazis showed how brutal they could be, perpetrating numerous atrocities and reprisals on the population.

 In order to feed the Nazi troops, the German army ransacked food stores, stole livestock, and pillaged the agricultural land in a particular inhuman way. 

It was not long before food supplies for the majority of Greeks ran dry, with most of what little food remained available for those living in the capital.  Staples like flour and potatoes were very hard to find and black marketeers became fabulously rich, selling basic goods at highly inflated prices. 

Many of those who could not afford this overpriced food, simply starved to death.  In the freezing winter 1941-1942 alone 40.000 Greeks died of starvation.

The Greeks had to seek alternative foods in order to survive.  These foods mostly consisted of items they could not consider consuming in time of peace.  

A book entitled "Recipes of Hunger - Life in Athens  During the Occupation" published by Oxygen Editions presents research conducted by the teacher and author Helen Nikolaidou who wrote several volumes regarding the sources of food available for the residents of Greece during the Nazi occupation.

Greek newspapers offered recipes that used few food items that were, at least for those fortunate enough to procure those ingredients.  One excerpt of a newspaper of the era  reads: "Take 2 tomatoes, if you find them, grate them and boil them until thick, season to taste, and add 3 olives per person and you have a delicious soup that you have not thought of before."  

   

The most tragic part of this terrible situation was that children were starving, some dying.   Greeks also resorted to eating wild greens that grew on the hills and mountains of Greece that were and still are considered a delicacy.  Raisins were also sought after for their high nutritious value.  I remember a raisin syrup called "stafidini" that was used instead of sugar.

Chef  Nikolaos Tselementes wrote in a newspaper during the occupation:  "Get some pulses, place them in a saucepan pour water to cover, add seasoning to taste, some chopped herbs and prepare a soup."

Greens, potatoes, cabbage, aubergines, and rice, if available were foods used by Greeks who could afford them during these terrible years, but the unfortunate ones boiled grass, flowers, and donkey-heads (yathourangatha) to prepare a frugal soup.

Most Greeks were fed by the soup kitchens set up by the Chuch of Greece and the Red Cross.  The lines of famished Greeks were long and tiresome.   There were times that people queued for hours for food to find out that it had run out when their turn arrived. 

Unfortunately, during the first winter of the German occupation, no cats nor dogs remained in Greece, which now seems unfeeling and preposterous but then was essential for humans to survive.

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