Thessaloniki, 2014
He didn’t shoot me…
I was born in Kastoria. We were a family of six children, my father and mother were very well off, my siblings were at school, the eldest was attending a School of Commerce at the time, my other brother had enrolled at the Athens School of Dentistry, my sister was studying at the Gymnasium [Junior’s High], my other siblings were still young, still at Dimotiko [Primary School].
My mother looked a bit like me… But she was a very beautiful woman and a housewife, with six children. However, when the Germans banished us from school, I was still at the 5th Gymnasium class, so I never finished Gymnasium. My brothers came back from their universities to Kastoria and the eldest started working at the shop. My other brother liked working with teeth a lot, he used to go at a dentist’s and make dentures. He was helping the dentist; since the dentist couldn’t pay him of course, he would give him the occasional gift. My sister liked to play the piano and sing. She had a beautiful voice. I didn’t have a nice voice; I was taking French classes; I was learning French. The main thing for us children in order to leave home was to learn something… a language.
[…]
How was I saved? A miracle from God. We can’t really tell how those who were saved were saved; it was the stuff of miracles. An incident about how I was saved: I was wrapped with a baboulitsa [headscarf], we were starving and nobody would come to see us. This happened during the retreat, when the Germans… and we were like a block, there, all the way from the kitchen to here [she tries to explain the spatial arrangement through gestures]. There was the kitchen where they would cook, they had a balcony where they would go out, that narrow… that closed door, that narrow passage that you see was the barrel where… they would wash the greens there, the wood, they would wash the radish in order to… to make food, right? They would throw them in. They would shut the door and the outer door was open. I got in, starving as I was, and I carried my pot, the Schüssel [“pot, bowl” in German], as we used to call it. I go in, no one is there, the door is shut, who would dare to go in? As soon as I realise there is no one there, I place the pot inside the barrel and I fill it with food. I am about to go out and this German was standing at the door. “Aaaaah”, when I saw him, I put it down… I remember nothing of his face, I don’t even remember his hat, because I also had the baboula wrapped around my head. He said, he said, I saw him removing his hat, he took his whip out and got his rifle in his hands. I made for the door; he stretched his leg out when I made for the door. That was exactly what he meant to. I got out, tripping, and fell down. I got dizzy, I fell down, all the radishes landing on my chest, aaah, who knows how long it took to… he didn’t shoot me; he didn’t shoot me.
So, that’s how I was saved, through sheer luck. How was I saved? To whom can I tell this? Who’s going to believe that he didn’t shoot me, because he didn’t shoot me… he didn’t shoot me.