"I loved going to that school with the saints, who looked at us from the pictures hanging on the walls. Pope Athanasoulis was loved by everyone and listened to because he was very good. One day, after class, some of the older boys grabbed my brother and put him in the middle. A boy holding a broken bottle shouted at him: "You killed our Christ!". The priest found out and punished them." In the story of the Jewish girl Rebecca, who became a Kula during the Occupation and, with the help of EAM, hid with her family in the village of Matsani (today Kryoneri) in Corinthia, everything fits. The peaceful osmosis between cultures and solidarity, brutality and fear, family bond and racist bullying, self-denial and risk-taking. Not a few months have passed since I was wondering, writing here about an excellent foreign-language book-testimony to the Holocaust (The Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Weissman, Pataki Publications), when we will finally have children's and teenage books based on Greek-Jewish stories from Possession (and more!). And here is where my expectation is fulfilled in the best way.
Rebecca-Kula, over 80 years old today, a permanent resident of Israel with children and grandchildren, is DeCastro's cousin and "lends" her story. Marantidou's great illustrations add to the emotion and drama that the low tone of the wise, monologue narrative holds beneath the author's lines. This is exemplary text and image conversation. The overall result is a Greek children's book that has all the makings of an international career. A Jewish family with two small children, aged around 7 and 9 at the time, is rescued from occupied Athens in 1943. A poor village with shack houses, without running water and electricity, welcomes the Jews and hides them.
The village priest takes the matter upon himself in the Sunday sermon: "When the Germans come, everyone can raise their hand and say that Jews are hiding here. The Germans may give him money, they may not bother him, but I, your priest, will burn his house and drive him out of the village. Because there are no traitors in our village." A shepherd, therefore, who knew how to command with the good and with the wild, stood as a guardian angel of the non-religious fugitives. Decastro has the good idea to insert the words of the other children of Matsani village into the words of Rebecca-Kula. This is an effective direction, as the reader makes the comparison alone and forms the complete picture on his own initiative from the pieces of the multi-faceted mnemonic puzzle. Here the author seems to be using oral testimonies.
From the reference at the end of the book, we surmise that the testimonies come from the relevant archive of the Corinthian organization Filoxenia, which is currently based in the same village and is active in culture and the environment. So the words are not only children of many people, but also of a combination of modern infrastructures and good practices. Who would have expected, a few years ago, such performances starting from the mountainous Peloponnese? The descendants of Papa-Athanassoulis, but also of the Dimopoulou family who hosted Rebecca-Koula, her brother and parents, were later honored by Yad Vashem, the International Holocaust Remembrance Center based in Jerusalem.
After reading the book, I walked to the building at number 10 Athenas Street, a tasteless modern building. At one time, at the beginning of history, the pre-war apartment building that the Kamhi family abandoned when fleeing to Matsani would have been located there. Somehow, I think, the city is given its true face. From now on, the readers of this book, walking in Monastiraki or crossing the Isthmus or climbing the mountains of Corinth will recall a certain past, which will no longer be a ghost. And his people.