Peacemaker Magazine from the White Rose Society

WWll Greece--The Battle Of Istibey

4/6/2019

White Rose Greece - Theodora honors her great grandfather's memory.

Written by Joanne Miller
Edited by Jonathan Wolfman
April 6, 2019

Now and then we find opportunities to meet remarkable people halfway around the world through the power of social media, people who are of like mind...heart-filled souls who are descendants of war heroes. They, as we, wish for our shared world only peace. This is the story of one of those descendants.

The History: The Axis countries were Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. The Allies were the US, Britain, France, the USSR, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. On October 28, 1940, the Italian army invaded Greece through Albania launching what is known as the Greco-Italian War. The Greek army, although temporarily, halted the invasion by forcing the Italian army to retreat back to Albania.

Operation Marita--Nazi Germany invaded Greece through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. At the time, most of the Greek army was already heavily involved in the Greco-Italian War on the Albanian front. The Battle of Metaxas Line (Known in Greece as The Battle Of The Forts) April 6, 1941 The Germans were able to capture individual forts but were unable to breach the Metaxas Line in general. Yet when when the Panzer Division invaded across Yugoslavia, and captured Thessaloniki on April 9, the Greek East Macedonia Army Section surrendered (April 10) and the Battle of Metaxas Line was over.

The determination and bravery of the Greek Soldiers impressed Nazi General Wilhelm List so much that he ordered his soldiers and officers to salute the Greek Soldiers and took no prisoners.

In Memoriam of Iaonnis Dellios, Honorable Greek Soldier

The Testimony--

"I was three years old. I hardly remember his last goodbye."

“Don't expect me to return alive. It rains fire and steel up there."

"I, then a child, with my mother (Fotini) and my unborn sister, escorted him from Neo Petritsi until we were where we could walk, since Belles Hill reached up 1339 meters. During our way back, I asked, "Mom where is Dad going?"

It was impossible for her to answer, to talk out her thoughts. What could she say to me? That, amidst the terror of war, she was left alone with two babies, that she did not know how to feed us? Or that a few minutes ago she said ‘goodbye’ to her one and only love, her husband, the person who supported her most, because he had to go to one of the most terrible battles of the war?

After a short time the news reached our family in a formal announcement that my father, Ioannis Dellios, was dead. He was just twenty-nine. A few days before my mother had given birth to my sister, Evaggelia, so we had to wait forty days to be able to identify my father's body, as prescribed by Greek Orthodox tradition.

During that time, a young soldier visited our house. He held my father’s military identification. "I am sorry for your loss!", he began. "Ioannis died right before my eyes, but before that, when a bullet from a German Stuka hit his leg, he gave me this and said to me, ‘Please, if you survive, give this to my wife.’ The order we used to hear was run and hide, the fort is about to fall! He was taking off his wedding ring to give it to me, running from one spot to the next, he was wounded, and then one last bullet from a fighter plane hit his ribs, killing him instantly. He was fighting for his country, at a place called Aspri Petra.”

(White Stone) Katerina Delliou Charalambidou -- Those were my Grandma's words that I kept to my heart, and I promised that as long as I am alive I will remember and honor the name of her father. My Grandmother never married again. A few days before she died, she said that she'd been dreaming of her husband who was smiling and saying to her: "Come." She died, unexpectedly, from a stroke at fifty-two.

Each year on or near April 6 the memorial at Belles Fort, a religious and military ceremony takes place at the monument etched with their names, where many heroes fell fighting against the evil that once threatened Greece, and all of humanity.

Adolf Hitler -- In a 1948 speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill paraphrased a 1905 quote by George Santayana saying, “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and a few friends were the original White Rose Society. Sophie was executed by the Nazi regime in February 1943 after her conviction on charges of High Treason for distributing flyers, (The Leaflets) at the University of Munich. A Nazi guard marvelled at her courage and calm.

Rest in love brave soldiers of Greece!

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American Immigration Sideshow

2/22/2019

Central American Migrants walk along the Mexican bank of the Rio Bravo near Texas on 2/17/2019....... credit: Julio Cesar Aguilar

American Immigration Sideshow:
Border Wall or Distraction?

By Scottie Westfall

As we enter this new conflict over the national emergency declaration at the border, much of the discussion has been framed over its constitutionally. Yes, real issues exist with the “imperial presidency,” but that problem is decades old. Presidents have used power to deflect from scandal before, and congress has abdicated one power after another to the presidency. These issues, although certainly a long-term problem with this constitutional system, are largely overshadowing the real crisis of migrants seeking refugee status.

Trump is hardly the first president to get into this situation about border security. During 2011 and 2012, Barack Obama and then Arizona Governor Jan Brewer exchanged some well-publicized exchanges over the building of a border fence. In the May of 2011, Obama bragged that the border fence was “basically complete,” which led to large numbers of right-wing populists calling foul.

Obama was hardly a saint when it came to undocumented migrants. He oversaw the deportations of 2.7 million people, and for a time during the 2016 presidential election cycle, he was denounced by some immigration activists as the “deporter-in-chief.”

Both the Trump and Obama administrations face the same refugee crisis. The Central American nations of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, long the home of all sort of US imperialist intrigue, are lands of violence. Gangs, which are essentially paramilitary organizations operating the way crime syndicates do, are wreaking havoc upon civil society in these countries. Escape to Mexico or maybe the United States is a very real existential hope for so many people. Establishing asylum really does mean the difference between death and survival.

A great hope once existed in Central America. In 2006, Honduras elected a reformer named Manuel Zelaya to the presidency. He was not a fire-breathing socialist like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Lula in Brazil. He was a rancher who had been elected on a centrist platform, but as president, he switched to the left, increasing the minimum wage, making education free to all children, and providing some state aid to the poorest of the poor.

He was ousted in 2009. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made no quibbles when the Honduran military removed him from office. Violence swept through Honduras, as she covered for the coup, and in 2014, when tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors arrived at the US-Mexican border, she callously called for the deportation. “We have to send a clear message that just because your child gets across the border doesn’t mean your child gets to stay,” she said then.

Flash forward into the current presidency, and now immigration policy is but a sick burlesque. In the summer of 2018, the Trump administration experienced a similar crisis with Central American migrants. This time, many migrants came as full families, and the US put on such a display of utter cruelty, pulling young children away from their parents and holding them in dentition centers. In December of that year, the US was holding 15,000 minors in its custody and was struggling hard to reunite them with their parents. That same month, two children have died in US custody, sparking requests for an inquiry.

But so much of that disgusting episode has been lost in the current national emergency debacle. We have somehow forgotten that people are suffering and dying. Children are being traumatized through these horrific separations. Our leader plays head demagogue about every “caravan” of migrants that begins working its way up through Mexico.

In a more sedate time in US politics, politicians engaged in dog whistle politics. They mentioned “welfare queens” to scare blue collar voters that their tax dollars were going to African American women who didn’t work but were able to buy all sorts of extravagances drawing the dole. But now, they make no attempt to hide their racism. Donald Trump started his presidential campaign lambasting Mexican rapists. He now hits the fears of Latino drug dealers as hard as he can. In places where the opioid crisis has claimed a whole generation, such as West Virginia and Ohio, the fears of drugs are very real, but Trump uses that terror to gin up the most insatiably rabid form of xenophobia.

This rabid xenophobia is a potent tool to keep the base on his side as a new election cycle looms ahead. Various investigations could also be hazardous to his power, so it is politically expedient to generate hate and keep it burning red and hot.

But we still have a political system that has forgotten the poor and the suffering. Those who mourn their family members’ drug dependency receive no real relief from the federal government, and the migrant children have had their whole world uprooted. These are the people who need compassion the most, yet we are lost in the disgusting burlesque of a government shutdown and a zany national emergency declaration.

WWll Greece--The Battle Of Istibey

Written by Joanne Miller
Edited by Jonathan Wolfman
April 6, 2019

American Immigration Sideshow

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WWll Greece--The Battle Of Istibey

Written by Joanne MillerEdited by Jonathan Wolfman​April 6, 2019

American Immigration Sideshow

Author

Archives

Categories

Written by Joanne Miller
Edited by Jonathan Wolfman
April 6, 2019