The specter of ravenous hunger haunts the streets of Athens. Occupiers, traitors, and big sharks are siphoning off our lifeblood. With the opening of the warehouses, the people of Athens have demonstrated their resolve: they will not allow the horrors of the terrible winter of ’41 to recur!
[…] Better to fall to the bullets in the fight for liberation than to perish from hunger on the streets.
Excerpt from the proclamation of the EAM [General State Archives, Archive of Heraklis Petimezas]
The deadly famine during the occupation contributed to the mass mobilization of the Resistance in Athens, with the National Liberation Front (EAM) organizing the first strike actions demanding a solution to the food crisis and condemning the black market. The Resistance intensified with the creation of numerous other resistance organizations, taking on various forms (demonstrations, sabotage, espionage, armed struggle), successfully achieving demands and striking against the occupiers. The occupiers and their collaborators responded with reprisals, mass executions, and blockades, which peaked in the last year of the Occupation.
IMAGES: ANNOUNCEMENTS – GAK, Archive of Heracles Petimezas
- An EAM Proclamation
- A Proclamation by the Revolutionary Socialist (Communist) Party of Greece
Thursday, 16.7.1942
Today, a large rally took place. Hundreds of students, workers, and citizens gathered to protest the planned cuts to food rations. They say that instead of rations, grocers will provide food. “But who will give us wood to cook with?” asks the impoverished community quite justifiably. Firewood has reached 100 drachmas, and charcoal 400. And then, who guarantees that the grocers won’t cheat us?
The rallying cries of the people are “We want food rations” and “Down with Gotzamani.”
Eirini Zacharia, Diary of the Occupation 1941-1943, Athens 2016
Note: Sotirios Gotzamani (1885-1958) was Minister of Finance and later of Agriculture, Commerce, Industry, and Food Supply.