Thalia feels ultimately relieved. We met her in the 1980s living with her sister in a small Zagori village in Epirus. Loneliness never scared her. She learned to cope with it since the early 1940s. Back then, she was a young woman, fallen in love with Orestis. The Greek soldier was one of the 7.948 who died during the Greco-Italian War, held from 28 October 1940 to 23 April 1941 on the Albanian front. Unidentified, uncried, unburied. After the undignified passing of her first love, Thalia decided to remain single. Her sister Aspasia stood by her and stayed single too. For them, and for many other people who suffered the same fate, justice came finally yesterday, after 78 years!
On October 12, 2018, at a decent funeral ceremony in the newly built cemetery of the Albanian village Dragoti in Këlcyrë, the back then fallen soldiers received a proper burial*.
Munich, October 13, 2018
Nikos Kotzias seems to take seriously his function. And he goes even further, as he has the courage to bring himself face to face with open wounds of his nation. One of them was the exhumation, search for the remains, identification and burial of the soldiers that past in the Albanian mountains during the 1940-1941 Greek-Italian war. This was a long-standing Greek demand that has been successfully enforced by the present Minister for Foreign Affairs.
“It was the result of two long rounds of grueling negotiations with the Albanian side, as part of an effort to resolve outstanding issues between the two countries, one held in November 2017 on Crete and the second in January 2018 in Korçë.” (Tasos Kokkinidis, Greek Reporters, Oct 12, 2018).
At the age of 93, Thalia can now put a flower on a place of war and lost love. She deserved it
Photos & Story: Cyclist of the World alias Grigoris Veriotis
Text: Johanna Panagiotou, PhD Candidate at LMU, 20th Century World History
* 578 soldiers who had been killed during the WW II were buried haphazardly, which is − based on the Greek tradition since the antiquity − completely unacceptable.
** In the meanwhile, Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias resigned on October 17, 2018 after a clash with Defense Minister Panos Kammenos over the agreement made with FYROM. Read about it here: https://www.ethnonews.com/news/severna-macedonja-who-cares-about-us
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