“To Dance and To Sing” during World War II – Haikaram Arakelian

Haikaram Arakelian was only a small boy living in Greece during World War II.  He may not remember everything about the war.  He may not remember how the country suffered economically.  He may not remember how the Germans invaded.  He may not remember how the Greek forces reacted.  All of this he would find out later.  He does, however, vividly remember how the war affected his everyday life and the things he had to go through during one of the darkest times the world has ever seen.  He does remember having to split his bread with his two sisters.  He does remember seeing the bodies of those who died of starvation right outside his door, just as his father remembered having to bury his own mother as a little boy in the dessert during the Armenian Genocide.  Now, he lives a prosperous life in Glendale, a long way away from the paucity in Greece, but his memories of the war are still fresh in his mind.  He described what he and his friends thought of the war when it first started, the way a child would think of the war.  “We didn’t know, we thought it was like play… but when they started bombing the port which was a few miles away from where we lived, we felt it was something different.”

I was born in Kokkinia, which is a suburb near the Greek port, Pireaus [in Athens], in 1935. It was a suburb that was mostly inhabited by Armenians or Greeks that came from Armenia after the Armenian massacre and settled in the neighborhood.  My father was a travel agent and he had a very good job.  He provided for the family and helped his relatives. It was a very simple life.  We were missing a lot of facilities like running water, electricity, paved roads, and paved streets. We had friends that we went to school together, and we used to walk about two kilometers to go to school. We had a nice life with very small means. This is the way I started my life there. We didn’t know any better. Everybody was the same.

There were rumors that the war had started and that the Germans were coming to invade the country.  We didn’t know, we thought it was like play, but when they started bombing the port which was a few miles away from where we lived, we felt it was something different and we had to run. There were shelters that the people had dug in their homes in their backyards and we used to go in the shelter to avoid these bombs. And this was very awful when this happened. When the bombs fell, the schools would close.  When we heard the sirens, the teachers told us and we used to run back home and protect ourselves. Incidents like this would happen three to four times a week. One time, there was an explosion and two trains carrying ammunition collided near our house.  Pieces of iron and bronze landed in our house and I would have been killed, except that I didn’t listen to my mother. My mother told me to go to sleep because at noon in the summer we used to go to sleep, but I ran away. I didn’t want to go to sleep and while I was out playing, a piece of metal landed in my bed.

There were also shortages of food and many people were dying. We could see the dead people in our fields behind our homes. The city was collecting these dead people and burying them in the cemeteries.

When I was about nine years old, with some neighborhood friends and school friends, I used to shine the shoes of the German soldiers.  Just not far from my house there was a factory that the Germans took over and it was their headquarters and we used to go there and shine their shoes. One time a man came and I shined his shoes and he told me, “Wait here for a minute.” He brought me a bag full of dark bread, wheat bread and there was some meat and some fruits.  And we were so happy that I took it home, and my mother was very surprised.

My father lost his job because there was no traveling. People weren’t traveling at the time, so he had to get new jobs. He used to take the stuff that we had (shirts, jewelry, record players, and radios) and go to villages and exchange them for food. He used to bring beans, grain, and stuff like that.  I remember one time, he had only gotten raisins and when we were going to the shelters, we put them in our pockets and ate them for dinner.  We were so happy that we had raisins for the day.  That was very very hard for my father.  I used to remember him coming back with a beard and old clothes. Mothers, they used to do the best they could.  They didn’t have enough money at the time of the war to go and buy stuff.  If I needed a shirt my mother would take a shirt that my father had and make it for me. The mothers were busy with the little things that they had to do to keep the family going. It was a hard life for a while.

We were quite far from the heavy bombardment but we used to see the bombs, and the lights and the planes coming, so we tried to escape.  But then the English came and bombed the Germans. When the Germans lost the war, they left warehouses full of ammunition and trucks and equipment.  They abandoned these warehouses and the people went and started looting them, including myself. Not only myself, but my friends, too. We were war children like you see in the movies. Of course all the stronger people would carry sacks of flour or beans, but we took the little stuff, whatever we could carry, and we brought it home.  I remember once I took a big package of crackers, some bread and some meat, and the family had something to eat for a few days. When the Germans were there, they were taking almost all the food that was produced from the country. Even fisheries were empty because they would take it for the army.

After the war, everything was quiet and for a while we had this civil war. In the civil war, the green communist party took over the country and they were killing the people that were pro-monarchy… the king’s people.  And there were many disputes and arguments and this lasted for a few months.  It was the worst time that Greece had.

For a while… it was war, it takes time to become normal. But after the war ended, people started living a better life.  It improved. Greek people… normally they are very happy-go-lucky people, they don’t need much to get excited, and so life became normal. We were poor but had a nice life. A happy life. To dance and to sing… that was a Greek.

Interviewed by Daron Dulgarian