Speech of 2000 Portland AHEPA's OXI Day celebration
by Greg Kavounas
OXI Day was the start of a war for Greece.
60 years ago, yesterday, Greece entered the Second World War.
War is a terrible thing.
Back then, to even go to war, you knew you would be making sacrifices.
Around you in your community, in your neighborhood, in your family,
the able bodied men would leave; stop working their jobs.
And some would not be returning back.
That’s sacrifice, and that was even if you won the war.
If you lost, it was worse. The war came home.
When two countries are at war with each other, one of them is in the wrong.
By 1940, Germany and Italy had attacked and conquered many free countries.
Just like that.
On October 28, 1940, Italy invaded also Greece.
They said: we are way more than you – that was true
They said: we are much better armed – and that was true
They said: don’t fight us
Greece said NO to that, OXI to that.
They valued their freedom, their self determination,
values that its ancestors had taught the world.
To defend these values, the Greeks preferred war, and its sacrifice.
And the sacrifice would be worse,
because they expected to lose, and the war to come home.
But they had the courage to choose it, which is why OXI Day is special.
It is the anniversary of that courage that we celebrate today.
Back then, the “OXI” of Greece was heard around the world.
John Erskine wrote: “Today every American is a child of the Acropolis.”
The St. Louis Post Dispatch wrote that, with the word “OXI”,
“There speaks the Greece of Leonidas and the 300,
the Greece of the Greeks who never ask
how many the enemy are, but where they are.”
The Greek soldiers fought very bravely. Churchill called them heroes.
From the military point of view, the story of OXI Day had some happy
surprises.
The Greeks actually pushed the invading Italians out of Greece,
and back into Albania where they invaded from.
The world again broke out in praise.
The U.S. Undersecretary of State, Sunner Welles, said that
“the Greeks shattered forever the myth of Axis invincibility”.
Then the Germans came to help the Italians.
And they won, and they conquered Greece.
But the Germans paid an even worse price than the Italians.
Hitler’s chief of staff Field Marshall Keitel, said:
“The unbelievably strong resistance of the Greeks
delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia.
If we did not have this long delay, ? the outcome of the war would
be different.”
When the Germans conquered Greece, they had to station half a million
soldiers there.
Because the war continued.
It was guerrilla war fighting from the mountains, attacking their convoys,
and resistance (antistasi), stabbing them in the dark of the night
in the city streets.
Then came the time for the sacrifice.
The time to pay for the courage, with hunger and deprivation.
In 1942, the NY Times reported from its American correspondent in Greece:
“In Athens alone, 110,000 children are dead.
9 out of 10 babies born are dying from malnutrition.”
And these were children. Were their lives worth standing up, to make the point of OXI day?
Tough question, which my generation has not had to answer,
thanks to what these people did 60 years ago.
We are thankful for their courage, which came from their Greekness.
Look at our youth, today, in this community.
War is still a terrible thing, but TV tries to tell them
that it happens only in far away places, and only during the 8 o’clock
news.
That we are always in the right, and coincidentally the strongest.
So we celebrate OXI Day, to tell them that war was different.
That war was over principle, and it came home.
We hope our youth will understand and keep the same values as those
Greeks 60 years ago.
We hope that, if need be, our youth will show the same courage.
Thank you.