GREECE: Many Lidices

Vogue’s words could not help seeming pale, irrelevant, almost flippant beside the unspeakable pictures received from Greece last week (see cuts). Yet Vogue’s words (in a moving and far-from-flippant article in the current issue) and those of Greek Minister of Information Andre Michalopoulos could supplement the picture in the process of educating the outside world in Axis occupation methods.

Vogue:

“Greece is a true hell. The Greeks are the recipients not of cruel beatings, but of a finesse in occupation tactics. The German system is slow, sure, and unimaginable. In Athens a good menu would consist of a breakfast of herb tea and a Melba-size slice of dry bread; luncheon would be weeds from the garden, cooked in a few drops of oil, if one were lucky enough to get oil, and another thin piece of dry bread; and finally, dinner would be vegetable soup, thickened with a teaspoonful of wheat flour, and for dessert a fig or a couple of olives. Dogs, cats, even rats are the only meats to be found; three pounds of donkey meat, which tastes like kitchen soap, costs about $10.”

Michalopouios:

Greek families are burying their dead secretly in order to use their ration cards. Bulgars, to whom Adolf Hitler threw Macedonia and Thrace, immediately slaughtered 10,000 Greeks, drove 70,000 more from their homes. Money cannot help; dead men have been picked up clutching large sums in their fists. The Italians cover the dead with cloth and carry them away; the Germans kick the dead in the gutter. Greece has many Lidices, towns razed and marked only by a sign printed on a swastika flag.