Vague Country, Vague Learning: The Importance of Letters to WWII Greece

How much do you know about WWII in Greece? Think about it right now. How many facts can you recall? For most, it’s likely not much. Have you ever considered why, though? It’s not something you learn about naturally unless you seek it out yourself. After all, social studies classes can only cover so much with their limited time. They narrow down their teachings to what fits their main point. Maybe some fleeting details of Greece in WWII make it. Whatever else is unknown until it’s relevant to us. And when it is, we may yearn to arrange those fragmental facts and fill the gaps. 

To satisfy your curiosity, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wanted to capture Greece to prove his prowess to Nazi Germany. Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas denied Italy’s request to control Greece’s strategic points, starting the 1940-41 Greco-Italian War. Germany attacked in 1941 and quickly captured all of Greece, splitting its control with Italy and Bulgaria. They began deporting the Jewish population and caused a countrywide famine. Due to Greek resistance and attrition, the Germans released their control on Greece in October 1944. Soon after, a Civil war broke out between the Communists and the Anticommunist military.

Having all the facts given this way brings closure, but what more? We satiated our curiosity, so we moved on. We gain knowledge that lacks personal connection. Sometimes, when we have only a vague idea of something, we may strive to fill the gaps in our understanding. Yet, when we have the clear facts, we may no longer feel the need to go further. What if we keep the element of vagueness? Primary sources, especially letters, have this element of ambiguity. It forces us to draw context by “reconstructing the situation that lies behind a text” (Ehrman, 201) and researching. For example, we can unpack Greek-originating letters to reveal parts of Greek history previously unknown to us. Becoming curious and learning through these letters has merit because of the educational and personal benefits of putting the pieces together.  

I’d like to highlight a correspondence from the American College of Greece’s library’s website. It’s a set of six letters sent through the Red Cross Message Service, which stipulated a maximum length of 25 words. All were related to a college faculty member named Sophie Michaelidou. She wrote back and forth with her friend Minnie Mills, who returned to America recently and wanted to help the college. What few words they could write must’ve meant so much to them, yet I could only draw so much from my limited context. There were the expected greetings of “glad you are home,” “miss you,” “thinking, working, praying for you” (ACG Digital Museum), etc., yet Minnie and Sophie treated them as much more than niceties. Does this testify to the hardships of the times? They imply that college faculty had much work, yet supplies were scarce. What kind of work? What supplies did they lack? Minnie promised to help through a man named Luther Fowle, yet his role isn’t clarified. All there is about him is the following: He sent supplies to the faculty, likely food and other necessities, and authorized relief payouts. Could he be the lawyer that the letters mention? In fact, who were half of the people mentioned in these letters? George, Hariklia, Mabel, Annie, and more, who are they? 

I felt enamored by the human connection within the letters and Sophie and Minnie’s desire to help one another and stay in touch throughout the war. In turn, I felt the need to know more of their story. So, I dug deeper, trying to learn about the history surrounding the college, especially during WWII. I learned through Giles Milton’s “Not to Be Served But to Serve” that Sophie was a treasurer while Minnie was the principal. They used the school as a hospital and had to sell the college’s possessions to survive. The book’s information clarified the meaning behind almost all the letter’s words, which made the whole process feel much more rewarding than if I had the book from the start.

By the end, I had learned about Greece in WWII on a smaller scale, of the happenings within one college. It also reinforced my knowledge of the bigger picture, connecting it to a human experience, something more personal than a textbook’s teachings. And so, the intrigue I gained from these letter’s ambiguity bolstered my education.

This “learning through ambiguity” phenomenon persists beyond this one occurrence. Yad Vashem’s Last Letters of the Holocaust collection also fascinated me. One letter within this collection is from a Greek Jew, Elie Sides, who was sent to a ghetto in Thessaloniki and later to Auschwitz. The preface to the letter’s transcription explained the context of most things within the letter: his occupation, how Elie tried to help his daughter escape confinement, the fact that Sides thought he was going to Krakow, Poland, instead of Auschwitz because they lied to him, and more. Both the preface and the transcription failed to explain why Elie wrote the letter in French. I was already interested in the presence of a Greek Jewish community. I’d never heard of that before, so this intrigued me further. Could the Sides family not be Greek? Did they move from somewhere else? After considering multiple explanations and deep-diving into research, I found no concrete evidence to prove if they were Greek. However, I did discover that Elie’s son-in-law’s last name–Sarfati–meant “French” in Hebrew, explaining the letter’s language. Even though I never found the answer to my questions, my experience from start to finish opened my mind to Greece’s diverse communities and cultures.

To connect this to the larger population, think of the situation surrounding My Dear Bessie: a correspondence between Chris Barker and Bessie Moore. The compiler of the letters, Simon Garfield, had written a book and put letters, far removed from their contexts, between each chapter. Garfield wrote of how his readers’ curiosity grew voracious from these scattered letters, stating, “Too many [readers] said they skipped through the main chapters to discover what happened… next” (8). Thus, Garfield compiled the letters from “genuinely… popular demand” (8). Readers drawn by this love story would follow Chris through his stationing in Greece. There, they’d learn of Britain aiding Greece and the looming threat of civil war. They could also see and consider two points of view of this historical event. 

The vague nature of these Greece-originating letters begets questions for the reader and draws them in. It often makes them wish to learn more about Greece and its history. So, they do. Unpacking sources and creating an explanation through them has this entertainment value. The fun of discovery reinforces the new things you learn about Greece’s history and what you already know. There’s also a sense of humanity behind the words of these everyday people, increasing the chance that it sticks throughout your life, unlike the average textbook. The correspondent’s opinions and experiences in Greece live with you and introduce you to new perspectives. Thus, solving the mystery behind the bits of information in these letters is more beneficial. Not just for Greek history but for any letter from any historical period and place.

Works Cited

ACG Digital Museum. “World War II Collection.” John S. Bailey Library, 12 Jul 2024, https://library.acg.edu/digitalmuseum/collections/world-war-ii. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Barker, Chris, and Bessie Moore. My Dear Bessie: A Love Story in Letters. Edited by Simon Garfield, Canongate Books, 2015. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Encyclopedia Judaica. “Sarfati.” Encyclopedia.com, 11 Sept 2024, https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sarfati. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Hall, Richard C., editor. War in the Balkans: An Encyclopedic History from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Jüdisches Museum Berlin. “Red Cross Letters: Proof of Life in 25 Words or Less | Jewish Museum Berlin.” Jüdisches Museum Berlin, https://www.jmberlin.de/en/red-cross-letters-proof-life-25-words-or-less. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Milton, Giles. Not to be served but to serve: a history of the American College of Greece. Livani Publishing Organization, 2011.

Yad Vashem. “5 April 1943: Thessaloniki | Last Letters from the Holocaust.” Yad Vashem, https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1943/sides.asp. Accessed 10 October 2024.