NEW YORK – The Archdiocesan Eparchial Synod, which recently convened in New York, transferred auxiliary Bishop Apostolos of Medeia from the Chancery of the Metropolis of San Francisco to the position of the Synod Chief Secretariat, replacing Bishop Sebastian of Zela, who in turn became Assistant to Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta.

The Synod took no action regarding the issues at Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology (HCHC) and its president, Rev. Christopher Metropulos. Archbishop Demetrios had promised the Ecumenical Patriarchal Synod in August he would discuss the issue at the Eparchial Synod, and The National Herald has learned that some Metropolitans urged him to take action, but reportedly he chose not to proceed, instead saying he would speak with Rev. Metropulos. HCHC have only 154 combined students enrolled this year, the smallest number in years.

The Archbishop with some Synod members visited the unfinished nave at the St. Nicholas National Shrine.

The Synod also discussed candidates for ordination, reviewed the list of candidates for Episcopacy, which will be submitted to the Patriarchate for its approval, and discussed possibly establishing a central information bank to store electronic copies of certificates of Church sacraments.

Synod members met with Archdiocesan Chancellor Bishop Andonios of Phasiane, and Audit and Finance Committees Presidents, respectively, Eleni Allen and Lazaros Kirkos, to discuss the Archdiocese’s finances and the results of the second phase of the audit for the Shrine’s construction.

Metropolitans Evangelos of New Jersey and d Nathanael of Chicago, who are currently serving at the Patriarchate’s Holy Synod, informed the Eparchial Synod about the issue of Ukraine Church Autocephaly.

ARCHDIOCESAN COUNCIL CONVENES

The Archdiocesan Council convened for its first meeting of the 2018-20 term on October 18 and 19 at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, presided by Archbishop Demetrios, who nominated the officers: Vice President George Tsandikos, Treasurer Allen, and Secretary and Legal Counsel Catherine Bouffides-Walsh, all of whom were unanimously approved. He also announced the appointment of the other six members of the Executive Committee: Finance Committee Chair Lazaros (Louis) Kircos, Administration Committee Chair Constantine Caras, Audit Committee Chair Maria Stefanis, George Behrakis, Louis Roussalis, and Theofanis Economides. Demetrios noted that Bishop Andonios and CFO Father Soterios Baroody are Executive Committee ex-officio members. Also, all of the Synod members (metropolitans) are de facto members.

As was the case at the Clergy Laity Congress in July, the Archdiocese reported various achievements: financial stability, full restoration of restricted accounts, implementation of appropriate financial controls. The Finance Committee proposed a balanced budget for 2019, which the Council approved.

The Special Investigative Committee Phase II Report regarding the Shrine (SNCNS), released October 17 and available on TNH’s website (thenationalherald.com), was discussed, namely, as the report states, that “after extensive investigation, there is no evidence that SNCNS funds were improperly paid to any individuals employed by or associated with the Archdiocese. The Phase II investigation also revealed no evidence or allegation that fraud was committed in connection with the SNCNS construction project.”

The Council unanimously adopted a motion “expressing the deep respect of the members to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and their full confidence in His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America, and the metropolitans of the Archdiocese.”

Metropolitan Methodios of Boston reported on the Congress, which was held in Boston. The two Congress Chairs, Michael Sophocles and Peter Bassett, reported that even though the average cost for each delegate was approximately $700, which was above the registration fee, with aggressive fundraising the Congress was able to generate a surplus.TNH has learned that the surplus is $550,000 and will be split between the Archdiocese and the Boston Metropolis. Leadership 100 donated $300,000 toward the Congress banquet.

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The first aggression in 20th century history perpetrated by a fascist state was carried out against Greece, 12 years before the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, and 16 years before the German invasion of Poland.

In August 1923, ten months after coming to power in Rome, Mussolini used the pretext of an Italian-manufactured Greek-Albanian border incident to bombard and occupy the island of Corfu. After killing at least 15 Greek civilians – the world’s first victims of fascist war making – the Italian forces withdrew from Corfu a month after the start of their occupation.

Although world opinion and Greek diplomatic magnanimity forced the Italian withdrawal and prevented Mussolini from annexing Corfu, the Italian leader’s actions revealed fascism’s menacing character, an ominous threat to international stability and peace that would be ignored by the Western powers until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Much as the Corfu Crisis of 1923 has been largely overlooked in most histories of fascist aggression, the first defeat suffered by fascist forces in Europe has been one of the most ignored, but important, events of the Second World War. Ironically, the first defeat of fascism, like the first fascist aggression, involved Greece. Nineteen months before the Axis setback at El Alamein, North Africa and 26 months before the German disaster at Stalingrad, Greece inflicted an astonishing defeat against Mussolini’s fascist empire, a humiliation from which the world’s first fascist leader and first fascist state would never recover.

The Greco-Italian War of 1940-1941, known to most Greeks as simply the Albanian War, would have significant strategic implications for the course of the wider, gargantuan conflict throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Yet, the rout of Italy’s army by the Greeks in late 1940 marked more than the first Allied military victory of the war in continental Europe. For the Allied war effort, the outcome of the Greek campaign constituted an important moral triumph which would have enormous ideological consequences for the global battle of ideas between democracy on the one hand, and the anti-democratic forces of fascism and totalitarianism on the other.

DISTORTING GREECE’S ROLE IN THE WAR

Despite the significant consequences arising from Greece’s participation in the war, Greece’s role as an Allied power is typically either ignored or trivialized by most historians. The English-language writing on the war, dominated largely by British authors and uncritically reproduced by American scholars, has led to a popular, distorted view of the Second World War.

Inasmuch as most such works have tended to elevate Britain’s role in the conflict by marginalizing the importance of other actors, the contributions of smaller Allied co-belligerents have been largely ignored. In this sense, the historical importance of no other Allied country has been perhaps as willfully ignored as Greece.

British national pride cherishes the myth that “Britain stood alone” defiantly and heroically against fascism from the fall of France in June, 1940 to the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union a year later. This fallacy is compounded by the fiction that the British army’s victories in 1941 in Ethiopia and North Africa represented the first Allied victories against the Axis.

Moreover, to the extent that the major extant literature acknowledges Greece’s role in the war, the relevance of Greece’s role is largely reduced to drawing Britain’s involvement in the Balkans, dispersing Commonwealth forces to Greece, and thus supposedly undermining the British from securing a decisive, early victory against the Italians in North Africa.

In short, most histories of the Second World War address Greece as merely a peripheral theatre of operations for a failed, minor British campaign, culminating in an interesting, but tangential, German airborne assault against Crete. In short, the substance and analysis of Greece’s participation in the war is largely ignored and the importance of the Greek victory against fascist Italy is either omitted or trivialized in most such works.

These widely recycled renditions of events are, however, entirely inconsistent with the actual historical record. First, the rhetoric of “Britain standing alone” against fascism ignores the many Commonwealth nations, as well as Czechs, Free French, Poles, and others who fought alongside the British after the fall of France. This approach also omits Greece – whose armed forces resisted aggression longer than any other Allied country eventually conquered by the Axis – a country which fought tenaciously during seven of the twelve months that Britain supposedly stood alone.

Furthermore, the Greek army’s daring reversal of the Italian invasion proved to be not only the first Allied victory of the war, well ahead of Britain’s first cautious counteroffensives against the Italians in Ethiopia and North Africa, but colossal in its symbolic and ideological importance.

Finally, rather than coming to terms with and analyzing the incompetence of British military leadership, which produced an uninterrupted string of Allied disasters during the first two years of the war, most historians have been content to repeat the hollow apologia of the British command in the Middle East, which deflected its failures in North Africa by attributing them to the dispatch of resources to Greece.

This well-entrenched Anglo-centric perspective has impeded the development of a more thorough understanding of Greece’s participation in the war and the seminal strategic consequences and meaning of Greece’s victory against Italy in the early stages of the war.

THE ITALIAN INVASION AND FAILURE

Greece was forced to enter World War II on October 28, 1940, when an Italian army launched a cross-border invasion from positions in Albania – Mussolini chose the date to commemorate the 18th anniversary of his ascendancy to power as Italy’s prime minister.

Three hours before the invasion began, Greece’s head of state, Ioannis Metaxas, was given an ultimatum by Italy’s ambassador in Athens to surrender Greece to Italian occupation. Metaxas’ immediate and resolute rejection of Mussolini’s ultimatum inspired the Greek people, who were already outraged by months of Italian provocations, to popularly express their will to resist in one word: Oxi! (No!).

The Metaxas government’s immediate order for military mobilization was met by an instantaneous wave of patriotic fervor and unprecedented national unity, as Greeks, regardless of past opposition to or support for the Metaxas regime, rushed forward to defend their country against fascist aggression.

The Italian invasion of Greece was motivated by strategic, political, and ideological objectives. Conquest of Greece was crucial to Mussolini’s goal of establishing Italian hegemony in the Mediterranean and the building of a fascist, revived Roman Empire.

Furthermore, irritated by Berlin’s lack of consultation with Rome before precipitating war against Poland in 1939 and invading France in 1940, as well harboring envy of the Germans’ astonishing military successes, Mussolini sought to match Hitler through a victorious, unilateral campaign against Greece. Moreover, the anticipated defeat and subjugation of the Greeks was intended to demonstrate to the world the primacy of Italian fascism and the superiority of the Italian nation.

The Italian invasion plan envisioned a decisive defeat of the Greek army to be completed within two to three weeks. Greece would be invaded and occupied in three stages, or phases. The first phase of operations would eliminate Greek border defenses and secure the seizure of Epirus and the Ionian Islands.

The second phase, fueled by the arrival of a large wave of reinforcements from Italy, would produce the destruction of the remaining Greek field forces in a thrust across western Macedonia, culminating in the capture of Thessaloniki. The final phase of the invasion would involve the rapid, effortless occupation of the rest of Greece, to be crowned by a triumphal march of Italian troops into Athens.

Placed under the command of General Sebastiano Visconti Prasca, the more than 100,000-man Italian invasion force consisted of one armored, one alpine, and four infantry divisions, plus ancillary armored, artillery, blackshirt, cavalry, and infantry units, as well as six Albanian battalions, all of which were supported by roughly 500 artillery pieces, 460 planes, and almost 200 tanks. In order to quickly reinforce and nearly double the initial invasion force, six additional divisions were earmarked for rapid deployment from Italy within two weeks of the commencement of hostilities.

Facing this formidable concentration of men and material, the Greek forces positioned in the first line of defense along the frontier with Albania, amounted to only 10,000 troops, a figure which would increase to barely 35,000 troops during the first week of fighting. The Greek army lacked any tanks, and the entire air force counted fewer than 80 planes.

Given the enormous disparity of forces in Italy’s favor, as well as the factor of a surprise attack, the Italian High Command was predictably optimistic about the outcome of their forthcoming campaign. Mussolini had every reason to expect success. He was not alone. In fact, once news of the Italian invasion broke, the international media and the world community universally anticipated a quick defeat and occupation of Greece by fascist Italy, a large, powerful country with a significant industrial arsenal, a colonial empire, and a population seven times larger than its prey.

World opinion had been justified in expecting that Greece would be quickly vanquished and occupied. The poorly armed and antiquated Greek army was greatly outnumbered. Conversely, the modern and well-equipped Italian military enjoyed comparatively limitless reserves of manpower and material, as well as total air superiority and the initiative of the offensive. Yet, the Greeks would overcome these staggering disadvantages by effective concentration of force, tactical deftness, and the intangible of extraordinary will – in short, with stubborn determination, the Greeks outmaneuvered and outfought the Italians.

During the first few days of the attack, the massed Italian forces in Epirus moved forward but were slowed by the Greeks’ screening units. On November 1, the Italians collided into the Greeks’ main line of defense, running from Igoumenitsa along the Ionian coast, to the border towns of Kalpaki and Konitsa in the center, north through the Pindus Mountains, and descending west of Kastoria and Florina. Backed by intensive bombing sorties, the primary thrust of the Italian offensive was directed toward the city of Ioannina through the vital crossroads near Kalpaki.

In support of the main push towards Ioannina, a deep flanking maneuver to the north and east of the Kalpaki sector was spearhead by the elite alpine Julia Division. The powerful, well-equipped Julia Division was tasked with securing control of the Pindus Range and capturing the strategic town of Metsovo, thereby isolating Greek forces in Epirus from those in Macedonia and Thessaly, cutting off their supply and retreat route, and encircling them for annihilation.

GREEK COUNTEROFFENSIVE AND VICTORY

To Mussolini’s horror, and the world’s astonishment, the Italian invasion was halted and beaten back by the Greeks. After almost a week of repeated, frenzied Italian attempts to break through the Greek lines, the Greeks had defeated the Italians in several near-border engagements, including the critical Battle of Kalpaki, the first Allied land victory in Europe, in which two under-strength Greek regiments badly mauled and defeated two Italian divisions and a large armored formation. At the same time, the Julia Division was decimated.

The Julia Division’s advance across the Pindus Range was harassed by constant, daring attacks from Greek cavalry, which outmaneuvered the Italian unit, forced it to fall back towards Albania, and crushed it in a series of bold actions.

The defeat of the Italian invasion force and the steady arrival of Greek reserves enabled the Greek army’s commander-in-chief, General Alexandros Papagos, to launch a counteroffensive along the entire front on November 14. The main push of the Greek assault came from five divisions, which Papagos had concentrated near Kastoria in western Macedonia, along a sector of the front where the Italians, waiting for the first phase of the anticipated victory in Epirus before starting the planned second phase of the invasion, had remained largely inactive.

Breaking through the Italians’ forward defenses, and after a large scale, week-long battle against eight Italian divisions, on November 21 the Greeks captured Koritsa, Albania’s then largest city. Koritsa thus became the first Axis-occupied city to be liberated by Allied forces during the Second World War, an event that, much to Mussolini’s humiliation, drew extensive international media attention.

The Greek victory at the Battle of Koritsa, which nearly ruptured the Italian front, had the effect of forcing the Italians to begin a headlong retreat deep into Albania. By November 22, the last Italian troops had been swept from Greek territory. During the next six weeks the Greek counteroffensive pressed steadily deeper into Albania, producing an uninterrupted stream of victories as one Italian defense line after another, and as one town after another, fell to the advancing Greek army.

By the close of 1940, virtually all of southern Albania, including predominantly Greek-populated Northern Epirus, had been liberated. Although the Greeks continued to make local gains by capturing strategic points along the newly established front in January and February 1941, the onset of extremely harsh winter conditions and logistical limitations forced General Papagos to halt the general advance at the close of December 1940.

In desperation, Mussolini had by that time changed his commanding generals in Albania twice and had poured enormous numbers of troops into the country, all with no effect. The front may have stabilized, but the Italians could not reverse their staggering defeat.

In response to the Italian disaster, Hitler ordered the German General Staff to prepare for an invasion of Greece. Although Hitler did not want to go to war against Greece, he saw no means of avoiding such action. Larger strategic interests demanded that Greece be neutralized.

Hitler concluded that the success of his impending invasion of the Soviet Union would be complicated if the Axis Powers’ southern flank in the Balkans was not secure, a view cemented by the arrival in Greece of a token British expeditionary force in March 1941. Thus in April 1941, the Germans invaded and overran Greece, beginning the country’s horrific ordeal of occupation and resistance.

Even in the midst of defeat and conquest by the Germans, the Greek victory against the Italians continued to resonate among both Allied and Axis camps. Mussolini attempted one last time to salvage Italian fascist pride by launching a “Spring Offensive” aimed at defeating the Greek army in Albania ahead of the impending German invasion of Greece.

After months of rebuilding and reinforcing the Italian forces in Albania, ultimately amassing a vast army of almost 600,000 troops (the largest single field army the Italians would deploy on any front during the Second World War), on March 9 Mussolini launched a carefully prepared offensive against the Greek forces, which numbered fewer than 300,000 troops. With the support of massive aerial bombing and sustained artillery barrages, tremendous waves of ground assaults were thrown against the Greek lines.

Despite suffering enormous casualties, the Italian attackers did not gain an inch of territory and the vaunted “Spring Offensive” ended in total failure by March 25, fittingly, the Greeks’ Independence Day. Mussolini, who had arrived in Albania to observe in person the opening of the offensive, left Albania in disgust. Adding to Mussolini’s humiliation, following the Germans’ invasion of Greece, Greek forces surrendered to the Germans but refused to capitulate to the Italians.

In fact, impressed by the Greeks’ show of bravery and tenaciousness in combat against German forces, Hitler, half-sympathizing with the Greeks, momentarily gave consideration to concluding a separate peace with Athens and to leaving the Italian forces in Albania to fight the Greeks alone.

STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS OF GREEK VICTORY

The Greek victory over Italy had significant consequences for the course of the Second World War, but in ways rarely understood by most historians. Indeed, the standard narratives on Greece have tended to promote more misunderstanding than accurate awareness of the country’s role in the larger conflict.

For example, according to a narrative intended to mitigate the failure of their Greek campaign, several British apologists posited that London’s decision to deploy 60,000 British and Commonwealth troops in Greece in March 1941 was determinant in producing the postponement of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks, a delay that proved fatal for the Germans because it stopped them from reaching Moscow before the arrival of the dreaded Russian winter.

This argument was happily repeated by several German generals who found in the British narrative a convenient means to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own military failures in Russia and to deny the Soviets any credit for their own respective successes.

Interestingly, the British master narrative was eventually adopted and modified by Greek writers, who presented Greece’s admirable victory as a case of a small state exercising an asymmetrical effect on Great Power geopolitics and military actions in the international system. Greece’s victory against Italy in 1940 was thus explained as the catalyst that set into motion the sequence of events that produced the Axis failure against the Soviet Union, and hence made possible the Allied victory in Europe, a view widely popularized in Greece and the Greek diaspora.

Despite its appeal to Greek pride, the proposition that the Greek army’s victory against Italy in the mountains of Epirus and southern Albania determined the outcome of the gargantuan struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is without substance.

Moreover, this entire interpretation is premised upon the uncritical assumption that were it not for merely poor timing and bad weather the Germans would have crushed the Soviet colossus in a single, swift campaign – a conjecture that is as fatuous as it is simplistic. Rather, the Germans lost their war against the Soviet Union for the same reasons the Italians lost their war against Greece – the fascist racism of the Germans and Italians caused them to underestimate the ability of their enemies, and this outlook led them to plan unrealistically and inadequately for the determined resistance they believed a supposedly inferior people, such as the Slavs and Greeks, were incapable of mounting.

In this sense, the Greco-Italian War was important not because it determined the outcome of the German-Soviet conflict – it did not – but because it was the forerunner, one with remarkable parallels to the latter, larger conflict.

The conventional narrative has obfuscated historians’ understanding of the significance of the Greco-Italian War in two respects: the strategic consequences of the Greeks’ success for the Mediterranean theatre of war; and the ideological consequences associated with the triumph of democratic ideas over the supposed superiority of fascism.

The preoccupation with linking Germany’s defeat in the Soviet Union to the Greek victory in Albania has been counterproductive to a rigorous understanding of the real impact of the Greco-Italian War on the strategic contours of the larger war.

To be precise, although the Greek victory in Albania was not important to the ultimate military outcome of the German-Soviet conflict, it was crucial to the survival of the British war effort in the Mediterranean. In short, the Greek victory against Italy contributed decisively to the failure of the Axis to vanquish Britain, not the Soviet Union.

In this sense, the Greeks’ victory in Albania was of particular importance because it diverted crucial Italian land, air, and sea forces at a time when they were desperately needed in North Africa to defeat the British forces in Egypt.

From October to May 1941, the Italians dispatched five times as many troops and supplies to Albania as they did to North Africa. Albania had the first call on armor, artillery, aircraft, motor vehicles, and munitions. As a result of the Greek crisis, the Albanian front monopolized the attention of the Italian High Command and remained Rome’s all-consuming concern at the expense of other operations, especially those in North Africa.

Had Rome defeated and occupied Greece, and not been tied down fighting a desperate defensive war in Albania, the Italians would have been able to concentrate an enormous, mobile, and far more lethal force in Libya with which the Axis might well have taken El Alamein and successfully advanced to the Suez in 1941, rather than failing to do so in 1942.

In short, the Greeks’ victory against the Italians in 1940 probably saved the not-yet-firmly organized, poorly led, and still underperforming British forces in Egypt from defeat, a development which would have had disastrous consequences for Britain’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Furthermore, it is clear that Italy’s failure in Greece persuaded Spain’s fascist leader, Francisco Franco, to remain neutral in the European conflict. Conversely, had the Italians defeated the Greeks, Spain would have likely entered the war on the side of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco’s ideological partners.

With Spain as a member of the Axis camp, Gibraltar would have been easily overrun and the British presence in the Western Mediterranean would have been wiped out. Such simultaneous strategic losses for the British at the opposite ends of the Mediterranean – Gibraltar and Suez – would have been catastrophic for Britain and its ability to continue the war against the Axis.

IDEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF GREEK TRIUMPH

Fascist thinking led the Italians to assume that the Greeks would be easily defeated. Once the Greek army devastated the fascist invasion force it produced not only military panic within the Italian High Command, but an existential crisis within Italian state and society writ large. Mussolini was stunned and bewildered by the seemingly incomprehensible developments in Greece and Albania.

He had carefully and deliberately singled out Greece as a much weaker country, and he believed the Greeks to be racially inferior to the Italians and therefore incapable of resistance. Indeed, shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, Mussolini was so confident of an effortless victory that he remarked, “If anyone makes any difficulties about beating the Greeks I shall resign from being an Italian.”

In the whole of almost twenty years, nothing did more harm inside and outside Italy to Mussolini’s reputation and the ideology of fascism than the Greek victory in Albania. Military morale and Italian public confidence in Mussolini’s regime hit bottom, and the debacle in Greece disoriented and demoralized the fascist party. In fact, it was the defeat at the hands of the Greeks that effectively lost fascism the overwhelming popular support it had enjoyed among Italians before October 1940. Furthermore, Mussolini’s international prestige and clout were destroyed.

Ultimately, Mussolini’s position even within the Axis camp was marred and belittled as a result of the Italian defeat in Greece. Mussolini, in short, could no longer cling to his early conviction that he was the greatest of the fascist dictators, the leader of the more dynamic movement with a right to equal consultation, if not actual leadership of the Axis.

Instead, from the Greek debacle onwards, Mussolini was forced to become more and more dependent on Germany, while German regard for Italian interests declined correspondingly. Indeed, whereas Mussolini’s recognition and importance as a major world leader were never in doubt before 1940, the Greek fiasco transformed Mussolini and fascist Italy into an international laughing stock.

In retrospect, the most important consequences of the Greek victory against Italy extended beyond the military sphere to the arena of ideas. Greece’s victory ended the myth of Axis invincibility and, even more importantly, it revealed the falsehood and futility of fascism. Any illusion that fascism heralded a New Order, a greater civilization based on an entirely new hierarchical idea of man, society, and nation was shattered by the Greeks’ success in battle against the larger fascist, supposedly racially superior, invader – the triumph of a veritable David against a modern-day Goliath.

Consequently, the Greeks’ military victory was also seen as a moral and ideological victory for the Allies and democracy because it affirmed the noble principle that all nations which abide by the rule of law, no matter how small or lacking they may be in might, have a right to exist and to be free to determine their own destinies in peace.

Greece’s defeat of fascist Italy was a defeat of the brutal idea that only powerful nations have a right to a future and that the future should be determined by force. Many historians emphasize that the lack of sufficient preparedness doomed the Italian invasion of Greece to failure. Such historians miss the point – they do not grasp the fact that the cause of a lack of sufficient preparedness in Rome for war was fascism itself, which, as much as the Italian army, was demolished by the Greeks on the battlefields of Epiros.

Rome’s fascists had been confident that Italian genius and energy were bound to bring success against the inferior Greeks, and this would be true even if the Greeks were a hundred times more numerous and well-armed. Italians could rest assured that they would be victorious because they were more intelligent, cultured, robust, and braver than other nations. Therefore, true to the logic of its racist nationalism, Italy welcomed the war against Greece and judgment by battle as an entirely proper test by which the superior quality of the Italian nation and fascism could be demonstrated. Both Italy and fascism failed this test.

In this sense, Greece’s triumph against fascism was, like so many other Greek achievements before it, a victory and a moral lesson for the world – one that is strikingly prescient for both Greece and the world in our times.

Alexandros K. Kyrou, PhD, is Professor of History and Director, Program in East European and Russian Studies at Salem State University in Salem, MA. This piece was originally published in The National Herald on October 25, 2014.

The post The Strategic Implications of the Greek Oxi appeared first on The National Herald.

ATHENS – Many times when Stella Karavasili has a headache or feels out of sorts, she would call her grandmother on the phone and ask for her to do an incantation called a xematiasma to get rid of it, and the bad energy from the mystical evil eye most Greeks believe is real.

“She would say some words and a prayer and I would feel ok again on the spot. I don’t know, is it something religious, is it just bad energy?” she told The National Herald. “I know that our church believes in it and mentions it. My grandma passed the words on to my father, who knows how to do xematiasma,” she said.

It may be 2018 – when some Greeks still believe in the gods of ancient times – but a study carried out by the Society for Headache and Migraine Patients found the majority of Greeks still believe that the so-called evil eye (“mati”) is responsible for making their head hurt.

The study, which was carried out on a sample of 10,000 people to gauge public awareness of the causes and cures for headaches, found that 60 percent blame their headaches on ill-wishers and 40 percent believe they can be cured with an xematiasma.

Go figure. “There is a prevalence of misguided theories concerning headaches and their cure,” Dr. Dimos Mitsikostas, an Associate Professor of Neurology at Athens University and head of the society, said before World Migraine Day on September 12, Kathimerini reported. “It is important to dispel these prevalent myth and to break certain taboos, like fear of visiting a neurologist.”

“Headaches are discounted by the boss, the romantic partner and often even by the doctor,” Mitsikostas said, explaining how patients suffering from headaches and migraines are often misunderstood. “Most people associate headaches with some psychological factor when they are, in fact, cause by a biological disorder of the brain.”

Most Greeks are having none of the scientific explanations, preferring to think someone put a spell on them, a kind of Greek voodoo perhaps although it’s unclear how it can be done.

The evil eye is known to have been a fixture in Greece dating back to at least the 6th century BC, when it commonly appeared on drinking vessels and there are tests, believers say, to detect if you’ve been afflicted.

One involves putting a drop of olive oil in a glass of water, preferably holy water if you have any hanging around the house. If the drop floats, the test concludes there is no evil eye involved. If the drop sinks, then, gulp, you’ve had the evil eye cast on you, but don’t reach for the aspirin if there’s someone who can do the xematiasma for you.

The “healer” silently recites a secret prayer passed over from an older relative of the opposite sex, usually a grandparent although it’s unclear if it’s so secret how so many people know it although revealing the incantation means you can lose your ability to cure people, supposedly.

“My mother always said she would tell me the words, but she passed away suddenly,” said Karavasili, 41, a hairdresser who said her partner George, a Coast Guard officer, said that his mother also knew the secret to the xematiasma and would make his headaches go away when pain relievers didn’t work.

Frosso Ramou, 56, a teacher, said she believes bad energy can be transmitted. “Some people have this way of feeling for others. If you want to be a receiver of bad energy this means it may affect you. You may render things that happen to you to this. But if you are a positive person you may overcome the explanation it’s a bad eye.

Religion also accepts. Most time when you talk about a bad eye someone can admire you and send strong magnetic waves and charges. If you don’t believe in this you may feel you are not affected. It is believed that people with blue eyes can give you the bad eye but you can cross three times and spit three times to make it go away,” she said, but you may want to make sure there’s no one near.
There are several regional versions of the prayer in question, a common one being: “Holy Virgin, Our Lady, if (insert name of victim here) is suffering of the evil eye, release him/her of it.” The word evil has to repeated three times, but make sure you don’t say Beetlejuice three times.

According to custom, if one is indeed afflicted with the evil eye, both victim and “healer” then start yawning profusely. The “healer” then performs the sign of the cross three times, and emits spitting-like sounds in the air three times, the Greek Ftou! It’s unclear whether you can throw in the Na! That’s a hand gesture with variations called Moutza that’s an insult.

In Greek theology, the evil eye or vaskania is considered harmful for the one whose envy inflicts it on others as well as the sufferer. The Greek Church has an ancient prayer against vaskania from the Megan Hieron Synekdemon book of prayers so there’s some options to save yourself.

The evil eye, a glance believed to have the ability to harm those on whom it falls, can come from anyone at any moment, or you can draw it to yourself. The cause can be zealous admiration, envy or even malevolent jealousy, Greek blogger Matt Barrett advised.

Children and women are thought to be particularly susceptible, while in many traditions strangers, malformed or blue-eyed individuals and old women are most often accused of casting the evil eye, he said. In Greece and in Turkey , glass blue eye charms to ward against the evil eye are stillsold.
Giannoula, 83, who didn’t give her last year, said she knows of this stuff. “It’s Satan’s doing, my child. He puts the jealousy in you. He puts the poison in your heart and you give the kako mati – the evil eye. It can make you sick, it can kill you,” she said.

Being a grandparent, she recommends another way to get rid of the mati someone cast on you. “You have to go to a priest to undo the evil eye, you should not let someone else do it for you. You have to have a blessing read from a priest. Only parents and grandparents can do it for their children,” she said.

The post I Put a Spell on You: Most Greeks Believe in Evil Eye appeared first on The National Herald.

BROOKLYN – October 14, the Holy Cross Church in Brooklyn warmly welcomed the return of Archimandrite Gerasimos Makris, who was ousted from there in January. After the Divine Liturgy, he attended the church’s annual Philoptochos luncheon. Philoptochos President Eleni Psaras, who is also a member of the National Philoptochos Board, is a native of Lemnos who has been in the parish for 37 years, 30 of which she has been a Philoptochos member and President for the past eight. She spoke with The National Herald; the interview follows.

TNH: Do you know what happened regarding Fr. Makris?
EP: No one can yet understand what has happened. No one believed anything of what was said. When Bishop Andonios [of Phasiane, the Archdiocesan Chancellor] spoke to us in a meeting we had with all the presidents, he said that it was something minor but he has to be out of the Church for a while. That is what he told us. Above and beyond that, whatever they told us, no one believed anything.

TNH: In his February 2 letter to your parish, Bishop Andonios wrote that Fr. Makris himself admitted that he was involved in inappropriate behavior.
EP: Yes, he sent a letter, but when he spoke with us he said [the matter] was something small.

TNH: So, which is correct, what he said or what he wrote officially?
EP: I don’t know what to say.

TNH: Did you ever ask Fr. Makris what happened?
EP: When he left the Church, he didn’t speak to anyone. I learned he couldn’t talk to anyone, so as to be asked and to answer.

TNH: Now that he is back, have you asked him?
EP: No. We haven’t seen him. And why should I ask him now? It is better to forget what happened. What can we do? He is back, that’s what everyone wanted. It is finished. People expected him to return, and no one believed [the accusations]. No one believes this man could do something like that. We didn’t believe the women who accused him.

TNH: It is Bishop Andonios and the Archdiocese that wrote the letter about the accusations, was that a problem?
EP: Yes. But we don’t know exactly what happened.

TNH: So Bishop Andonios doesn’t know what he’s doing?
EP: Someone accused Fr. Gerasimos and the Archdiocese wrote the accusations. Was it true? We don’t know.

TNH: Why don’t you ask Fr. Makris what happened?
EP: I can’t ask him. The Parish Council president should ask him. It is not my business.

TNH: How does the parish feel?
EP: For almost a year, we were without a priest; a ship without a captain. The church had emptied. People left. They didn’t put money into the tray. We were desperate. Now that he is back, people have embraced him. Now that he is back, people have embraced him. On October 14, the nave was full. They applauded him. As they did at the Philoptochos luncheon, where they also ran to him and embraced him.

TNH: Can you please tell us about your upcoming Philoptochos initiative in Greece?
EP: This is our ninth trip to Greece. The first one was to Zaharo, with the fires. We collected some money and we wanted to hand-deliver it, but the joy we gave was more important. We make this visit every year. This year we are going to start in Constantinople and then go to Thessaloniki, Florina, Karditsa, Trikala, Athens, and Mati of Attica.

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Dramatic events disturbed the bucolic life of Griazdani, my birthplace in Northern Epirus, on a sunny October day of 1940. The village elders advised all inhabitants to stay indoors, except for a committee of volunteers that would assemble in the town square and pretend life was normal.

There was nothing normal about it. Hordes of Albanian and Italian fascists were marching through the village heading for deployment on a battle front that stretched from the Mourgana Mountains to the town of Konispoli. Dark clouds of war against Greece were gathering and fear marked the lives of Northern Epirotans.

Though adults made valiant efforts to keep children free of fear, fear was walking in front of my house, dressed in the national colors of Albanian warriors, leading Mussolini’s army to the Greek borders. I could not fathom then the significance of Gheghs marching against Greece.

A lifelong study on Balkan affairs would eventually clarify matters: the smartly dressed Albanians were elements of the infamous Tomori Division, a military outfit that had asked the Italian High Command for the honor to cross the Greek borders first.

On the night of October 27, a ferocious battle commenced in the Mourgana-Filiates front that became my introduction to war at age five. The tenacious resistance by the Greek forces against the Albano- Italian invasion, kept us awake at night and hopeful for the day of our freedom.

There were nights when small groups of men, my father included, would cross over the Spara ridge into Tsamanda to provide information to Greek commanders about troop movements of the invaders; and there were other nights when we had to abandon our homes and hide in the forest to escape the pillage by Chams and Albanian irregulars who had formed special units, with the sole purpose of pillaging and terrorizing the Greek minority. Irregular units were part and parcel of the Tirana government’s designs for a Greater Albania.

Documents captured by Greek forces in Korytsa (e.g. Document No. 122, June 29, 1939) reveal the purpose of these units: they were designed to operate outside the parameters of the laws of war, carry out intimidation forays against the Northern Epirotans, cause depopulation of Greek villages and ultimately change the demography of Epirus.

The Chams were a central component in Mussolini’s grandiose Balkan schemes as well. In anticipation of the Italian invasion, and in close coordination with the Tirana government of Shefqet Verlaci, they had formed a brigade of their own that operated as a Trojan horse behind Greek lines. Commander of the Brigade was Tahir Demi from Filiates with his cousin Petrit as his deputy. This same unit would play havoc with the lives of Epirotans when it later offered its services to Nazi General Huber Lanz.

In early December the Italo-Albanian forces collapsed, the Chams drifted back into the civilian life and tucked away their guns for another day of collaboration. The Greek army poured into my village and a tall officer, Major Karalis, made the upper floor of our home his battalion headquarters. His stentorian voice never left me: Nicola, bring firewood upstairs, he would intone.

It turns out, he knew about my father’s service as a draftee in the Greek army in 1914-16 and a friendship was established between the two men. Though stern and professional, he would always take time to run his hand over my hair and thank me for the firewood.

When I ended up in Ioannina as a refugee to escape Enver Hoxha’s gulag, I wrote a short story for a class assignment titled My First Greek Hero. The philology professor of Zosimea Gymnasium, Grigorios Tzomakas, thought the essay was worthwhile to be shared with the class and instructed me to read it.

But I am not good for such occasions. I broke down in sobs after the first sentence and could not read a story about a hero who was killed in action and did not keep his promise to my father and come back for Easter. Another student read my essay to the class and a few more students cried.

For over 50 years I have kept his name etched in my memory and often thought of tracing his relatives. But I did not know where to start and knew nothing more than his last name and rank. Those who would address him would call him Kyrie Tagmatarcha and he would address my father as Barba Thanasi.

Fifty-nine years later, I accidentally discovered the major’s name and picture and memories of a heroic age came alive. While on a visit to Greece in 1999 to give a lecture on the New World Order and the Balkans at the invitation of the Mayor of Papagos, Admiral Vasilios Xydis, a booklet listing fallen Greek officers in World War II (and a silver plaque) was presented to me by the host. And there it was: the full name and a faded picture of my hero.

What an irony! It was the time when the United States and its NATO allies were bombarding the Serbs ostensibly to defend Albanian victims in Kosovo. Part of the lecture reflected a deep disappointment for the West’s lack of gratitude for the sacrifices of the Greek and Serbian nations in World War II. At the same time modern philistines were bombarding the Serbs in defense of the offspring of Kosovar Nazi collaborators.

My hero had the same first name as my father, Athanasios. He hailed from the village of Nikita, Halkidiki, and was commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 12th Infantry Regiment, the unit that liberated my village and became a legend. A cousin of mine, Dimitrios Stavrou, had composed a song about him with terribly prophetic title …And if by Chance I Fall in Battle. (Parenthetically, Dimitrios and my great uncle and sake, Nikolaos Stavrou, were burned alive by Albanian Chams during a joint Nazi- Ball Kombetar on Easter week 1944).

Official records show that Major Karalis died on December 19, 1940 in the village of Borshi (outside Himara) during an assault by the Italian Air Force and was posthumously promoted to Lt. Colonel for bravery. I do not know whether that is accurate or not. My father had asked every soldier returning from the front about his friend and was told by several of them that he was killed by an Albanian sniper in the village of Nivitsa; and that was part of my 1953 essay.

However, it makes no difference which version of his heroic death is correct. Major Karalis was a hero. I do not know whether a statue or monument honors his memory anywhere. I only know that my family cherishes the honor of having being his host, albeit so briefly, and never forgot Major Athanasios Karalis, son of Dimitrios, born in 1896, and died defending Greek ideals.

Nikolaos A. Stavrou, a U.S. immigrant from Greece, was emeritus professor of international affairs and political theory at Howard University, where he taught for over 35 years, Dr. Stavrou was founder and editor of the academic journal Mediterranean Quarterly. He passed away in 2011. This piece was originally published in The National Herald on October 29, 2004.

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EVANSTON, IL – The Greek Women’s University Club, recognizing excellence and encouraging the achievements of young men and women of Greek heritage, is sponsoring its 28th national music competition on Saturday, April 6, 2019. Winner(s) will be awarded $1,000.

The competition will be held at the Alice S. Millar Chapel at the Northwestern University Evanston Campus, 1870 Sheridan Rd. in Evanston.

Applicants must be young men or women of Greek descent, 20-29 years of age.

Applications accompanied by an audition CD must be postmarked no later than March 1, 2019 with an 8-10 minute performance. Selection requirements are specified in the application.

Applications are available from:

Anna Moreno

2074 W. Pratt Blvd.

Chicago, IL 60645

Tel.: 773-338-0346

FAX: 773-338-0805

Email: akmoreno@comcast.net

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WASHINGTON, DC – Prominent global businessman Michael Psaros, co-Founder and co-Managing Partner of the private equity fund KPS Capital Partners LP warmly introduced Vladimir Kara-Murza, recipient of the Oxi Courage Award in Washington DC hosted by the OXI DAY Foundation.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, recipient of the Oxi Courage Award Vice President of Open Russia and leading activist for a civil society and democracy in Russia, Kara-Murza has been poisoned twice by his enemies and survived against all odds. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016.

The author of two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov, Kara-Murza started his career as a journalist. He currently acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and recently served as a pall bearer at Senator John McCain’s funeral.

Also Liu Xia was recipient of the Oxi Courage Award the widow of China’s most prominent human rights advocate, Nobel Laureate, Liu Xiabo. Liu Xia was recently freed in July 2018 after serving 8 years of confinement on house arrest despite having no charges leveled against her. She is a Chinese painter, poet and photographer.

Liu Xia met her husband Liu Xiaobo while they were both part of the Beijing literary scene in the 1980s. The two married while he was imprisoned in China in a labor re-education camp in 1996.

Liu Xia prefers to lead the solitary life; however, she has been described as her husband’s “most important link to the outside world.” In that role, she also personally experiences pressures from Chinese authorities for publicly voicing opinions.

Past recipients include:

* 2017: North Korean defector and human rights activist Ji Seong-ho who 3 months later featured in the State of the Union address

* 2016: Vice President Joseph R. Biden and son Beau Biden (posthumously)

* 2016: Escaped ISIS sex slave, UN Goodwill Ambassador and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad (nominated by Amal Clooney)

* 2015: Leading human rights activist imprisoned in Azerbaijan Leyla Yunus (nominated and introduced by Bono)

* 2014: Journalist James Foley, just weeks after becoming the first American executed by ISIS. (President Bill Clinton introduced Foley and Jim’s parents accepted the award)

* 2013: Journalist John Githongo, who risked his life fighting corruption in Kenya. (nominated and introduced by Bono)

* 2012: Blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng whose US-aided escape from China led the world news in the spring of 2012

The Oxi Day Award is given each year to a man , living today in any part of the world, who has taken courageous action that contributed to the promotion or preservation of freedom and democracy.

The Oxi Day Award is inspired by the David vs. Goliath story of Greece’s actions during World War II and the incredible courage displayed by the Greek people. At the time, the free world watched as one by one 11 countries across Europe surrendered to Hitler’s Axis forces.

At 3:00 am on October 28, 1940, a representative of the Axis Forces arrived at the Prime Minister’s residence and demanded Greece’s surrender. The Prime Minister replied with a single world — Oxi — No.

Within hours, the Axis forces descended on Greece, expecting it to quickly fall. But the Greek resistance forced Hitler to change his plans. News of Greece’s victory flooded the radio airwaves and covered the front pages of newspapers and magazines (like Life Magazine) around the globe.

A grateful world celebrated — no one expected such a small nation to derail the seemingly unstoppable Axis forces.

Greece inflicted a fatal wound on the Axis forces at a crucial moment in World War II, forcing Hitler to change his timeline and delaying by two or more months the attack on Russia where the Axis forces eventually met defeat in the Russian winter.

Greece’s actions inspired Winston Churchill to say “If there had not been the virtue and courage of the Greeks, we do not know which the outcome of World War II would have been.” Even Adolf Hitler said, “Historic justice forces me to admit, that of all the enemies that stand against us, the Greek soldier, above all, fought with the most courage.”

The Greek people showed extraordinary courage against insurmountable odds, refusing to surrender and fighting to preserve their freedom. The Oxi Day Award was created to recognize those torchbearers of today who carry on that “Oxi Day Spirit” — the modern — day Davids among us who bravely fight for freedom and democracy around the world now and for ages to come.

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WHITESTONE – David Bressler, born and raised in Whitestone, is the Republican candidate for New York State Assembly in District 26 in Northeast Queens. A retired Regional Manager for Entenmann’s, he recently visited the offices of The National Herald because of his concerns about the state of affairs in New York politics and to make sure voters, including many Greek-Americans, are aware of what is at stake in this election.

Bressler told TNH he decided to run because“I became involved with the Queens Village Republican Club about three years ago and I was always complaining about Albany, the dysfunctional system they have up there, the rampant corruption, and the waste of taxpayers’ dollars. I worked hard my whole life, like so many others, and they just waste it away, and it’s really unfair and you get fed up after a while.

“I live in the Bay Club, a beautiful gated community, like any other community it has its issues. I’ve been on the board for ten years, and gave up my presidency this year to devote my time to the campaign, and we’ve accomplished a lot there, but yet I saw some problems in the community and really nothing gets done. For 10 years, we focused on Bay Club because that’s what I was voted on, I ran for reelection this year and won by a landslide which is a compliment, with most boards the unit owners get tired of you after a while, but they know what I say I get done, and we saw so many things in our community, overdevelopment of the land, inequitable property taxes, the different assessment rates and tax rates. Condos and co-ops are class 2 and they definitely get the brunt of property taxes and then you hear about Governor Cuomo wasting $10 billion on upstate projects to create jobs and then very few jobs were created, part of that $10 billion was the ‘Buffalo billion,’ I’m sure you’ve heard of, and really the result of that $10 billion wasn’t creating jobs it was creating the fact that two of his closest aides were convicted of bribery, Joseph Percoco about two weeks ago was sentenced to 6 years, so this has just been going on and then a few months ago, our ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was sentenced to seven years which I thought was a light sentence. Then you had so many others, it doesn’t matter which party, there was a Republican Assemblymember in Rochester who was just indicted for bribery.

“My first legislation that I want to adopt and pass is term limits, because the city has it right, it has two, four-year terms, that should be for all state officials who are running for office, two four-year terms. This way they don’t get entrenched with lobbyists, land developers, and contractors. You earn the first four years and if you get reelected you go for another four years and then you’re capped. But right now you’ve got elected officials who have been there for 30-40 years, there’s no good that’s going to come out of that.

“I’m unhappy with the radical left Democratic Party taking over. I get along with moderate Democrats, as a matter of fact moderate Democrats are voting for me. Because my policies align closer to moderate Democrats than the radical left do. And the radical left is Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo is going left in this election since he was challenged by Cynthia Nixon, and all these crazy policies, felons are allowed to vote, and jails in our neighborhoods, closing Riker’s Island and we know there’s a land development deal going to be announced I’m sure, but why would you want to close Riker’s Island where it’s safe and secure? If God forbid, a convict escapes it’s an island it’s hard to get off. The population of Riker’s is 8500, they could only fit 5000, so the 3500 are going to be released. I know they’re not going to release the rapists and murderers, but if someone steals a pocketbook or a car or robs your house numerous times they don’t belong on the street, and that’s what they want to release, some bad people in our neighborhood. Heroin injection sites, heroin addicts in our neighborhoods, they’re going to want to get money to buy heroin, that could lead to theft and robbery, and my solution, and I was speaking at an engagement and I got a standing ovation for this, why don’t they put that heroin injection site with a rehabilitation center? We know, we’re not heartless, we know that it’s going to be difficult for heroin addicts to get over their addiction, but don’t have a standalone heroin injection site. Integrate it with a rehabilitation center, so the goal is to rehabilitate them, not a heroin injection site where they’re going to have good needles after good needles.

“The lack of commonsense and the lack of thought in these policies really drove me to run for office, because it’s difficult to run for office. Thank God I have a great staff, Maria [Andrianos] has been a great administrative assistant, she makes my life easier and I have a great campaign manager, so having a great staff and still the demands of running for office are extremely difficult, but rewarding, and I think the ends justify the means. At the end when I am elected, because I am confident that I will be elected, I could do good for the people, rather than do good for myself.

“It’s good that I had a career, and I’m financially secure because of 401Ks and pensions, etc., so I can give back to the people, I don’t have to worry about raising kids, putting them through college, this office will be for the people, because I don’t need anything from it to be honest, I just need for things to be thought out carefully with commonsense and also thought out to be efficient, effective, and fair, and a lot of these policies are not fair and they’re not thought out and they’re not safe.

“We also have the SHSAT issue, the students that work hard and study hard and get the best scores deserve entry into these specialized high schools and again, we don’t want to ignore the students who haven’t received good grades, there’s a free tutoring program that’s not publicized, so let’s get it out there to the parents, to prep the students who aren’t doing as well. You don’t fix a problem by punishing the good ones, you fix the problem by helping the ones that are a little bit behind, and de Blasio wants to punish the students that are already succeeding. I don’t believe in that, I believe in helping the ones that aren’t succeeding and finding out the reasons why they’re not succeeding. If there’s not enough free tutoring then spend on more of that, what better way to spend than on our children.”

More information on David Bressler is available at davidforassembly26.com.

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LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Hellenic community gathered together to memorialize the World War II veteran, real estate developer, political activist, and humanitarian Aris Anagnos at UCLA on October 28, Oxi Day. Speakers included The Honorable Michael Dukakis, Former Governor of Massachusetts; The Honorable Phil Angelides, Former Treasurer of California; the Consul General of Greece in Los Angeles Evgenia Beniatoglou; The Honorary Consul General of Cyprus, Andreas Kyprianides; Los Angeles Councilmember Gilbert Cedillo; Katie Hill, Congressional candidate and Executive Director of People Assisting the Homeless (PATH); Lila Garrett, Poet, Radio Personality, and Former President ADA; Lydia Brazon, Vice President of Real Estate Directions; Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, President and CEO of Earth Friendly Products; and Eleftheria Polychronis, Vice President of the Board of Directors of the American Hellenic Council.

Congresswoman Judy Chu presented Demos and Thalia Anagnos with a citation from the House of Representatives in honor of their father. The Greek American soprano Diana Post sang two arias for Anagnos, who was an opera lover, and the film producer Nikolette Orlandou showed a short documentary about his life. A powerful eulogy was offered by Thalia Anagnos, who encouraged those attending to follow her father’s footsteps in fighting injustice. Demos Anagnos served as master of ceremonies and welcomed the community to the memorial service on behalf of his family.

Aris Anagnos, born in Athens in 1923, dedicated his life to fighting for peace and justice, and for humanitarian causes, globally. After serving in the Allied Forces with the Greek Army in the Middle East during World War II, Anagnos came to the United States and obtained a BA in Business Administration at UCLA. Following his graduation, he pursued a successful career as a Real Estate Broker and Developer. Anagnos was active in community affairs, serving on the Board of Directors of the Southern California ACLU, including a term as President, co-founding the Humanitarian Law Project/ International Education Development Fund, and serving as President of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action.

His philanthropic activities included a major donation to the Saint Sophia Foundation for the construction of a Senior Citizen Home and support of the PATH Regional Homeless Center. During the 1967-1974 military dictatorship in Greece, Anagnos and his late wife Carolyn organized a Committee for Democratic Freedoms in Greece, and in 1974 joined in founding the Save Cyprus Council, later renamed the American Hellenic Council, where he served continuously as Vice President and one term as President.

Aris and Carolyn were very active in peace and human rights movements in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, including brokering peace proposals in El Salvador and Nicaragua. For this work, Anagnos was awarded the Comandante Enrique Schmitt Medal, the highest Sandinista award for non-Nicaraguans, and the Ruben Dario Award, the highest decoration of the Nicaraguan Republic from President Daniel Ortega. Aris and Carolyn established the Peace Center in Los Angeles, which houses several peace and human rights organizations, and in 2008 Anagnos formally donated the building for this use, by establishing it as a non-profit foundation. Anagnos passed away on July 28 at the age of 95. He is survived by his children Demos, Thalia, Judy, Ellen, and Dan and their families.

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WASHINGTON, DC – The Coordination Committee for Macedonia Issue Awareness-Washington, DC hosted a lecture by Dr. Nikos Lygeros, a well-known professor and geopolitical strategist, on October 12 concerning the Macedonia name issue and the Prespes Pre-Agreement which was signed on June 17, 2018 by Greece and FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

The event, held at the Hellenic Center in Bethesda, MD, was well-attended with many eager to hear the speaker’s strategic analysis of the articles of the Prespes Pre-Agreement, which, if ratified, will have dire consequences for Greece and the region, according to the lecture.

Dr. Lygeros analyzed the main articles of the Prespes Pre-Agreement and discussed their historical, cultural, regional, and economic implications. He emphasized that the Prespes Pre-Agreement is just that—a Pre-Agreement, not yet an Agreement. As a result, there is still a small window of time for action before the Pre-Agreement is ratified.

Once ratified, the Prespes Pre-Agreement will concede the name “Macedonia” to the Slavs, allow the Slavs to assume a Macedonian identity which is contrary to historical fact, and give legitimacy to a Macedonian language which the Slavs claim is one of their Northern Slavic languages, but which is actually an artificial language created in 1944 as a pretext for irredentist ambitions against Greece. Ratification will also require Greece to make major concessions regarding the Aegean Sea, commercial products, trademarks, brand names, maps, atlases, and archaeological and historical artifacts. Dr. Lygeros’ lecture led to the conclusion that the Prespes Pre-Agreement is not in the best interests of Greece.

Among those present, the Presidents of the Greek-American Societies of the area, the Alexander the Great Macedonian Association of MD, The Evrytanian Association of America-Velouchi, the Hellenic Society Prometheas, the Laconian Society, and the Roumeliotes Society, provided their support, without which this event would not have been possible. Also in attendance were representatives of the Pan-Macedonian Association of the United States and people from a wide variety of backgrounds who consider the issue central to Greece’s national interest and to the peace and stability in the region and are, therefore, greatly concerned.

Additional information, on the Coordination Committee for Macedonia Issue Awareness is available on Facebook.

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OLD BRIDGE, NJ – Monte Carlo Night, an event organized to raise money for St. Basil Academy and the Federation of Cypriot American Organizations (FCAO) Philanthropy, was held on October 28 at the Grand Marquis in Old Bridge.

The proceeds of the fun event helped support the worthy causes: St. Basil Academy is the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese home for orphans, children of chronically ill or destitute parents or children from broken homes. The FCAO’s Philanthropic department supports Greek Cypriots in need.

The event was very successful thanks to the volunteers: Stalo Karamanos, Voula Tsentas, Maggie Kousoulis, Pam Kousoulis, Niovi Philippou, and Soula Mistras who helped with their time, effort, and financial contributions.

Federation of Cypriot American Organizations Vice President of Philanthropy Christos Karamanos was the chairperson of the event. He praised the work of the committee and thanked all those who donated and participated.

Mr. Karamanos told The National Herald that this is the second annual Monte Carlo Night and it was a very successful event with over a hundred people from Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York in attendance who had a great time and were very generous with their donations. They enjoyed themselves while raising money for good causes, spending time with friends, and meeting new people as well at the event.

He told TNH that they cleared about $20,000 for charity, but the exact amount is not yet known since he has received many calls from people who would like to send in checks with further donations.

More information about the FCAO is available online: fcaousa.org.

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NILES, IL – The Aristotle Saturday Greek School of the St. Haralambos community in Niles, a suburb of Chicago, celebrated Oxi Day. All the teachers and School Director Andrianna Panayiotou prepared an extremely Greek celebration for Oxi Day.

“The national holiday of the 28th of October was a celebration day for our school. Our students dressed in blue and white and shouted ‘Oxi’ to the war, ‘Yes’ to peace and ‘Long live Greece,’” Ms. Panayiotou said.

The children were singing with pride and saying “Oxi” (No). They made flags, signs and wore white tops and blue pants for the boys and blue skirts for the girls who took part in the school celebration in the “heart” of Hellenism in Chicago.

The school holds the Greek flag high and always keeps the culture, customs and traditions of Greece as a top priority. All the children participated with joy and pride as they sang about the “Oxi.”

The parents and relatives of the children attended the celebration and felt pride for the children and for the teachers who are dedicated to teaching Hellenism, the Greek letters and language.

The children held Greek flags and signs during the celebration, which was well organized by the teaching staff and the director of the School.

All the children were singing about “Oxi” while listening to traditional songs from the 1940s. “Long live Greece” and “Oxi” were called out constantly and in fine Greek, a sample of the excellent work done at the Aristotle Saturday Greek School.

The celebration concluded with a parade of the children carrying flags, signs, and many banners with “Oxi” and “Greece” written on them.

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CHERRY HILL, NJ – The Oxi Day celebration at St. Thomas Greek School in Cherry Hill took place on October 29. The students commemorated the historic day, October 28, 1940 with poems and songs in the presence of their parents and teachers. V. Rev. Fr. Christoforos Oikonomidis, presiding priest of the community was also present.

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BRYN MAWR, PA – Hellenic Hearts hosted its first Scholarship Award Ceremony on October 28 at the picturesque Rosemont College in Bryn Mawr, PA.

The non-profit organization Hellenic Hearts has many objectives, including providing financial and college preparation assistance to Greek-American students. To accomplish this goal, students were given the opportunity to apply for a need based scholarship that would help pay for the costs of their education.

A total of $15,000 in scholarships were awarded to those who displayed characteristics of not only a hardworking student, but an active member of the community, something Hellenic Hearts strives to instill in the younger generations.

The students recognized for their outstanding achievements are Chrysoula IIiopoulou, Georgea Daskalopoulos, Nicholas Prieston, Costas Angelis, Casandra Antzoulatos, Athina Economou, Marianthi Hereras, Katerina Nanos, and Despina Evangelopoulos. Among those present were Hellenic Hearts Board Members John Aivazoglou, Tim Vlassopoulos, Louie Karapanagiotides, Michael Angelos, Dr. Niki Mendrinos, and Margaret Antzoulatos.

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NEW YORK – Former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden was among the guests at the Patriarch Athenagoras Award of Human Rights bestowed upon Fr. Alexander and Presbytera Xanthi Karloutsos for their valuable services to the Church and Greek-American Community.

The event held at the New York Hilton on October 27 was organized by the Order of Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Metropolitan Emmanuel of France represented His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the event.

Fr. Karloutsos in his speech said the following:

Your Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Your Eminence Metropolitan Emmanuel – Personal Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Your Graces, much-loved Archon Family, Brother Priests and Sister Presbyteres, and beloved friends all.

Allow me to invoke St. John Chrysostom’s final words “Glory be to God for everything!” Xanthi and I would like to echo this: Glory be to God for each and every one of you here this evening as well.

Although we are not the most worthy recipients of this Award, we are immensely aware and humbled by its worth. For us, Patriarch Athenagoras was a visionary for our Church in America and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The infrastructure of our Archdiocese, which is the bedrock of all that we enjoy, was bequeathed to us by this prophetic Prelate. Even our political ties to the Oval Office began when then Archbishop Athenagoras was called in November of 1948, to lead the Sacred See of Saint Andrew as part of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, to keep the First Throne of Orthodoxy from being trapped behind the Iron Curtain and falling into the communist hands of Stalin’s Soviet Union. That is why President Truman decided personally to send his trusted friend to Constantinople on his presidential plane, known then as the Sacred Cow.

We express our heartfelt gratitude to the Archons of the Order of Saint Andrew and, most especially, to their indefatigable National Commander, a fellow PK and trusted brother, for this august honor. And in the person of Dr. Maria Limberakis, we thank all the Archondisses, the spouses who encourage and empower their respective husbands and families to be faithful Orthodox Christians, and advocate for religious freedom and human rights of the Mother Church.

Speaking of the precious word mother, a most cherished name for someone who lost his mother at age 9, how can I express what the Mother of my children and the yiayia of our ten grandchildren, has meant, and means to me? (I love my children and grandchildren more than life itself.)

Together, my wife Xanthi and I, have worked and served in the holy Priesthood for over 48 years. While I was seen processing with Popes and Patriarchs, my unseen co-worker was sorting suitcases at airports; while I was in receiving lines with Presidents and First Ladies at the White House, Presbytera Xanthi was arranging chairs and tables at the State Department; when I celebrate the Divine Liturgy and enjoy the first seat in our Church, my co-disciple takes the last pew to ensure proper discipline in the Narthex and Nave; while I’m the maître de superstar at our Hamptons Greek Festival, my privileged Presbytera is peeling onions, washing pans and baking baklava.

My Protopresbytera is more than the wind beneath my wings; Xanthi is my compass, my curb, and my conscience. Without Xanthi, there would be no Fr. Alex: everything I have done, or became, I owe to the love of my life. That is why, Presbytera, as the songwriter sang “I love you more today than yesterday, less than tomorrow!”

We both need to offer a few words of remembrance and thanksgiving for our parents of blessed memory. My father, Father Michael, was a wounded healer hero priest, who, like Fathers Nicholas Paleologos and John Limberakis, and so many other pioneer priests, were true Country Parsons as described in the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer stated “The country Parson is the only devout churchman because he lives in poverty, but is rich in holy thoughts and deeds; he preaches the Gospel and makes sure to practice what he preaches.

He is everything that the monk, Friar Administrator and Pardoner are not.” My Dad lost his wife, Olga when she was 34, and he 35, and with help from Yiayia Stavroula, he raised six children, all by God’s lifesaving grace. Because of them, and the heroic taken-for-granted parish priests and presbyteres, past and present, I see the Archdiocese through my parents hope filled, but pained eyes, and not through the lofty lens of my office on 79th Street.

My Dad raised me, but it was my father-in-law, Klearchos Kosmas Karavellas, and his saintly wife and mother by grace, Anastasia, who gave me their first born princess and helped raise us both up to become the together team we are today. These humble Greek Orthodox political refugees from atheist Albania, opened up their hearts and home to all and they embodied the essence and epitomize what it means to be PHILOTIMOI, to love honor; PHILOXENOI, to love the stranger; PHILANTHROPOI, to love their neighbor compassionately; and PHILOTHEOI, to love God, who is the Alpha and Omega of our existence.

We human beings have always sought answers for the purpose of our lives and the meaning of our deaths. We seek to live the Socratic “examined life” knowing full well, as our Lord Jesus said, “What does it profit a man or woman to gain the whole world and lose his, or her, own soul?” It’s one reason why many of us, during the Christmas Season, find comfort in watching Jimmy Stewart’s, It’s A Wonderful Life. We need to be assured that our lives matter; that the lives of our loved ones matter, and that without them nothing really matters. We are all interconnected, brothers and sisters, through our Heavenly Father, and whether we realize it or not, we have an Aristotelian cause and effect with everyone we meet.

Allow me to share with you some insights of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, a truly holy man. He writes “that our life does not end at the moment when we depart this earthly life. For we have left a mark in the world in which we live, a mark that is indelible: every person whom we have met, every word we have spoken, every gesture of ours, every action of ours – everything that was us, or was done by us, proceeded from us, has left a trace in this world.”

At this point, the Metropolitan mentions the name of a man, a French phony aristocrat who lived in the nineteenth century, that I am sure, 99% of us present have never heard of. Joseph Arthur de Gobineau died in October of 1882, but before his death, he wrote a short, absurd treatise on the inequality of the races. No one reads this book any more, but it was read by a hate-filled man whose life was not so wonderful and it influenced a twisted Adolf Hitler to almost bring about the devastation of the world.

I bring all this up because my wife and I have lived a wonderful life which has been impacted, enriched and enhanced because of every person we met, both living and those of blessed memory, who left their personal mark upon us. Each of you has touched us indelibly and we are truly grateful. Because of the different priestly ministries assigned to us: Parish Priest, Youth Ministry, Public Affairs, Communications, Leadership 100, our service in Constantinople, the Faith Endowment and the Archons, we are both humbled and proud to say we have worked with, and served, the Greek Orthodox faithful in America. Personally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the lay people, the women and men of this Archdiocese, who became not only my trusted friends and mentors, but sisters and brothers.

Thucydides posited that the “Greeks were a people born into the world to take no rest for themselves nor give none to others.” It is that restlessness that propelled the sons and daughters of poor immigrants, yearning to be free, to climb to the mountaintop of the American market place. We have come a long way from the villages and towns of our parents and grandparents, and fulfilling their dreams and hopes, our generation has achieved wealth, success, and prominence far beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

However, the mountain-top has dangers awaiting our children and grandchildren, because the pernicious precipice is always present. Out of love for our children and grandchildren, we have showered them with everything that our parents could not afford to give us. And yet, tragically, we have neglected to instill in them the priceless gifts our parents did give us: timeless values and principles which were forged out of a two thousand five hundred years legacy. Values and principles which make us realize that our self-worth, is much more valuable than our net worth.

Now is the time for our National Community to come out of the malaise that has begun to paralyze us. We must rid ourselves of the dreaded disease of indifference, which the Church Fathers and Mothers called Acedia, and come together triumphantly to build the light on the hill on the acropolis at Ground Zero. Our Community’s self-worth must be made manifest in the construction of our Saint Nicholas National Shrine, so that the dreams and hopes of those before us will be a legacy we bequeath to those after us.

I take this opportunity to thank His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios for encouraging me to stay in my Southampton parish and for being a comforting Archpastor for our Family when my Father died and Xanthi’s mother passed – Your Eminence we will always be grateful. We thank our parishioners, many of whom are here, for working with Xanthi and me for the past 20 years. I also want to express my appreciation to all of our co-workers throughout the years who have assisted my Presbytera and me in our various ministries. We are blessed to now work in our Archdiocesan Office with Christa, John and Andrew and with Fr. Constantine, Presbytera Anastasia, Jeannie, Paul and Thanassi in our Dormition Church.

I would like to offer my last words to pay tribute to the Three Hierarchs who really inspired me to be the best priest possible.
Fr. Byron Papanikolaou, although not a bishop, he was truly a hierarch Priest, who challenged me “to love unto madness” the people entrusted to me by Christ our Chief Shepherd.

His All Holiness Bartholomew, the Green Patriarch, who inspired me by his living example from the first time we met in 1983, to put “Christ and His Church above everything else”. Like his predecessor Patriarch Athenagoras, this intrepid Apostle of Peace, never fails or wavers to protect and defend religious freedom from political despots whether it be in the Ukraine or anywhere else in the ecumenical world.

His Eminence Archbishop Iakovos was surely one of the greatest religious leaders of the twentieth century, and President Carter was right to bestow upon him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. If I did become anything in the Archdiocese, it was because Archbishop Iakovos entrusted me with the ministries and functions that forced me to grow as a person and a priest. Allow me to share with you a bitter truth that Archbishop Iakovos taught me at a meeting I had with him in October of 1977.

STORY

Those piercing words of Archbishop Iakovos allow me to end with the wisdom of a most worthy Athenagoras Human Rights Award recipient, Mother Theresa. The following was engraved at the wall of her home for the children in Calcutta.
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
When you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you have anyway.
You see in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It never was between you and them anyway.

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NEW YORK – The Panepirotic Federation of America, with an announcement,  ‘strongly condemns the senseless killing of an ethnic Greek by Albanian police‘ in Northern Epiros on Sunday and calls for an internationally supervised investigation to determine how he died.

The announcement reads:

Konstantinos Katsifas, 35, raised a Greek flag at a cemetery holding the remains of Greek soldiers from World War II near the town of Vouliarati as Greeks celebrated the heroic resistance of Greece to the invasion of Fascist forces on Oct. 28, 1940. When Albanian police moved to take it down, Albanian authorities say he fired at a police van with a Kalashnikov rifle and fled to the nearby hills.

Albanian authorities then launched a massive manhunt with a helicopter hovering overhead while police and special forces combed the hills for Katsifas. They claim that when they cornered him and asked him to surrender, he fired at them and they shot him dead.

“Knowing the hostility with which Albanian authorities have persecuted ethnic Greeks in the past, the official Albanian account is hard to believe and we call for a full and open international investigation of this senseless killing,” stated Nicholas Gage, president of the Panepirotic Federation, which represents Greek-Americans from the region of Epiros, half which is in Greece and the other half within the southern border of Albania.

“It is obvious that Katsifas, despite the flash of anger that overtook him when police took down the Greek flag, did not intend to injure anyone because he fired at an empty police van, not at any officers,” Mr. Gage said. “And it is highly unlikely that he would have chosen to shoot it out with the massive forces pursuing him rather than surrender.”

He pointed out that ethnic Greeks have been falsely imprisoned, beaten and harassed by Albanian authorities for years and called on the Greek government, the European Union and the United States to pressure Albania to provide the ethnic Greek minority the basic rights and protection due them under international agreements Albania has signed but never enforced.

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CAMBRIDGE, MA – Demetrios and Despina Mattheos of Lowell, MA got the surprise of their lives on October 28, when they were surprised in a surprise celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary, in a carefully orchestrated effort by his three children, Dr. Steven, John, and Mary-Ellen (Monias).

The children notified the Mattheoses’ family and friends and emphasized absolute confidentiality. And their plan went off without a hitch.

Following Divine Liturgy on the morning of the 28th Steven invited his parents to brunch at the Four Season Hotel in Boston. As his parents were driving there, along with John, his wife, Nancy, daughter, Gabriela, and Mary-Ellen, Steven called them and told them that the Desfina restaurant in Cambridge – which they preferred to the Four Seasons but which was normally closed on Sundays – had decided to open in honor of Oxi Day. Unbeknownst to the Mattheoses, it opened because their three children had reserved it for their parents’ surprise anniversary party.
Sure enough, the honorees were surprised to be welcomed by over 70 relatives and close friends.

Speaking collectively for the three siblings, Steven congratulated his parents and described their golden anniversary as “a feat worthy of praise,” noting that only 5 percent of married couples enjoy that milestone.

“Thank you for everything, seen and unseen, heard and unheard,” he continued. “I know that dad jokes about how lucky he was to marry you, Mom. But in reality, it was we who were so lucky, so lucky to have been raised in home with such love, faith, loyalty, discipline, and a word that cannot be translated, ‘philotimo.’

“Next, I would like to say thank you to all of you who took the time to be here and more importantly, to be in our lives. Weddings and anniversaries are not just about brides and grooms. These gatherings are about family and community. My parents care so deeply about everyone in this room. They care about community. They are actively and endlessly involved at the church, the Greek school, and the festivals. My parents always welcomed all of our friends into their home.”

He then read a poem he wrote for his parents: “Mom and Dad, when you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you hang my first painting on the refrigerator and I immediately wanted to paint another one.

“When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you flash a proud smile when you saw my report card and I immediately wanted to do better on the next one.
“When you thought I wasn’t looking I heard you say a prayer, and I knew there is a God I could always talk to and I learned to trust in God.
“When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you make a meal and take it to a friend who was sick, and I learned that we all have to help take care of each other.
“When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you give of your time and money to help people who had nothing and I learned that those who have something should give to those who don’t.
”Visibly moved, his father said: “we thank God, who granted us good children, good friends, and we thank you very much because you honor with your presence this celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary.”

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NEW YORK – Supreme President George E. Loucas was invested into the Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Oct. 28, during events held for Archon Weekend in New York City.

His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Geron of America, officiated over the ceremony. AHEPA congratulates all the newly invested Archons.

AXIOS!

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ASTORIA – The newly elected board of the Federation of Dodecanese Societies (FDS) was sworn in on October 21 at St. Catherine and St. George Church in Astoria. The Federation also held an Artoklasia and a reception with coffee and refreshments followed the services. Archimandrite Nektarios Papazafiropoulos, dean of St. Demetrios Cathedral presided over the services and the swearing in of the board.

Among those present were the newly elected FDS President Maria Marangos, Kalymnos; Vice President Nikos Kartalis, Rhodes; Assistant Secretary and former youth President Zoe Pilios, Symi; former Vice President John Sakellis, Kos, and his wife Nancy Sakellis; former President Theologos Tiliakos, Patmos; Second Vice President Andreas Goustas, Tilos; Nikos Papageorgiou, Kasos; Timoleon Kokkinos, Nisyros; Alekos Romeos, Tilos; and Manolis Cassotis, Karpathos.

The Federation of Dodecanese Societies’ newly elected board:

Maria Marangos, President

Nikos Kartalis, Vice President

Andreas Goustas, Second Vice President

Adamantia Mari, Secretary

Zoe Pilios, Assistant Secretary

Evdokia Koullias, Treasurer

Stacy Figetakis, Assistance Treasurer

The Pan-Lemnian Philanthropic Association “Hepaestus” also held a memorial service and Artoklasia at St. Catherine on October 21 in honor of the 106th anniversary of the liberation of Lemnos, October 8, 1912. A reception was held following the services at the Pan-Lemnian Association hall.

Fr. Papazafiropoulos praised both the Federation of Dodecanese Societies and the Pan-Lemnian Association, noting the importance of remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and pointing out the vital role of the various associations in supporting and maintaining the connections with the homeland and promoting the language, culture, and traditions of Greece for the generations of Greeks living abroad.

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LONG ISLAND CITY – With the election just one week away, New York State Senator Michael Gianaris, Assemblymember Aravella Simotas, and State Senate candidate for District 11 John Liu visited the offices of The National Herald on October 29. The Democrats spoke about the issues in this vital election year, all of them hoping for a large voter turnout, and urging everyone to make their voices heard on November 6.

John Liu, the former New York City Comptroller (2010-2013) and Councilmember (2002-2009), representing District 20 in northeast Queens, was the first Asian American to win legislative office in New York and the first to win citywide office. He was also a candidate in the 2013 New York City mayoral election.

The Democratic nominee for northeast Queens’ District 11, Liu also tried for the seat in 2014, losing to incumbent Tony Avella in the primary election; in the 2018 primary rematch, however, he defeated Avella who had angered many by joining the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of Democratic state senators who allied themselves with Senate Republicans. Avella left the IDC, but his membership had already cost him the support of many Democrats and led to the successful challenge by Liu in the Democratic primary. Avella will still appear on the ballot in the general election as the third-party Independence Party of New York and Reform Party of New York State candidate.

Liu currently teaches municipal finance and policy at Baruch College and Columbia University.

When asked about the campaign so far, Liu told TNH, “we had a hard-fought primary and I was honored that the Democrats of Senate District 11 nominated me to be their candidate over the incumbent and now we are exactly a week away from the election and I feel very good given that the party enrollment in the district is overwhelmingly Democratic and I have no doubt that there is a huge blue wave that is sweeping across New York State and America, but there’s too much at stake, I’m not leaving anything to chance, I’m campaigning very, very hard.

“I have wonderful, wonderful supporters like Assemblymember Simotas and Senator Gianaris and not only Aravella, but her whole family, which is a pretty significant presence in the district.

“The Greek community is huge, we’ve got two very large churches, which for whatever inconceivable notion, the incumbent never supported and often opposed and antagonized, even as the church in Whitestone was trying to build a school. I think with a week to go we’re in a pretty solid position, but like I said, I’m not taking anything for granted.

“There are a whole host of issues, plenty of quality of life issues which we have a community board, council members, and other representatives to work on and I will certainly be there to help with the quality of life issues, but we have significant state-wide issues that have not been met, school funding, for example, that the assembly passes every year, that the Democratic Conference of the State Senate which Mike helps lead passes every year but then the Senate majority, controlled by the Republicans, blocks, even the simple issue of extending the authorization of speed cameras in front of school zones that was blocked, that’s something that I expect will come up very quickly in January. Issues of immigrant dignity, keeping families together, that’s also paramount and at the top of the agenda.

About Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to abolish to Specialized High School Test, Liu told TNH, “That’s a big issue, it will definitely be an issue when we get to Albany, it’s an issue that de Blasio has utterly failed at. I don’t support what he’s doing. He made it a zero sum game, meaning whatever gain one group might have would be at the sheer expense of another group and that group in particular happens to be Asian Americans. This mayoral administration never reached out and spoke to anyone in the Asian American community and so I am going to work with the other senators and our colleagues in the state assembly to come up with a plan that makes sense going forward, but de Blasio’s plan, as far as I’m concerned, is dead on arrival.

“I happen to have a lot of experience with these schools, I’m a graduate (Bronx Science), my brother Rob’s a graduate (Bronx Science), my wife Jenny (Brooklyn Tech) and son Joe (Stuyvesant). I want to make sure that many generations of kids also have the same kinds of opportunities.”

When asked about the biggest challenge going forward, perhaps backlash for his association with Mayor de Blasio, Liu said, “The Republican candidate [Vickie Paladino] puts out a lot of pictures of me and de Blasio next to each other. I am not a fan of this mayor, but I’m a Democrat and so the Republicans essentially are saying that all Democrats are the same which we are not. I’m proud to be a progressive Democrat but I would distinguish myself from de Blasio by calling myself a thoughtful Democrat as opposed to a non-thinking Democrat.”

“I’m running against Paladino, not de Blasio, she’s running against de Blasio,” Liu added.

Of the changes in the community, he said, “The community continues to change, it’s changing in demographics, along age lines, there are more younger people staying in the district as well as moving into the district, we’re starting to feel the wave coming in from Astoria and Long Island City, and so younger people are coming, the population of New York City is increasing with many more young people, and the area is becoming more ethnically diversified with Asian Americans and Greeks moving into the area, hence the growth of churches and school programs.”

About the issues of concern to the Greek community specifically, Senator Gianaris noted that “we are hoping to elect two more Greek-Americans to the state senate next week as well, Andrew Gounardes and James Skoufis, so we’ll have a group of people that understands these issues and John has always been a friend of the community, he’s a friend of mine, so he’s very much aware when we advocate for Cyprus being reunified or Macedonia to make sure the name is not co-opted.”

Liu added that he’s proud to have worked on Gianaris’ first campaign 18 years ago and “I was proud to trek down to southern Brooklyn to endorse Andrew Gounardes’ campaign.”

Of young people getting involved in the campaign, Liu said, “We have many young people, millennials, and there are actually people younger than millennials now, who are volunteering and getting involved, responding, the only thing is we can’t phone them, we have to text them. They respond to text messages, they do not answer phones. My son was actually on the phone once and I told him to hang up the phone and he asked me where.”

Of the voter turnout, Liu said, “We had almost twice the turnout of four years ago, the last time I ran and there were also gubernatorial election, the general election turnout should be double as well. I always like to see a big turnout because that reassures me that our democracy actually does work. When people are generally content, the turnout’s going to be low, but when they are really upset, the turnout’s going to be high. I think it’s going to be very high this year, a lot of it due to this blue wave of Democratic voter discontent about what’s happening in this country and extended to what’s happening in this state which is exactly what you saw when the IDC was wiped out.”

Gianaris said, “The anger in the primary [against Avella] is really about not supporting people who show you one face and then do something else, and what you see with John is what you get.”

Simotas pointed out the relationship Liu has with the Congressional leaders in the district, Rep. Grace Meng and Rep. Tom Suozzi, noting that “we as legislators really can’t be effective unless we all work together. In Astoria, we’ve been very lucky from the municipal level all the way up to the federal level, we all work as a team… John has those same relationships which don’t exist right now with respect to the state senate in his district because Tony Avella shuns everybody, that’s why it’s important that we make sure John goes up to Albany next year.”

Liu also noted the importance of working with others, adding that it’s not about personal relationships or the party, “it’s about everybody trying to do the right thing for the community.”

Election Day is November 6.

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