ABSTRACT
Occupied Greece suffered a deadly famine. Though mortality rates were worst in the winter of 1941–42, extreme hunger was prevalent in many parts of the country until the end of the occupation in autumn 1944. A central aspect of the famine is the significant variation in the timing and levels of mortality for different localities within the country. The question of how the famine is remembered has only rarely been addressed. Up until 2000, there was seldom any public discussion of the famine, except to repeat the national historical official narrative that has also become the national collective memory. This narrative attributes virtually full responsibility to the German occupation (but not to the other two occupying forces, Italy and Bulgaria); it asserts that it lasted only during the winter of 1941–42 and that Athens suffered the most. However, different localities have developed their own distinct local collective memories, which vary substantially from one another and from the national narrative. Furthermore, individuals have preserved their own distinctive memories of the famine. These were articulated in oral history research carried out in 1994, 1999, and 2000 by the author with informants who lived through the famine. The outbreak of a protracted and extreme economic crisis in 2009 brought the famine into the fore. During the crisis, a re-remembering of the famine has taken place with even more emphasis put on the German responsibility and a re-affirmation of the official narrative. This chapter outlines the three different memories that co-existed before 2009 as well as the changes that occurred during the crisis.
