In November 1940 , the Italians invaded Epirus,
pushing down from Albania as far as Kalpáki, just south of Kónitsa.
United as a nation for the first time in decades, the Greeks
repulsed the attack and humiliated Mussolini. However, the euphoria
was short-lived as the following April the Germans attacked and
rapidly overran Greece. When parcelling out various portions of the
country to their allies for administration, the Germans initially
assigned Epirus to the Italians, who trod lightly in the province
where they had recently been so soundly beaten. After Mussolini's
capitulation in September 1943 the Germans assumed direct
responsibility for Epirus, and conditions worsened. Together with
the mountains of central Greece to the south, the Epirot Píndhos
was the main staging point for various partisan bands ,
foremost among them the Communist-dominated ELAS .
Resistance, harassment and ambush of the occupying forces incurred
harsh reprisals, including the burning in early 1944 of essentially
every village along the Aóös River.
The wartime flight to the cities from the mountains dates more
or less from these atrocities, and the vicissitudes of the
subsequent civil war (1946-49) dashed any lingering hope of
a reasonable existence in the mountains. Victims of reprisals by
either the Communists or the Royalist/Nationalist central
government, villagers fled to safety in the cities, and many never
returned. In the backcountry, off the tourist-trodden byways,
you'll still hear older people talk of these times. Some blame the
Communists, some blame the Nationalists and all blame the British:
"They set us at each other's throats," many will say, and with some
justice.
Since 1975, many men (and a few women) who fought in ELAS,
either as volunteers or conscripts, have returned to their villages
- some of them after over thirty years of exile in what was the
USSR and other East Bloc countries. Numerous others had been
carried off as children to Albania, and made to work in labour
camps before being distributed to various East European states. The
political Right claims that this pedhomázema - the roundup
of children - was a cynical and merciless ploy to indoctrinate an
army of dedicated revolutionaries for the future. The Left retorts
that it was a prudent evacuation of noncombatants from a war
zone.
One thing, however, is certain. The Right won, with the backing
of the British and, more significantly, the Americans, and they
used that victory to maintain an undemocratic and vengeful regime
for the best part of the following quarter-century. Many Epirot
villagers, regardless of political conviction, believe that the
poverty and backwardness in which their communities long remained
was a deliberate punishment for being part of Communist-held
territory during the civil war. For decades they were constantly
harassed by the police, who controlled the issue of all sorts of
licences and certificates needed to find public-sector work, to
travel, to put children in better schools, to run one's own
business and so forth. Only since 1981 have things really changed,
and the past finally treated as another, and separate, age