Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
A few months after Dimitraki emigrated in 1916, his brother Thomas died at the age of thirteen when he was kicked in the head by a mule. Village life was not without its dangers and medical attention was unknown. One amazing village remedy was the application of a poultice made from moldy bread to infected wounds.
The Greek government did not allow Constantinos to leave Greece. He remained behind and in 1921 married Ekaterini Badavia. She had been a classmate of Dimitraki's. Years later in 1985 as they sat in a kitchen in Kastoria they sang a childhood school song for their grandchildren.
Constantinos and Ekaterini had five children: Eleni in 1924, Athanasios (Thanasi) in 1925, Zoë in 1928, Nicolaos (Nick) in 1930 and Kalliopi in 1931. All were destined to suffer the Nazi German occupation in World War II, and the Greek Civil War, during which Thanasi served on the front lines.
In 2001, in a moment of reflection during a telephone conversation, my cousin Nick spoke of the ten agonizing years of war the people in Mavrovo and Kastoria endured between 1939 and 1949. Nick was too young to participate in the final attacks against the communists toward the end of the civil war on Grammos and Vitsi (near Kastoria). He was however required to serve in the militia's reserve. In four slowly articulated, simple and profound words he expressed all: "[. . .] fear, hunger, poverty, despair."
In the early 1950's, Thanasi and Nick immigrated to the United States under sponsorship of their Theo Dimitraki.(52) Eleni and her husband Christos Psaltis immigrated soon after with their two young children Aliki and Constantine. Kalliope, followed them, the last to leave her father and mother, Constantinos and Ekaterina, in Kastoria.
Aristede, seven years junior to Dimitraki remained behind in Kastoria for over thirty years. He suffered as a soldier in the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. In the early 1950's, following his nephews and nieces, he immigrated to the United States with his wife, Filareti. For several years they lived in an apartment across the street from Jimmy and Lily's home on Ovington Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Never having had children of her own, and much to my pleasure, Thea( Filareti became a doting aunt.(53)
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