Oxi Day, (pronounced O-hee), is the day that Greece said “No” to the Axis powers

A reminder of the critical and brave role of Greece in World War II and in the first days of the Cold War when the fight against communism was still hot.  From Oxi Day and “Freedom or Death.” Lest we forget by John Kass.

American media doesn’t care much about Oct. 28 and Oxi Day, literally “The Day of the No.”

But I care about it, because a man I loved was there.

Oxi Day, (pronounced O-hee), is the day that Greece said “No” to the Axis powers and changed the course of World War II at terrible cost. On Oxi Day, I think of that man.

My father.

He wasn’t political. Politicians were talkers and he was not much of a talker. He was a boy in the Greek Army then, from the village of Rizes on Oct. 28, 1940, when Mussolini, backed by Hitler, flexed his muscles to reach across Europe.

My father had dreams. He dreamed of coming to America, of becoming an American citizen and raise his children here. He’d heard the stories about the wondrous freedom of America from my grandparents, who’d lived in Chicago for a time. It was all he cared about.

Years later, he’d tell us he wanted to become an American so that we, his sons, could be Americans, “and no one could ever put their boots on your necks and your bellies.”

The sentence does sound odd, as he translated his thoughts from Greek to English, with those boots on those necks and bellies.

Odd, yes, until you realize he’d seen it.

He’d seen enough fascist boots on necks and bellies, including his own, and then came the Communist boots.  I suppose he understood freedom a bit more clearly than those of us who talk and write about it in abstract terms.

A moving piece, worth a read.