Berlin, the night of April 30, 1945. Amidst ferocious gunfire, two Soviet soldiers scale the roof of the Reichstag and raise the red Victory Banner. The daughter of one, Meliton Kantaria, has been living in Greece since 1997 and tells her family’s story.
Field Reporter: Stavros Vlachos
Sound Design: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Spyros Lymperopoulos
Video Director: Stefanos Bertakis
Translation: Dimitris Moschos
Voiceover: Maria Kallimani
Istorima is the largest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could easily be lost in time. It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.