The Italians took everything from us [Greek Audio]

During the Occupation of Naxos island, the Italians confiscated food and animals, leading the inhabitants of the island to face hunger and death. One day, Olympia Skyvalaki’s mother puts herself in front of the pistol of a soldier who has just grabbed the last bread of the family.

Interviewee: Olympia Skyvalaki
Rerearcher: Anastasia Karadimitri
Podcast Creation: Andreas Pappas
Sound Designer: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Dimitris Papadakis
Photos by Isidora Harbila

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.