Nitsa were married in a traditional Greek ceremony, with all its rich symbolism and with both extended families present, although the festivities were inevitably scaled down because of the general shortage of food and other supplies.
The rebuilding of Greece progressed slowly. Britain was unable to help the impoverished population, in spite of Winston Churchill’s declared policy that Greece must at all costs be saved for the West from the power of Soviet Russia. The Americans had supported the Greek government during the civil war and later, under President Harry Truman, their Marshall Plan would help get the country on its feet again. “Uncle Truman”, as the president quickly became known in Greece, understood the Greek morale, but with time even he was daunted by what is historically regarded as a Greek inevitability: political uncertainty.
Seemingly above the eternal political infighting, Kolonaki concentrated on economic revival. It had long been an enclave of the country’s elite; most of its residents were shipping magnates and industrialists such as the Lanaras family – all of whom were occupied in exercising the ancient Greek flair for business. Like George and Nitsa, most of the other young entrepreneurs in Kolonaki were scions of old, well-known and well-off families. Living there was like being a member of an exclusive club.
This was the environment into which Elita was born, three years after the civil war, in a spacious apartment on the broad Vasissilis Sofia Avenue. She would grow up in the rarefied air of a neighbourhood that was the hub of what would later be described as the second Golden Age of Greece (after the first Golden Age under Athenian ruler Pericles, in the fifth century BC). It was an era of remarkable growth and the creation of personal wealth after the devastation of the wars of the previous decade.
Kolonaki, with its grand houses and luxury apartment blocks around the beautiful old palace, is also home to impressive ambassadorial residences and various museums. Well-known international visitors frequent the restaurants and tavernas, including numerous writers and artists. It was here that American writer Henry Miller (author of a popular book on Greek travel, The Colossus of Maroussi) established a close friendship with the famous Greek author George Katsimbalis, as well as with the charismatic diplomat poet George Seferis. Seferis was attached to the Greek Embassy at Pretoria and so became well known in South Africa.
In the 1960s, the world became aware of the vast wealth of shipping magnates such as Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos, with their ostentatious lifestyles and sensational marriages and divorces. Kolonaki maintained a conservative distance from such flamboyance. It was particularly important not to appear “in the papers” and especially not via reports of scandalous liaisons. In this milieu George Lanaras would rise to become a highly regarded shipowner, known as one who never exchanged his base in Greece for another country, such as Argentina in the case of Onassis, or America and England, as did several other Greek shipping magnates.
Kolonaki may have been spared some of the upheavals of war, but a number of its sons died in the two conflicts and some of the old established families found themselves in financially reduced circumstances. But it was a neighbourhood with a very clear philosophy: the past is the past, it is the future that matters.
This was also George Lanaras’s motto. He had studied at the University of Athens, qualifying as a chemist so that he could join the family firm. Lanaras (also the Greek word for wool) was so much part of the textile industry that after the war, thanks to its collective expertise, the business could be speedily revived; before long the factories were in production again.
Because of their family’s determination to improve their lives rather than to dwell on the past, as children neither Elita nor her sister, Martha (who was three years younger), heard anything of the hardships of the war years. They were also ignorant of the grim circumstances in which their grandparents had come to live in Kolonaki. Much later they would discover that they were descendants of the illustrious Philikê Etairia (The Friendly Society). This movement is generally accepted as one of the instigators of the Greek Revolution of 1821, which heralded the beginning of the long struggle to win independence from Turkey.
The knowledge that she was descended from the Philikê, as they are familiarly known, gave Elita a feeling of pride. Growing up, she believed that it somehow defined her “Greekness”. She and Martha loved listening to and retelling stories of the Philikê: “We come from them, the Philikê Etairia.”
Since ancient times the history of Greece has been marked by continual shifts in the ruling powers of city states, islands, and smaller communities, followed by waves of migration and emigration. Over centuries a diaspora of Greek communities developed in various Western as well as Eastern countries. Greek merchants often moved to major trade routes, because, compared to the flourishing cities of Europe and the Middle East, Athens had become little more than a village. Large Greek communities were thus established everywhere and remained Greek down the centuries, holding fast to the Greek Orthodox faith and their mother tongue.
In the fourteenth century the Ottoman Empire (based in modern Turkey) began to launch incursions into Europe and by the fifteenth century these attacks had reached Greek-controlled cities and regions. Many raids and battles resulted in the Turks achieving widespread domination over the Greek diaspora in countries such as Bulgaria, Asia Minor and the islands around the Greek mainland. Four centuries of Turkish rule would lead to the Greek Wars of Independence, inspired by groups like Philikê Etairia.
The movement was founded in 1814 in Odessa by a number of Greek patriots who had lived under Turkish rule for generations in the diaspora on the coast of the Black Sea in Bulgaria. In 1821, when Philikê Etairia hero Alexander Ypsilantis attacked the Turks in Rumania with eight hundred men, the war of independence began in earnest. Ypsilantis suffered a crushing defeat, but across Greece the insurgents remobilised and the conflict would eventually continue for six bloody years.
The fame of the Etairia lived on in numerous stories, especially those about the military hero Theodore Kolokotronis, a clan chieftain from the Peloponnesian region. His cruel and spectacular victory at Nauplion ensured the Philikê Etairia a place of honour in Greek history. Tony, Elita’s future husband, may not have been a direct descendant of Theodore, but he was a member of the Colocotronis clan, which remains an illustrious name in Greece to this day.
In 1830, after the War of Independence, Greece became a monarchy and began to work towards national unity. This was known as Megali Idea (the Great Idea), according to which the Greek language, history and especially the Orthodox faith would be encouraged in Greek-speaking areas. As a result many groups in the diaspora, such as Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbians, Jews and also Turks, describe themselves as Greeks in their ethnic languages and remain faithful to Greek aspirations.
Elita’s maternal grandparents, Menelaos and Martha Zotiadis, were descendants of the Etairia who lived in Bulgaria. (Martha’s family had originally come from Anatolia). They met in Burgas, a Bulgarian city on the Black Sea. Menelaos was a respected dealer in chemicals as well as other commodities; Martha, a graduate in philosophy, also had a passion for literature. They were members of the Greek elite on that coast, taking the lead in the city’s cultural life. Family tradition has it that Martha had to accept an arranged marriage with Menelaos because her parents would not allow her to marry her Bulgarian-born love, who may also have been a Moslem. Menelaos although not attractive, was nevertheless Greek, and, as was the norm then, Martha agreed to marry this clever and affluent man.
Towards the end of the First World War, Greece entered the fray on the side of the Allied Forces and with their help was finally able to throw off the Turkish yoke. Turkish possessions were handed over to Greece and in 1920 a controversial series of repatriations began in which more than a million Greeks in Turkish territories, including Bulgaria, were returned to Greece, while Turks in Greece were repatriated to their fatherland.
One hundred years after the Philikê Etairia instigated the revolution against the Turks, the young Zotiadis couple’s stay in Burgas was brought to a dramatic end. They had to “return” to Greece, in spite of the fact that the Zotiadises had lived in Bulgaria for generations and regarded it as their fatherland. Like thousands of other families, they travelled by boat to Thessalonica.
These mass relocations brought about an appalling disruption of people’s lives. Menelaos and Martha, accustomed to a