Maria Karra (1925-2009)

Maria Karra of the Stamatiadi family was born in 1925 in Piraeus, the largest port of Greece, with roots from both sides of her family stemming from the Aegean islands. Her father, Vasilis Stamatiadis was a painter and student of the great painter Georgios Iakovidis at the Athens School of the Fine Arts, as well as the offspring of a relatively well-off shipping family that traveled frequently. Her mother, Amaryllis of the Nomikou family came from a large and educated family that originated on the island of Serifos. Together they had 4 daughters, one of which passed at a young age. Maria was the oldest. In 1933 when Maria was 7 her father passed from typhoid fever and her mother, a 27-year-old disabled widow, was forced to move in with her parents. “Having 4 daughters wasn’t just unlucky, it was literally a curse… They always told me that I was the protector of the family and I had to work”. Maria’s family wanted her to become a professor in the humanities, but the conditions were too harsh and did not allow for a higher education.

The war found Maria in Piraeus, but the family constantly moved between Athens and Piraeus living with other relatives or even separately at times. During the harsh winter of 1941, when the Athenian population was dying of starvation Maria stayed with her uncle in Athens. “My shoes were torn, but that wasn’t the worst thing. Hunger kept increasing, food stocks kept depleting and the black market ran rampant”

In the fourth grade of Gymnasium (middle school), she was conscripted by a female classmate in the youth organization of EAM and then transitioned to the female resistance movement Free Girl, after which she joined EPON in 1943. “An EPON woman. I never realized that in there I spent my teenage and early adult years […] these experiences have deeply defined me, they created my identity, and have become my life and thought”.

Her involvement in resistance movements had another practical impact since after the death of her father she had assumed responsibilities beyond her years and was burdened by the conservative notions that were prescribed to women such as virtue, seriousness as well as shame. As she mentions the hesitancy that “the idea that we mustn’t discuss anything relating to our bodies, its functions, and childbirth”. Her familial environment strongly opposed her activities. “What are you doing and where are you going? What will the neighborhood say? Young girls running around at night?” her mother would complain, but Maria persevered.

Her initiation into resistance movements and her participation in activities against the fascist occupiers in collaboration with many young men played a catalytic role in young women re-defining their notions about the role of women in society and realizing the potential for social education and the assumption of responsibilities. As Maria states “It was an earthquake that came and changed the priorities of women as well as to some degree altering traditions”. Of course, she emphasizes that many women were at the bottom of resistance movements, and very few had true authority: “Εquality was relative. What we accomplished was to gain confidence, to believe in ourselves and our capabilities, leaving our shells and entering the struggles, with the ability to write, to read and to organize. That was the biggest gain, self-confidence”.

The responsibilities that Maria had within EPON, excluding the participation in events and protests, were sheltering illegal members, finding spaces to hide materials (weapons, pamphlets, etc.) as well as finding local homes that were safe for meetings. Additionally, she was in charge of organizing crews to paint propaganda on walls. Maria participated in a crew of 3 girls that also announced slogans with a megaphone. Finally she was in charge of fundraising and distributing the illegal proclamations and newspapers: “One of our most serious responsibilities, that had political, educational and organizational importance was the distribution of illegal press, which was the motivator of the wider population, it alerted, it gave slogans of the moment”.

These activities occurred in a state of total illegality and danger since the occupational powers showed no mercy to any resistance activity. Arrests, detainment, and executions became a regular phenomenon. When on the 22nd of July 1943 the largest protest against the expansion of the Bulgarian zone of occupation was organized in Athens, the suppression of the protesters in the center of the city was brutal. Maria writes that “In Athina’s Street someone shot at us and before I could realize where the shots were coming from I see the person next to me fall injured, we lift him in our arms […] in the corner the attack begins. A tank approaches us, and the younger ones confront it, once we near it the tank opens fire, and the shots hit us in the flesh”. Maria having seen her friend Panagiota Stathopoulou and then Thomis Xatzithomas die in front of her, tries to aid as many of the injured as she can. “Some grab me and take me into the hospital, they ask if I am injured. No, it is the blood of the dead [on my clothes] I answer”.

In the summer of 1943, Maria returns to Piraeus, appointed at the tax office. She quickly connects with the local EPON of the area and is in charge of the Financial Committee for the handling of their funds as well as fundraisers, but she was also involved in other activities. A specific example was the death of a young EPON/ELAS member in 1944 when the liberation neared and the skirmishes with the invaders had flared up. The Germans had set up machine guns with the intention of attacking all those participating in the funeral procession. Maria and another 5 girls placed the coffin on their shoulders and ignoring the danger lead the body to the cemetery on their own.

Maria experienced the liberation from Piraeus: “With uncontrolled happiness we rushed to the streets, singing, dancing and shouting. Some cry and some are noticeably absent: the victims of the struggle, the murdered and the starved”. However, one banner that she and her coworkers hoisted at the tax office was the grounds for her dismissal from work and its damning inclusion in the folders of the secret police.

After the liberation, she continued her work at the EPON of Piraeus. There she participated in the events of December 1944, she fought alongside the 4th battalion of the 6th regiment of ELAS, creating an 11-person unit of EPON members. “Pasalimani was covered in shells fired from the British Navy that constantly attacked the city. We retreated… I had various responsibilities: organizer of the regiment, the person responsible for the telephone center, and the communications with the fighting units for anything regarding their missions. Everyone was armed, I had an automatic weapon on my shoulder, but I did not know how to use it”

After the retreat of ELAS Maria remained in Pireaus with the order of re-organizing the organization in the city, in a state of absolute illegality and constant terror from the state and paramilitary groups. The organization was female, with another 3 girls so as to not draw attention. “Countless hours we spent making proclamations, mainly slogans with the signature of the Communist party (KKE) and ELAS. We would go on walks and as we strolled we would throw the proclamations from under our dresses. No one would ever imagine that three girls would be doing such a job”.

 The period after the Varkiza agreements (February of 1945) life returned to some normalcy. The recently legalized and re-structured EPON returned to action in Pireaus, Maria worked in the cultural department, and she wrote articles for the Nea Genia [New Generation] periodical of EPON. She was in charge of enlightening young working women. “Lectures, theatre, choirs, trips… but what I liked most was the school of journalism at the offices of the Party Organization in Pireaus”.

In 1946 Maria marries Dimitris Mouratidis a longstanding communist, with persecutions and prison sentences from the interwar years, whom she had met and sheltered under the alias “Stelios”. But the circumstances begin to change during the civil war. In 1948 she is forced to resign from her job at the tax office since the certifications of national beliefs were necessary for employment in the government sector. Thus, the couple lost its only income source and was also forced to move and rent an apartment in Kokkinia under a fake name since her husband was in the illegal mechanism of the Communist Party. “We would hear immediately about every new arrest and every new death sentence that the emergency military tribunals imposed. On the one hand, we would be disheartened from such news, and on the other, we saw the noose tighten around our own necks”. D. Mouratidis was arrested in October of 1948, despite hiding, and was sentenced to three life sentences by the military courts.

In a very difficult situation Maria recalled that she repeatedly showed her husband the same banknote to convince him that they had money when in reality in the cupboard there was only a cacao box. The likelihood of employment was slim since the characterization of being a communist followed her. Thus, Maria began to sell books as a certificate of national beliefs was not mandatory for such a job. Later with another 4 leftist friends they created the Publishing House O Syghronos [The Modern] but this was quickly suppressed when the core partners were arrested.

In these difficult times that leftists faced during the conclusion of the civil war Maria did not sit by idly. As a political and social activist herself and with her husband in jail she participated from 1948 in the Panhellenic Union of the Families of Political Exiles and Prisoners (PEOPEF). As the general secretary she and other women of the movement campaigned for the basic rights of the political prisoners, a full amnesty as well as the end of the re-education camps in Makronisos, and the improvement of the living conditions of prisoners. Additionally they fought for the betterment of their access to healthcare, the financial and psychological support of their relatives, and aiding their rehabilitation. Maria remembers how “when we cross the streets of Athens the people stare at us oddly: 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 women mostly old and dressed in black, with the bitterness and the determination in our faces walking to the ministry of the Interior, at the political office. We have become their permanent guards, sometimes they arrest us and lead us to the police precincts, but we are determined”.

During a period when sentences were harsh for leftists, Maria and other women from PEOPEF, fought effectively to end the death sentence, with marches, publications, and memorandums that were aimed at the Greek and the global public as well as international organizations. For example, when 8 communists from Piraeus including her husband were sentenced to death in 1949, Maria managed to illegally gather statements from political prisoners in Makronisos as well as exiles abroad. With the help of the liaison of the Soviet news agency TASS in Greece, she managed to publish the “Greek Issue” which was discussed on the floor of the General Assembly at the UN in October of 1949, which voted to suspend the death sentences of Greek leftists. “Later we began to uncover the silenced suffering in Gioura, Kerkyra, and Kefalonia. In Australia, Switzerland, America, and France thousands of proclamations are distributed regarding Democracy and Amnesty in Greece”.

Of course, the conditions were not easy. Together with the economic hardships -she mentions that “many times the political prisoners paid for our ferry tickets”- they also had to deal with the persecutions from the state. “The security services harassed us constantly, trials and again trials, disbanding the PEOPEF and sending us to the military tribunal, constantly dragged to police stations to be terrorized, isolated and banished”.

For her action in PEOPEF Maria was arrested in 1951 and she was kept in isolation in the general security offices in Pireaus for 2 months under immense hardships. “The cell was on the terrace, built with a thin concrete layer that the sun would burn in the day and would freeze during the night… with dimensions of 1,80 meters in length and 1 meter in width. High up in the wall, there was a small opening for lighting, there was no electricity. My mother fed me… they would not allow any utensils to avoid suicide, pencils paper, and books were banned”. Maria sang in order to endure the isolation and figured out a communication system, by tapping on the wall, with the other prisoners. She was sent to an emergency military court, where she was found innocent after a mobilization by PEOPEF, however, she remained in custody at the Averof women’s prison. She mentions that the biggest issue was the overcrowding of the jail, as in wings meant to house 200 prisoners 700 were housed instead. In the opposite wing of the Averof prison, her husband was also incarcerated. Legal communication was impossible so instead they would meet each other from afar and communicate using a white handkerchief.

Despite her innocence in court the persecution did not stop, Maria was arrested again in December 1954 and was exiled to Ai Stratis. “In that dry, far away island of the Aegean lived 700 men and 45 women, exiles from all over Greece. […] It was very difficult in that barren island to be comfortable and live for years, it was unclear for how many. With a few clothes, no money, heating, or contact with the outside world, no radiophone, no newspapers… Our life there was not peachy, time was in short supply. We had to work in labor groups for many hours so that we could use our time and survive. The ones that received checks kept an allowance and the rest they donated to the communal fund of the camp. The same happened with packages […]Letters were limited and subject to censorship, only one page of the absolutely necessary”. Maria returned to Athens from Ai Stratis in 1956, with deteriorating health that forced her to be hospitalized.

When Maria returned from exile, she did not forget her past struggles and continued the defense of political prisoners and exiles. Concurrently she began working as an accountant for various businesses, while she also participated actively in syndicalist groups. She joined EDA, the legal party of the Left, and became a part of the women’s group of the party (Female Assistance Committee), as well as its syndicalist office. The period of 1963-1967 she was a founding member of the Organizational Committee of Labouring Women (SEEG). “We did a very important job, to convince the syndicates and the members that were recently released from jail to utilize female representatives because until then the leadership of the syndicates, even the female ones (nurses, tobacco workers) were exclusively male”.

The persecutions and exile had rocked her personal life. In 1963 she divorces Dimitris Mouratidis who had returned from exile but keeps in contact with him. However after two years, she marries Nikos Karras, a member of EAM and KKE, condemned to die in 1949 and exiled for many years.

With the imposition of the military dictatorship in April 1967, she was alerted by a comrade and left her house with her husband, who had also joined EDA, crossing again into illegality. “A frantic search began, going from house to house, I had nowhere to go. My acquaintances were either arrested or in hiding or being watched […] The rumors ran wild with news of dead and injured”. She stayed illegally in Athens for 2,5 years and was part of the anti-dictatorial struggle as part of the Panhellenic Anti-dictatorial Front (PAM), aiding in the publication of the anti-dictatorship newspaper Rizospastis-Mahitis [Radical-Warrior]. In this difficult time of illegality, her daughter was born: “An illegal she was brought into the world and was registered with a fake name”. Towards the end of 1969 with her husband having already departed abroad, she managed to escape with her daughter to Italy with the help of a Dutch group.

In Rome, having become a member of the Anti-dictatorial Labour Front (AEM), and with her experience the previous years with labor and syndicalist matters in Greece, she connected with the Italian syndicates and international workers fronts. She also traveled to many countries to report on the Junta regime. In 1970 she denounced as a syndicalist the Junta coup to the International Bureau of Labour (DGE-BIT), forcing the Junta representatives to abandon the meeting twice.

She moved to Paris in 1971 without any financial support. “With huge difficulties, dragging a stroller with my baby in it, I looked for work. Life for us was expensive and hard”. She worked part-time while attending classes at Sorbonne and simultaneously she authors the book Eponitissa [EPON Girl] about her experiences in the struggles against the occupiers.

She returned to Greece in 1974 after the collapse of the Junta and continued her professional and syndicalist career. Simultaneously she actively participated in the female movement as a member of the Movement of Democratic Women, taking on the post of vice president of the Municipal Committee of Equality, as well as a member of the organization committee of female groups. She also worked with local government and was elected as a municipal advisor in Athens in 1982 as well as vice mayor of Welfare focusing on children and the elderly. Politically she was a member of the executive of AEM, the executive board of EDA, then the Party board of PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement). She maintained her bonds with her old comrades from the resistance movement and was the vice president of POAEA (Panhellenic Organization of National Resistance Fighters). She also wrote a book titled Emeis oi ap’ ekso (We the Outsiders) about her experiences in PEOPEF. She died in Athens in 2009.