OXI DAY

28th October 1940 - The Day Greece said a Loud OXI - NO - to Mussolini 
and the 2nd World War Took a Different Turn! 




"Until now we used to say that the Greeks fight like heroes.
Now we shall say: The heroes fight like Greeks."
Sir Winston  Churchill - Prime Minister United Kingdom
(From a speech he delivered from the BBC in the first days of the  Greco-Italian war)

OXI Day commemorates the day that Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas rejected the ultimatum given by Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, on October 28, 1940. 

This ultimatum, a demand that Greece allow Axis forces to enter Greek territory or otherwise face war, was presented to Metaxas by the Italian Ambassador in Greece, Emanuele Grazzi, on October 28, 1940, at dawn (04:00 AM), ironically enough after a party in the German Embassy in Athens. Metaxas, is supposed to have immediately answered with a single word: 

 'OXI' 

Whether he actually did or not, is almost irrelevant... 

That simple but determined OXI, however it was said, was symbolic and significant. It represented the sentiments and principles of the entire Greek people. This word marked the beginning of Greece's involvement in the Second World War, an involvement which was to cost Greece dearly, from every point of view. This is our tribute to those noble men and women who fought and died so that today we can be free....

Read more: 28th October 1940 - The Day Greece said a Loud OXI - NO - to Mussolini and the 2nd World War Took a Different Turn!



To Xypolito Tagma - The Barefoot Battalion - 
Gregg Tallas' Delightful Movie about Children in German Occupied Greece


As part of their learning more about the events of World War II and its consequences for Greece, my 10 year old daughter's class, (she's 5th year- Pempti - by the way) was taken to see a new release of a marvellous movie about children growing up in war ravaged Thessaloniki. 

She loved it, as did all the children,  and as she was telling me about the movie, Το Ξυπόλυτο Τάγμα or The Barefoot Battalion, and I read the pamphlet they were given, I remembered my own parents telling us about the same movie when we were growing up in our own community so far away from Greece, each time the 28th October celebrations took place there....


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