Karrer, Alexis. 2004. El-Ntampa He Historia Mias Homerias Hexenta Hronia Meta (Al-Dab`a the History of a Captivity: Sixty Years Later). Athens: Entos.
- Chapter 3. 1944–1945: The Battle of Athens
- » And They Took Us to Al Dab`a
Chapter 3. 1944–1945: The Battle of Athens
And They Took Us to Al Dab`a
As we all know, writing (at least recent writing, done by people who do not have the luxury, or the disadvantage, of a stay-at-home spouse who raises children, manages the household, puts dinner on the table, and acts as a social secretary) is a profoundly social act. Despite the fact that what finds itself on the page at the end bears the responsibility of our decision to put it there, what makes the decision possible is the constant fort-da of the exchange with other minds, encounters with objections and approbations of the object/subject at hand.
Al Dab`a has stayed with me for a very long time. Maybe because there is so little mention of it in almost all of the historical analyses of the period. Maybe because not too much importance has been given to it. Maybe because of the ways in which the operation was carried out, in scattered mentions, here and there, in testimonials by people interned on Yáros, about a place on Yáros called “Ntámpa,” an encampment of punishment within the encampment of punishment that the place was, tickled my propensity for minutiae. But Al Dab`a cannot, and ought not to be, considered minutia. Perhaps, as Angelakopoulos says, “compared to the other horrors, the experience of this particular British camp would not merit great attention.” But in the larger scheme of things, in the overall assessment of the processes that have made the enfleshment of the danger of the Left possible, Al Dab`a opens the space of barbed wire for Greece.
The place (also known as El-Daba`a, and later, among Greek detainees in Yáros, simply as Ntámpa) is a Bedouin Awlad 'Ali village on the Egyptian coast, which was also a station and goods siding on the railway. It is located approximately 60 kilometers from El-Alamein, 200 kilometers from Alexandria to the east, and 600 kilometers from Tobruk to the west, and it should not be confused with the oasis Tell El Daba`a, which lies further to the east and slightly to the south, where a major Hyksos settlement has been recovered. The British had an RAF base in Al Dab`a, established in 1938. It included a prison that was then nothing more than a space open on all sides, called by the British “the tented encampment,” encircled by barbed wire, or, as a New Zealander Axis prisoner there called it, “a cage.” According to Karrer (2004: 55), Camp 381 was 1.5 kilometers long and about 800 meters wide, broken up into twenty-four cages placed at intervals of about 15 meters and separated by three lines of barbed wire. Every five meters there was a lamppost and every two cages there was a watchtower covered with a tin roof. The camp was captured by the Germans under Rommel during the first battle of El-Alamein in June 1942 and used as a prisoner-of-war camp. It was retaken by the British under General Montgomery in September of that year, during the second battle of El-Alamein.
The line is from a folk song, whose lyrics were adapted to the realities of Al Dab`a. The original song, from the islands, was a love song (of sorts) about a woman who owned a fishing boat. It was adapted by Vassilis Tsitsanis early in 1945 and was recorded in 1946 by Tsitsanis and Stratos Payioumitzis.
Tha sas po mian historia
Apo ten aihmalosia
—varka yialo—
Kapoia mera tou polemou
(den to pisteva pote mou)
—varka yialo—
Hoi Egglezoi mas kyklosan
Me ta tanks kai mas tsakosan
—varka yialo—
Mas eperan ta roloyia
Me to xylo, me ta logia
—Varka yialo—
St' autokineta mas valan
Kai ten piste mas evgalan
—varka yialo—
Sto Goudi kais to Hasani
Ki apo kei gia to limani
—varka yialo—
Mas evalan sto papori
Kai gia to Port-Said plore
—varka yialo—
Mas eferan sten El Ntampa
Kai sten plate mas mia stampa
—varka yialo—
Mas edinan te vdomada
Dyo koutalia marmelada
—varka yialo—
Mas edinan kai fystikia
Pou 'tane yia ta katsikia
—varka yialo—
Mas edinan kai mia stala
Sympepyknomeno gala
—varka yialo—
Den xehnousan hoi Egglezoi
To helleniko trapezi
—varka yialo—
Kai mas dinan taktika
Kai mpizelia araka
—varka yialo—
Den to teloume to gala
Oute kai ten marmelada
—varka yialo—
Mono theloume na pame
Piso sten glykeia Hellada
—varka yialo—
I will tell you a story
From captivity
—boat by the shore—
One day of the war
(I would never have believed it)
—boat by the shore—
The English rounded us up
With their tanks they captured us
—boat by the shore—
They took our wristwatches
By force or by persuasion
—boat by the shore—
In the lorries they put us
And we suffered much
—boat by the shore—
At Goudi and at Hasani
And from there to the port
—boat by the shore—
They put us in the boat
And they took us to Port Said
—boat by the shore—
They brought us to El Ntampa
On our back they put a stamp
—boat by the shore—
They gave us two spoonfuls of marmalade
Once a week
—boat by the shore—
They gave us peanuts
That you use to feed the goats
—boat by the shore—
And they gave us a drop
Of condensed milk
—boat by the shore—
The English would not forget
The Greek cuisine
—boat by the shore—
And they fed us regularly
Peas
—boat by the shore—
We don't want the milk
Nor the marmalade
—boat by the shore—
The only thing we want
Is to go back to sweet Greece
—boat by the shore—
Another version, recorded in New York by George Katsaros and Stella Kay (Standard F-9014-B) mentions the campaign as one of exile specifically, both in its title They Took Us to Exile, and in the lyrics.
Kai mas pegan exoriaAnd they took us to exile
Makrya apo ten AthenaAway from Athens
—varka yialo——boat by the shore—
I am indebted to Lila Abu-Lughod and Timothy Mitchell, who helped me decipher the name Ntámpa, which I kept reading and hearing about in testimonials by Yáros detainees, and identify it as Al Dab`a. Abu-Lughod (2000) has shown how such stations became the nuclei of towns where the Awlad 'Ali sometimes settled or were used as markets. For a detailed account of the Al Dab`a camp during the Second World War, see http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei.
The Hyksos were invaders or migrants from the Near East (some suggest that they were probably Canaanites) who ruled the Delta region of Egypt from 1720 to 1570 b.c. Some have argued that they were Minoans. See Shaw 2000; on the excavations at Tell El Daba`a, see Bietak 1996.
This photograph was taken probably in 1946, post Al Dab`a, although neither the family of the young man that made the photograph available to me nor the photographer who took the photograph can tell with any degree of certainty. The photograph is inscribed on the back “Al Ntampa Aprilios 1945 [April 1945]” but this probably indicates that all persons depicted on it had been held together there and not that the photograph itself was taken at the camp.
The young man with the cigarette is Yiorgos Kontarines, a student at the Business School at the University of Athens and an ELAS member who participated in the Dekemvrianá and who was arrested and transported to Al Dab`a in January 1945. Only one other man on the photograph has been identified— Gregoris Tsevas, the one with the moustache standing on the right of Yiorgos Kontarines .
Yiorgos was captured and sent to Al Dab`a in January 1945 and returned to Athens probably in April 1945 (although it could have been as late as June) having contracted tuberculosis. After spending some time at a sanatorium in Penteli he joined the KKE (the Communist Party of Greece) and the Mazikê Laikê Autoámyna (the Massive Popular Selfdefense, an organization that had been instituted in Thessaloniki as a response to the massive excesses of the paramilitary organizations). During all this time he had a love affair with a young woman from his neighborhood, nineteen-year-old Katina Evripiote. Katina was the sister of Yiorgos’s best friend, and whose family was of a different political persuasion than Yiorgos was. In February 1946, Yiorgos was drafted into the National Army. While serving his military service he found out that Katina was pregnant with his child but that her parents were preparing to marry her off to someone else, as they did not allow her to marry a communist. Yiorgos deserted the army in June 1946 at which point he and Katina attempted to elope but failed. On June 6, 1946 outside of her house, Yiorgos shot Katina and then committed suicide. Katina’s house was right next to the “X” offices in Dáphnē (a suburb of Athens). This, however, is a story the historicity of which becomes unstable as more information is excavated. Although Yiorgos’s death certificate initially mentioned penetrating head trauma as the cause of death, it was later amended (in a “different handwriting and in red ink” his niece told me) to rule his death as suicide. There is no official information available on Katina’s death.
The story was told to me by Demetra Halikia, the niece of Yiorgos (his sister’s daughter) who, while looking for any information on Al Dab`a found out about my research and contacted me. Demetra mentioned to me that her mother was sixteen years her brother’s junior, and that she had grown up constantly enveloped by the story of her brother. Demetra made a point of telling me that when her uncle died he was twenty-two years old, her mother was six, her grandmother thirty-seven, and her grandfather forty. She also mentions that when she was a child she and her grandmother visited her uncle’s grave every week, where her grandmother would sing ELAS and EPON songs on the grave. She also adds that she grew up with stories about the Occupation, ELAS, and her uncle. She has named her son after her late uncle. To this day the two families are at odds with each other. Specific details about the story were supplied by Demetres Athanasiou, a friend of Yiorgos who was arrested a few days after him, held at Al Dab`a with him and who later was sent to Makronisos (in 1950). He described Yiorgos in very positive terms but as a harsh and determined person. He has added that all of them felt at that time despondent, defeated, and hopeless.
The cross on the photograph was drawn by Yiorgos’s father after the murder/suicide. The scratches on the face of the man in front were unintentional and probably happened over the course of the years. The photograph is being reprinted with the kind permission of Yiorgos’ family in whose private collection the photograph belongs.
I want to thank the family of Yiorgos, especially his niece Demetra Halikia, who made this story available to me.