«One has to kill Crete in order to capture it. It won’t surrender alive. And then it rises from the dead in order to start new struggles».
I.M. PANAYOTOPOULOS
This special dedication for the 50 years from the epical battle of Crete will try to bring back to life this cosmo-historic event with the apocalyptic power of pictures. Hundreds of rare photographs, maps, proclamations, printed material and other historical documents, throw their light from their optical point of view and cover unknown or less known aspects of this glorious act of Cretan history.
At the Battle of Crete, the inhabitants might have not weighed with the scales of prudence the enemy. They might not have estimated his superiority with the method of cold logic. But theirs was not an act of irrationality; just another conscious offering to the altar of free thought and spiritual values. This fact was noted by all the allied forces, which also fought with heroism and incomparable self-sacrifice at this land.
Crete, unarmed, was defeated. The Cretan soul, though, untamable and unsubmissive by nature, hit fiercely on the «anvil» of struggles and sacrifices, did not bend; was not defeated.
It clenched its teeth, it buried its dead, it tended its wounds and continued the resistance. This picture of Crete is portrayed poetically by G. Calomenopoulos, when he writes:
This castle you want to pillage, German,
Is founded on bones centuries old,
And its foundations drink blood for thousands of years It feeds on tears and sorrows make it strong,
It’s impregnable, and it’s indestructible and always stands erect,
Unbendable and immovable, a bulwark of freedom and it fights always standing, and wields the sword.
At this year’s anniversary an opportunity is given again for die past to meet the present as well as the adversaries of this uneven contest, winners or losers. At the same battlefields, where beardless young men of twenty years of age fought and fell, and at the cemetery areas offered by the hospitable Cretan land, they will get together again, the dead with the living in order to pay pious homage to their graves, to adorn them without bouquets of wild flowers and to cool them with a spring-time tears. The 50-year anniversary which is celebrated this year, let it be a shining example and a stand of the right perspective, which will promote and secure peace and calm all over earth.
At this hospitable and fruitful Cretan land, which has been the womb European civilization, let us ley the seed of peace and let us give our hands to get the message across “NEVER AGAIN WAR”.
To our people and the foreigners who fought for the ideals of freedom and independence and died for them. To the non-fighting population of Crete that was sacrificed at this struggle. And lastly, to the dead that were left by this unusual battle, which fought obeying the irrational orders of an unhealthy concept, let this book be a symbolic dedicational memorial.
MAY 1991
GEORGE PANAYOTAKIS
ΡΑΔΑΜΑΝΘΥΣ 