By Asher J. Matathias

A friend’s forwarding and timely email instructing to Click here: Greek fighting: the eurozone's weakest link starts to crack, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, put me in a reflective mood, permitting my mind to wander the span of six decades, roughly coinciding with my life. Born in Nazi-occupied Greece, my stream of consciousness exercise recalled my father Jacob's intermittent absences, particularly in daylight, to stay updated on underground activity in the Mt. Pelion, where we found refuge. There followed years of deprivation, relief found only close to the military base where he was stationed, his literacy and typing ability becoming indispensable to his commander, as the latter was prosecuting the strategy of the right-wing government engaged in a protracted three additional years of civil war barbarism.

The experience of rending the body politic asunder, dividing siblings, parents, and the broader society into Monarchist and Communist factions was settled by the abundant infusion of American arms, emphatically helping simultaneously a weakened Greek state (not to fail by falling into the then expanding Soviet sphere of influence), while picking up the political obligations of a chastened British Empire --- victorious in the Second World War, yes, but exhausted, facing a massive economic crisis at home. Indeed, the famous Winston Churchill was replaced by Clement Attlee as prime minister in 1945!

Under Cold War conditions --- the epic 45-year struggle that would lead to eventual triumph in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin War, and followed in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet empire --- Greece became a flash point for the epic confrontation; after all, the closest European country to the emerging longest-lasting conflict in the Middle East and a founding member of the original 1949 14-nation military alliance that became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, the most successful unit of its kind.

However, while stressing the nominal ideals of democracy and self-determination, there was a overarching American aim in keeping Greece stable and safely in its camp --- even if occasionally to achieve such goals internal autonomy was sacrificed to the expediency of military strongmen, and a police force more accustomed to suppress speech than to scrupulously abide by Constitutional norms guaranteeing legitimate demonstration and general respect for the prevalence of civilian rule.

Fear of police brutality comes naturally to Greek citizens. Unlike the American paradigm, growing up I was cautioned to cross over to the opposite sidewalk when passing a police station, their presence to be necessarily tolerated but functioning not as servants for the public but as its masters! Moreover, in the post-civil war period, police ranks were augmented by unreconstructed former Nazi collaborators and indigenous, frequently sadistic right-wing adherents with a propensity to suspect any government criticism easily categorizing such dialogue as leftist, or even Communist.

Within such a historical context, last December’s event fomented by the tragic death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos under incriminating circumstances for the police represented the latest chapter in the development of modern Greece. The jittery police confronting and unable to contain a growing citizen protest, inspired by deteriorating economic conditions (high unemployment and living costs. Some point to the adoption of the euro currency in the PASOK government of 2002); the fleeing of Greece's best and brightest to seek fame and fortune abroad; the endemic nepotism and corruption of the embedded political elites common in third world societies paved a fertile grove for the unleashing of frustration that has been manifested in the streets of Athens and spreading like wildfire to other Greek cities, with the aforementioned death becoming the spark for the televised anarchism we have been witnessing. Vandalism even reached the Greek Consulate in New York!

Noteworthy are the twin facts that Greece has evolved into a haven for many illegal immigrants, viewing the country as their passport to a brighter future, while legal immigrants, from points of origin in Eastern Europe and Russia and the former Yugoslavia, number more than a million! These elements provide an easy platform for many charlatans who would aspire to the role of a Greek Lou Dobbs, stressing a puritanical native atavism, replete with ethnic intolerance and xenophobia. In the same category falls a fringe but continuous, unhealthy and rabid anti-Semitism, according to which Jews rule the world via a seemingly unholy alliance that connects them by an umbilical cord with the modern State of Israel to America!

The other event, with the United States again playing a major and unfortunate role, was the dictatorship of the colonels that held sway in the Greece, between 1967 and 1974. The antagonisms that were unleashed in those historic episodes, including police involvement in perpetrating the killing of more than a score of demonstrating university students in 1973, have never subsided --- frequently erupting into expressive anti-Americanism.

It is reassuring that the emotions that have precipitated the latest convergence of people, expectations and keen frustration have subsided considerably. Permanent resolution to the ills facing a still-evolving-into-maturity Greek society will remain elusive, absent a political creative leadership with vision, attaining its privileged position through merit and honest debate. My heart aches for the travails my native land, including family members, and a long roster of friends have experienced. Two proposals that can serve to bring long-term healing and social tranquility are recommended: for the immediate future, a grand coalition government to bring the country's disparate politics into focus to tackle the issues facing it (a la President-elect Obama's example); establishment of Truth and Reconciliation Commission to exhume the ghosts of the past in order to finally bury them with clear conscience. This broadly-based dispassionate analysis and understanding is both necessary and long overdue.

Asher J. Matathias is an Adjunct Prof. at St. John's University, Queens, NY. A survivor of the Holocaust in Greece and President of Five Towns B'nai B'rith he is also a Frequent Public Speaker and Writer.