The Ghosts of Plaka Beach delves into the world of a small Greek community during World War II. You take a personal story about your Uncle and his murder and develop a book that describes what an entire community experienced during those times. The book explains how events occurred and why, the ways in which society, government, politics, beliefs, etc. effected the turnout of events within Plaka Beach.

Could you please expand on your subtitle and its significance?

The theme of violence triggered by a particular action and then escalating into a spiral unfolding through successive revenge acts is very central in my book. It appears at both the community and the personal level. At the personal level my uncle, not the one who was murdered but his brother, went after his brothers murderers, first by helping their opponents and then by pursuing them through the courts. Unfortunately the murderers opponents that he helped were the Germans and their local allies.

How did you go about starting the arduous process of digging up information about your uncle and the events during wartime in Plaka Beach?

The key event was the publication in 2000 of an article in a collection of readings about the Greek civil war that described the onset of communist terror in the area where my mothers family lived. The author of that study, a brilliant scholar who also became a great friend, helped me with whatever information he had about my uncles case and steered me to archival sources where I could find more. This archival material I supplemented with other primary material like interviews, correspondence and unpublished diaries that I discovered in the course of my research. I trace this process in Chapter Two of the book called “The Prologue.”

What purpose do you intend your book to serve?

First of all, on a personal level I wrote the book because I had to get it out of my system, where it lingered for more than thirty years. Second, I believe that the psychological dynamics of the onset of civil conflict, viewed through my uncles experiences and vividly illustrated in the book by quotes from his wartime exchanges with my mother, are of considerable interest to professional historians and political scientists. Last but not least, I was dissatisfied with descriptions of the wartime life of the Greeks that you find in most World War II narratives, with heroes and villains neatly delineated as in a Hollywood western or a medieval drama. The reality, as I found out, was very different and much less morally satisfying. I explain these intentions in the “Prologue.”

You mention that many people dissuaded you from writing The Ghosts of Plaka Beach. Why? Do you think that it is important to go against the grain of typical historical literature by writing about events that are in “gray zones” and do not provide clear heroes and villains?

People tried to dissuade me because in a morally ambiguous situation most participants are bound to have skeletons in their closets, which they are not very anxious to display. In my book I describe a vicious terrorism by the Left-dominated resistance, which the Right countered by massively collaborating with the Germans. Not surprisingly, neither party wants the full truth to come out. This, of course, makes it all the more important to tell the story. Good historical literature should try to contextualize the motives and actions of the various participants in the events that it describes, not impose its own moral structure on the narrative.

You mention that you had a change in political opinion after you left Greece. If you had been older during the wartime, what do you believe your stance would have been?

It is hard to know what one would have done. If I had been a young man during the German occupation of Greece I most probably would have made the choices dictated by my familys experiences. I give several examples in the book of people who were fully committed to the fight against the German and Italian occupiers of Greece, but who were eventually compelled to join the other side by circumstances beyond their control. After all, my murdered uncle had participated in the resistance and had been arrested several times by the Italians. After his murder his entire extended family became supporters of the collaborationist forces, who were thought to be their only protection against the communists. On the other hand my feelings towards the Left change whenever I think of my Jewish wife. The communists were not the only group helping the Jews in wartime Greece, but they were the largest and the most effective, and they offered salvation and shelter to the Jewish communities of central Greece in the mountainous areas held by the communist-led rebel army.

The type of work in your book is much different from your background in economics and finance. Did you enjoy writing a work of historical non-fiction?

I loved it. It was done as an aside, in parallel with my normal professional duties as a Finance professor, and it meant sacrificing vacation time to gather data, or weekend leisure to write the story. It was a labor of love that I never begrudged.

Do you plan to write any more works of this kind?

Most definitely yes. I have in mind another topic, on which I have already started working but which I am going to stay quiet about till the second book is ready.

What has been the reaction to your book since its release?

It is too early to answer this question. The book has only been out for a few weeks, and it has not reached my hands yet. In Amazon.com it is cited as “Not yet released”. It has not even been distributed in Canada, let alone in Greece. It is also likely that most Greek Americans are unaware of it. We hope to change this in the immediate future.

–Lorna Marie McManus