Blood and Tears

Blood and Tears is a powerful autobiography set in the turbulent decade of 1940s Greece. Through the eyes of George Papavizas, an impressionable and intelligent young man who came of age in a time of war, foreign occupation, resistance, and civil war, we witness the tragedy and trauma suffered by an entire nation. Leaving his idyllic western Macedonian village as a teenager to begin university studies in Salonika in the fall of 1940, the author experienced the patriotic fervor that brought rare unity to the Greeks and the euphoria that swept the Hellenic nation to resounding victories against Mussolini's invading army. The nation's and Papavizas's university plans both collapsed, however, when Germany came to Italy's aid and the Greek nation was occupied by Germans, Italians, and Bulgarians for almost three years. The occupiers appropriated nearly all available resources, bringing the author and his family face to face with the grim needs of survival. For Papavizas, the first half of the 1940s consisted of the horrors of the triple occupation and the heroic armed resistance of the Greek people. This meant ruined villages and towns, including two deadly burnings of the author's village; British commandos operating from his own house; and the reappearance of the old curses of the Hellenic race -- dissension and distrust -- which eventually subverted the exhilarating harmony that prevailed during the fall of 1940, the nation's finest hour.