On a mountain in central Greece, with a November wind presaging winter, Nikolas Covo crouched near the fire in a 55-gallon drum, his toes and fingers numb, his heart a dead lump. The stale bread he tried to chew felt like a clod of brick. Despite his hunger, he thought only of the last time he had seen his family, their tearful goodbyes when all knew somehow that the goodbye was forever. The deportations were due to start, and Nikki had taken his chance to escape Salonika in the hold of a fishing vessel. He had then been hidden by a courageous priest and his family in Athens, feigning himself a relative destined to enter an Orthodox seminary, and finally had escaped again, hidden in the trunk of a car, delivered to the partisans to take up battle against the invaders.
Nearby, eating their own crusts and trying to make soup from a handful of rotten turnips, were other young teenagers who, like Nikki, had come to serve with the Greek People’s Liberation Army. Those too young to bear weapons served as porters, cooks, orderlies, and runners. Nikki himself had been relegated to duty in the field hospital—emptying bedpans, serving what little food there was, hauling medical garbage to the dump. There, Nikki would toss surgical waste, fouled bed sheets, ripped uniforms and other detritus into a bonfire. In between these duties, he tried to comfort the dying.
He had reached the GPLA in early October 1943, shortly before an offensive that the group began against a hated enemy. To his horror, Nikki learned that the forces against which GPLA fought were not the Germans, but another faction of Greek resistance, the National Groups of Greek Guerrillas, which opposed the Communist bent of GPLA’s leaders. The German army still occupied Greece, wiping out entire villages in reprisal raids, yet GPLA diverted its attention from Greece’s occupiers to lob their shells at other Greeks. And although GPLA was largely successful in its attacks, it too suffered heavy casualties. The first wounded guerillas whose litters Nikki helped carry had sustained their wounds at the hands of their countrymen.
Among those around the fire was an Italian private, Gioccomo Alberti. He had been drafted into the Italian army and, until recently, had been part of the Axis occupying forces in Greece. Italy surrendered in September, however, and units of the Italian army had switched sides to link up with the Greek resistance. Gioccomo had stumbled into the GPLA camp along with five others of his platoon. They were emaciated. Food had been scarce, even for Italian soldiers.
Nikki and Gioccomo could speak to each other with difficulty. Nikki knew no Italian, but could recognize many words because they sounded Ladino, the language of his prayer books in his Salonika synagogue, the language he spoke at home. He hadn’t begun to learn Greek until the age of four, when his father had first engaged a tutor. And Gioccomo had picked up a smattering of Greek during his months as part of the Italian occupying force. They spent occasional minutes of rest talking to each other, becoming friends.
‘And your family?’ Gioccomo asked one evening.
Nikki did not respond for a full minute. The question, innocent enough, could not be answered with vitriol. Nikki wondered what he would have done had he been in Gioccomo’s shoes and told to don a uniform, grab a gun, and attack a neighboring country.
‘Your family?’ Gioccomo repeated.
‘Dead. Dead by the Germans.’ Nikki knew that no Jewish families had escaped the deportations from Salonika earlier that year, knew that they had been transported in box cars to a slaughterhouse in Poland. GPLA leaders had heard as much from captured Germans. It hardly took any torture at all to get them to reveal these truths about the Third Reich’s intentions with respect to all Jews that fell within their power.
‘Very sorry.’
‘And so I want to kill Germans now. That is why I am here.’ Nikki saw that Gioccomo did not understand ‘kill,’ so pantomimed a slicing of the neck.
Gioccomo nodded. ‘Is good kill Germans now.’
Yet, for all Nikki’s desire to avenge what he knew in his heart had been the deaths of his parents and sisters, he found himself not killing Germans at all, but rather mixed up in a military more obsessed with who ran Greece when the war was over than in actually ending the war. He wanted to get his hands on a gun, and he wanted a German soldier in front of him, an easy target, and then another.
Nikki could not sleep. At around 11, he heard gunfire from somewhere further down the mountain, and armed soldiers raced out of the camp, yelling. In the ensuing hours, casualties began arriving at the mobile hospital—some limping in on their own, some carried. Nikki was elated to discover that GPLA had been skirmishing with German units. As he ran from litter to litter, bouncing about from the shouted orders of the doctor and nurses, he gradually pieced together the story.
A company of GPLA fighters watching the highway had ambushed a German motor transport and then come under heavy fire. GPLA reinforcements had rescued the original company, but more German troops were expected. It wasn’t clear whether the camp itself was in danger, well hidden as it was. The Germans had not yet wanted to tangle in mountainous terrain. It would be impossible to move the hospital in response to a German attack. If the Germans advanced and overran the GPLA position, those found at the hospital would be captured. All expected to die immediately if they fell into enemy hands. It was how the war was fought.
At about 3 am, a new commotion arose. Twelve German soldiers trying to outflank the GPLA contingent had miscalculated and been captured. They were marched into the camp at gunpoint, hands tied behind their backs, heads downcast. Nikki could see them led in front of the makeshift mess hall. He left the hospital to learn what would happen to them, leaving a shouting nurse cursing him for abandoning his post. As he ran with the gathering throng, he looked for a weapon that he could grab for himself, but found nothing not already in the hands of a GPLA fighter.
Nikki pushed his way through the crowd encircling the Germans and saw the commander of GPLA troops, General Safaris, walk as well into the circle, with an interpreter at his side. Safaris, like the other GPLA fighters, wore no uniform, but everyone in the camp knew him.
‘German swine! What are you doing here in the free country of Greece?’
The Germans refused to answer, keeping their eyes on the dirt in front of them. Nikki could see that they were scared. He wanted to kill them all.
In Greek, Sarafis ordered the Germans to be stood against the wall and shot, then turned to the gathered Greek soldiers. ‘Who here has lost a family member to the German pigs?’ A shout from the GPLA fighters in which Nikki lustily joined showed that virtually all fell into that category.
‘Then who here has not had his chance to kill a German?’
Nikki broke into the open area and approached Sarafis. He stood straight and looked Sarafis directly in the eye. ‘I have not had my chance, General Sarafis.’ The crowd fell silent to listen to the exchange between their general and the tall, slender boy who wore dark-framed glasses and whose clothes were stiff with dried blood.
‘So, son, you want to kill one now?’
‘I want to kill all.’
‘Do you even know how to fire a gun?’
‘No, sir. I have not fired a gun, but wish I had. I am only an orderly. My father, my family, all transported from Salonika, and I am sure they are dead.’
‘And so now you want to kill our prisoners?’
‘We have no room for prisoners, sir.’
‘How would you kill them?’
Nikki wasn’t sure that he could kill with a gun. He had never fired one, and he worried that, even close up, he might miss and become the laughing stock of the camp. Or, one of the Germans might kick the gun out of his trembling hands. Then, suddenly, he knew.
‘Bayonet, if you please. Bayonet in the gut. One at a time.’
General Sarafis laughed, looking around at his men. ‘Bayonet in the gut, he says! He’s tough! Are you sure you can do it?’
‘I am sure, as I stand before God. Sir.’
‘Fine. You get one, and then the rest will be shot. Pick one. Go up to them now, and look closely. Sergeant, give him your rifle.’
Nikki took the rifle and checked the bayonet. He tested its point, drawing a spot of blood from his hand after a light touch. He then approached the line of German soldiers. He stared at each, and each looked back at him. He hated their pale skin, light blue eyes, blond hair, and arrogance in the face of death. Surely, they were scared and knew that their lives had ended, but still they looked at him with hatred. Nikki knew that nothing he did or did not do would spare their lives, but he had no interest in sparing their lives. They were soldiers of a monstrous people who had murdered those he loved the most.
He made his selection, pointing to a corporal in the middle of the line, the largest of the German soldiers. Nikki wanted to be sure that he hit his target.
‘Sergeant,’ Sarafis announced, ‘have two of your men hold that one up firmly against the wall. And tell them to stand back a bit. We don’t want any accidents.’ The Sergeant jumped to comply, and Nikki’s target was forced by the partisans with his back against the wall. Nikki walked up to him, now holding the bayoneted rifle.
‘You die here in free Greece and suffer the fate that you have imposed upon my father, Dr. Mordechai Covo, my mother, Sara, my sisters, Ada and Kalli. Do you understand?’ The German showed no emotion, but Nikki knew that he caught Nikki’s meaning. There was no need for an interpreter.
Nikki walked away about 10 yards, then whirled and rushed at the German, bayonet pointing straight at his midsection. It sliced in more easily than Nikki had imagined, and when it had penetrated as far as it could, Nikki yanked it upward so that its sharp point would do the most damage. A shout of pain and a mist of blood erupted simultaneously from the German’s mouth. Nikki pulled the bayonet out and plunged it in again as the soldier slumped down, still held under the shoulders by partisans on either side.
The crowd cheered, but Nikki did not hear. He could hear only his father telling him that enough was enough. Nikki pulled the bayonet out and threw the rifle down, took a few steps away, then crumpled with pain at the loss of his family and disgust with himself. He could not hear the fusillade as the remaining Germans were executed. The one he had stabbed was left to bleed out.
Nikki found himself on his bunk, crying uncontrollably. He could not recall anything following the bayonet’s plunge into the German. In his mind, he could see only the fallen form, a curtain of blood engulfing them.
Gioccomo kneeled over Nikki. He could not fathom what had brought Nikki to such a degraded state of emotion.
‘Nikki, what bad?’ He heard only Nikki’s crying. Gioccomo reached out and clumsily took Nikki in his arms, holding him as tightly as he could.
