My first visit to Greece took place in the summer of 1954. Ten years had passed since the departure of the Germans and five years since the end of the Civil War. The Nazi occupation brought the country face to face with unspeakable horror and disasters, and the effort to rebuild it was delayed due to the outbreak of the Civil War.

I had some knowledge of the tragic events of the war thanks to the excellent work of the architect Konstantinos A. Doxiadis, "The Sacrifices of Greece in the Second World War," where he recorded in detail, in a methodical and vivid way, the economic and human losses.

The Greece I first saw was steeped in poverty. This was evident everywhere. Often when you talked to a Greek about the beauty of his country, it was followed by a "yes, but it is very poor" - and to reinforce his words, he would rub his thumb with his index finger.

When the Nazis left Greece, they left behind a devastated country, with destroyed building infrastructure, disrupted transportation, a deeply wounded agricultural sector, and thousands of dead. Hunger proved to be a useful tool in the hands of the occupiers. The famine was extreme, especially in urban centers, and people were dying on the streets of Athens. The bank deposits of Greek businesses and families were wiped out by the terrifying inflation, due to the money printed by the Nazis and the skyrocketing price of gold from 5,000 drachmas per ounce before the war to 870,000,000,000,000 (yes, trillion) drachmas at the end.

During my travels in those years, from Epirus to Crete and from Pylos to Rhodes, I was pleasantly surprised by the cheerfulness, warmth, and hospitable spirit of these people who had survived the nightmare of war and its subsequent hardships.