Roots
I entered the world in November 1937 in a respectable—for those times—maternity hospital in Athens. I never understood why my father, Alekos, and my mother, Tasia, did not use their mellifluous full names, Alexandros and Anastasia. Both my parents were born on the island of Cephalonia. My grandfather, son of a merchant landowner, was the first in the family to study, going to Naples in Italy. He graduated in medicine in 1881 and his diploma was headed “Umberto Primo Re d’ Italia.” I never knew my grandfather, who died before I was born, but my grandmother lived until the early years of the German Occupation and I vaguely remember her: short, bent, and ugly, with a large mole on her face. She was well educated and had a mercilessly sarcastic wit that spared no one, not even her children. All is explained, of course, by the daguerreotype of her mother, my great-grandmother. A female Machiavelli, if one had ever existed, would surely resemble her: hair parted in the middle, eyes like fiery coals, and the merciless expression of a Renaissance prince.
My impressive great-grandmother Valieri. Daguerrotype.
My father, in the early 1930s, in the newspaper.
My father showed early on that he would not become a doctor. He would draw warships and his dream was to be an officer in the Navy. Unfortunately, his extreme shortsightedness prevented this.
He was an unusual pupil with unusually high intelligence, a limitless capacity for learning, and exuberant energy. Although his inclination was for the humanities and while still a pupil in high school he had read not only Plato but also many Western philosophers, he was also an outstanding mathematician.
The years of the Occupation were a time of enormous deprivation. In 1947 he found work at the Ministry of the Press in charge of the Weekly Review, the bulletin of events in the Greek world that was distributed to Greek embassies and communities abroad.At the time of the Cyprus affair, he was the first to announce the result of the referendum carried out by Makarios, whereas the Greek government ignored it so as not to upset its British “ally.” The Review continued until the arrival of the Colonels (the Junta), at which point it was finally discontinued.
He was a romantic of the 19th century who had the misfortune to live in the 20th. Sensitivity and honesty prevailed over his own interests. The tragic irony of his life was that he tried to live like a gentleman on the salary of a “bourgeois.” Philanthropist and democrat through and through, he used to say that he could talk equally easily with the king and the humblest of beggars. His life experience that “in Greece, even if you don’t achieve anything, the mere fact that you went counter to the flow means that you achieved a great deal,” made a great impression on me. This phrase sums up his philosophy and explains why the hopes of everyone that he would have a brilliant future came to nothing. He so nearly succeeded but hesitated at the last moment because he lacked the so-called killer instinct of the Anglo-Saxons. I have never forgotten his brokenhearted confession.
My mother was born and spent her childhood in Sami, a small town in the east of Cephalonia. She had the misfortune to lose her parents, Kosmas and Venetia, at a very young age and so was brought up, along with her younger sister, at the hands of “good” relatives who took care to embezzle their land holdings. My mother, without being beautiful, had style. In old photographs she gives the impression that among 10 or 15 others, she alone had such a luminous expression, such large, dreamy eyes full of sweetness and tenderness and an unusual hairdo swept to one side. Stylish and with a certain presence, she looked as if she did not belong to the crowd around her. Kindness and fortitude are the two words that sum up her personality. I have rarely come across hands as soft and warm as hers or such a tender embrace. Her interest in others was boundless and inexhaustible. She would weep like a child on hearing of hostages executed by the Germans and would save from her own plate bean soup and lentils “for the poor little children,” shoeless and heads shaved against the lice, whose hunger forced them to knock at the door. She never lost her patience or her faith in the face of adversity. Above all she never lost sight of the fact that one day her son would be worthy of his famous uncles and that every sacrifice was justified to bring this about. Her insistence and dedication were the more remarkable because she didn’t actually have anything to hang on to. Her relations with my father were a failure, the family finances were in a terrible state, and the attempt to escape from the mediocrity of our neighborhood futile. Finally, my mother’s belief that I should study and make something of myself proved to be unshakable.
My mother in Cephalonia.
Uncle Gerasimos
Gerasimos P. Alivizatos
(Uncle Gerasimos).
Elder son of Grandfather Petros, he was born and grew up in Argostoli. From photographs you can see that he had a physical resemblance to his father: medium height, a large head with very little neck, and quite a large belly. His skin was soft and his cheeks rosy, but his most striking feature was his eyes: of the clearest blue and with a gaze that was unwavering, searching, and completely calm. My mother once made the very apt comment: “Gerasimos looks at you with the innocence of a baby.” This observation was true of everything about him. Completely honest and painfully frank, he had few devoted friends and very many petty-minded enemies.
Uncle Gerasimos, or Gerasimakis as he was called in Cephalonia, was a multifaceted personality. An internationally recognized authority in hygiene, creator of a vaccine against rabies *, with innovative observations about antibiotics before Fleming, and president of the World Health Organization, he had encyclopedic knowledge and was a lover of the arts and history. His writing prowess was outstanding—scientific, historical, and literary, which even included theatrical plays such as Elizabeth I, Queen of England and The Last Komnenoi.
It was not only his knowledge, his superhuman, round-the-clock industry, and the quality of his work that commanded respect. His unswerving principles and his combativeness led him into direct confrontation with anyone who contravened them. His moral stature and his uncompromising nature were shown in the prologue to his Memorandum on Health, well known to his students. As he said, “The memorandum will be superseded by new data, but the prologue will last forever.” He wrote about how the only salvation for a student who considered the acquisition of knowledge unattainable was the many examination periods “so that the professor would eventually get tired of seeing him.” He castigated the student who, considering the acquisition of any knowledge useless, preferred to “spend large sums of money on private coaching schools that would teach him how to learn parrot-fashion, which would in the end only enable him to scrape through the exam.” He blasted the benign laws “with which everyone was rewarded with a diploma, worthy or unworthy, studious or slothful.” His comments about the prevailing reality were apt: “If all the ridiculous people were killed in Greece, then the population would be decimated.” And, about the careless way in which documents were compiled: “The Greek hates what he has written, which is why he never rereads it before submitting it.” Finally, regarding education: “Schools teach reading and badly spelled writing.”
Gerasimos Alivizatos was a teacher above all else. Everyone recognized this. His lectures in the amphitheater were so well attended that there was often standing room only. The delivery would diverge from the set syllabus and extend to all forms of human knowledge. These unique discourses were characterized by references to social, historical, musical, and other events. But first and foremost was the spectacle of professor and students, the liontamer and the lions. Gerasimakis would enter like a triumphant Roman emperor into the Colosseum while the amphitheater erupted into cheers, applause, and stamping of feet. Galloping like a war horse, he would circle the dais and face the crowd, eyes closed, with an expression of exultation at the reception. He would wait a moment to see if the noise would die down. Of course the uproar continued so he would make a movement with his right hand, like the conductor of an orchestra at the beginning of a concert. The din would still not be quieted. Neither did a second similar gesture bring about the desired result. He would then open his eyes in mock surprise and gaze severely at the audience for their “impudence.” At that point, while the noise continued, he would pronounce a single phrase, “shut up,” and like magic, complete silence would reign.
That was the teacher. There was, however, the man, as I knew him during my childhood and adolescence when I spent endless weekends in his shadow. Whoever reads the biography of Winston Churchill by Martin Gilbert or William Manchester and knew Gerasimos Alivizatos would find astounding similarities between them, not only in appearance but also in habits: working all night in bed, the sacred ritual of the midday meal with a crowd of guests, and his fondness for cigars.
I acknowledge that whatever musical education I received, I owe to my uncle. When I was 12 years old, he initiated me into opera, forcing me to sit by the radio one Sunday afternoon to listen to Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, having explained the plot and making appropriate comments while it was going on. The cost was high, however. Uncle could not stand mistakes, and there was no room for inaccurate information or careless judgments. The punishment, always verbal, was immediate and devastating. I had to think before opening my mouth and, above all, I could not be an overemotional, ordinary Romios (a derogatory name for the Greeks).
I saw him for the last time in June 1975 when I was about to leave for America again with plans for an extended stay, possibly to settle permanently. He was slumped in his armchair at the head of the table, dozing as usual. I told him I had come to say goodbye, and fixing me with those clear, blue eyes, he said: “Petros, always remember that your country is more sacred and more honorable than your father
or mother or all your family. Go now, you don’t have any other choice, but do come back.” It took me 20 years to comply with his wishes.
The Aunts
Aunt Katé, thin, aristocratic, and remote, with wonderful green eyes, was, you could say, taken from a 19th century romantic novel. She had studied the piano with Lina von Lottner—of Bavarian extraction, naturally—who considered her her best pupil. Deeply emotional, she waited all her life for the great love that never came or, if it did come, slipped by. During my years at university Aunt Katé shared my anxieties and suffered with me. Every eve of an exam she always came to our house with her customary bar of chocolate “for the night.” When I passed the final exam, pediatrics, I remember that she burst into tears and hugged me, saying, “Be happy.” I made her a copy of my diploma, which we found after her death, hidden behind her religious icons.
Aunt Fofo was completely different. She was brunette, of medium height, and had a good figure as I discovered at the age of 4 spying on her while she was dressing. She was dynamically active and always under stress. She had the rare quality that we mistakenly call common sense. She saw things clearly without the sentimentalism of my father or my mother’s fanatical idea that I should “make something of myself.” When my attempt to return to Greece in 1973 ended in a break with the establishment of the Hippokrateion Hospital, she was the only one who understood that there was no possibility of a compromise. She purchased a one-way ticket to the United States and gave me $300 to tide me over. I shall never forget her encouragement: “Make sure you get yourself so well qualified that next time you return no one will be able to squeeze you out.” I carried out her advice in full with my career at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center.
Pianist Aunt Kate, my father’s sister.
Aunt Fofo, my mother’s sister.
Mr. Ioannis Nikopoulos
It is worth making even a short reference to the person who so influenced my friends and myself in our youth. The son of a family from Patras, he had studied law at the University of Athens. He had acquired huge knowledge of general subjects and mathematics by dipping for pleasure into classical writings. He was tall and erect, a mountain of a man with the face of a Roman senator and beautiful gray hair, who walked like a Prussian officer. His honesty reached the point where if his prospective client was in the wrong, Nikopoulos gave back the brief, refusing to take it on. It is no wonder that he was poor, living to the end of his life on a pension in wretched conditions. He had sacrificed his youth to the vision of the Greater Greece. In 1916 he answered Eleftherios Venizelos’ call and went up to Thessaloniki where he joined the army of the Amyna.
In Asia Minor he served in the famous Archipelago division which, in 1922 along with Plastiras’ 5/42 Regiment, retreated slowly, fighting every inch of the way, to give time to the fugitives and civilian population to reach the safety of the coast. When the retreat began he suffered the most painful experience of his life. They had come to some small tributary of the Sangarios River and with the Turks firing from the eastern bank, Nikopoulos and his men crossed the water and emerged on the opposite side. They had just managed it when one of his soldiers who had been hit in the belly and was still in the water was heard to beg, “Captain, don’t leave me in their hands.” Turkish atrocities such as gouging out the eyes or lopping off the genitals of their prisoners were well known. Without thinking twice, Nikopoulos went back into the water and with a Herculean effort hoisted the soldier up onto his shoulders. Then, as he told it, he understood “the number two virtue of the Greeks: to shoot their officer in the back.” His men tried to kill him so that they could run away. Finally, he managed to get out alive and well and to restore discipline with a pistol and a whip. In answer to my father’s obvious question, “And what is the number one virtue of the Greeks, Ioannis?” he said without hesitation: “Envy, Alekos, envy.”
But bitterness had not clouded his vision. One never-to-be-forgotten Saturday night at our house, when I was a student, the two of us were alone in the dining room waiting for my father to come for his coffee. Nikopoulos suddenly turned to me and said: “If you are, as I think, an honest, upright man, you will be forced to emigrate. You will leave Greece because it is not possible for you to prosper in this country. You will therefore live abroad. I’m not telling you not to love Greece. Love her but avoid the Greeks.” I felt myself shiver. I knew his pronouncement was prophetic, and he was right.
But he himself was tired of living alone, poor and struggling. One afternoon he took the bus to the seaside town of Loutsa, entered the water and, although he knew how to swim, managed to commit suicide by drowning.
He died alone and forgotten, the pure Greek and Asia Minor warrior. He was mourned by very few friends and by us young fellows who had been deeply impressed by his virtues. We accompanied him to his last resting place in a small cemetery on the outskirts of Athens. He had no relatives and I am afraid that his bones have been thrown away somewhere. The only consolation is that “famous men have the whole earth as their memorial.”*
*From Perikles’ funeral oration, “The Peloponesian War,” Thucydides, book II, 44, translated by Rex Warner, Penguin Classics, 1954.
Kephallinias Street – The German Occupation
I got to know the world from the third floor of the apartment block on the corner of Phylis and Kephallinias Street No. 80, which overlooked the other houses and still exists today. Kephallinias Street was a noteworthy, self-sufficient ecosystem. Within a radius of 200 meters, it had everything that was necessary: a grocery store, bakery, the Aris cinema, and even a house of pleasure.
In the summer of 1940, we went on holiday to the seaside suburb of Kalamaki, and I remember the searchlights chasing each other across the sky. They were doing exercises, they said. War was coming! When it broke out between Greeks and Italians, the periodical Neolaia (Youth) published beautiful snapshots of our soldiers on the front line, with their caps worn at a rakish angle and their weapons on their shoulders. What still makes an impression is the light in their eyes, their shining faces, and the dashing spirit that leaps out from the pictures. Where did all that go?
On one of the last carefree prewar days, my father’s brother, Uncle Pavlos, took me to the Royal Gardens to see from above the bears that lived in a walled-off area. A few months later when we went back to the garden, after the Germans had entered the city, there were no bears. My mother told me sadly that they had died because they didn’t have anything to eat. Even with my child’s mind, I could understand the change that had come over my home.
Meat had disappeared long before and eggs very soon became a rarity and so our diet was limited. One day we would eat beans, the next lentils, the day after chickpeas, and on the fourth day peas. And we were lucky because the legumes were thanks to Aunt Fofo, employed by the Bank of Greece. Every month, along with her salary, she was given a large sackful of them.
During the same period our apartment block became the epicenter of the neighborhood. It was the only one that possessed a shelter with metal doors which indeed could be hermetically sealed against the possible use of poison gas. During the night, the British bombed the port of Piraeus and as soon as the siren sounded we would all go down, as would the residents of other houses in the area. Outside we could hear the rhythmic heavy footsteps of the German patrols. We were more afraid of the Germans than of the bombs. Anyone who has seen the movie Schindler’s List will perhaps understand how we felt.
They had already started rounding up Jews; this also forced our neighbors, the Levi, to disappear. This did not stop the Germans from coming with a truck and in their absence turning the whole house upside down. It was not unusual to see German trucks loaded with furniture, utensils, and paintings driving by our house on their way to their garrison on the corner of Kephallinias and Acharnon Streets.
Months went by, years went by, with deprivation and daily agonizing over the meager food supply. My mother bought on credit from the local grocer and bought eggs from the crippled Armenian shopkeeper, always worried lest my precious health should suffer.
One more savage picture remains from the Occupation. My mother and I were going to a little garden there, something like a children’s playground with a sandpit where, if it was wet, we made the sand into “meatballs.” At that time a cart pulled by a huge Hungarian horse driven by an Italian soldier came up the hill. For some unknown reason the animal had come to a stubborn halt and refused to move in spite of the Italian’s urgings and pulling on the reins. In a little while a crowd of kids had gathered and started jeering at the Italian. Suddenly a motorcycle with sidecar drew up and its German driver dismounted. Without saying a word, he started to kick the horse mercilessly in the belly with his black, nail-studded Wehrmacht boots. We froze while the frenzied brute continued to kick the unfortunate animal. In the end pain forced it to walk and so ended the ghastly episode, leaving me with a prejudice against the inherent heartlessness of the German race.
Finally came the Liberation, on October 12, 1944. It was an unforgettable day! The news spread with lightning speed, like an electric current: “The Germans have gone, the Germans have gone!” The shouts, the laughter, the euphoria were indescribable. We went out onto the balcony and the scene was unbelievable. As far as the eye could see along Kephallinias Street as far as Patision, there were Greek flags, forbidden during the Occupation. On one or two balconies there were British Union Jacks. Where they had come from, God only knew. If they had been discovered earlier their owners would not have lived to see the Liberation.
The black cloud of German Occupation looming large over Athens (1941). From the book Shadow over Athens by the renowned Greek cartoonist Phokion Demetriades (Maris Publisher, 1970).
Famine. The dead are secretly buried so that their relatives would continue to receive their food rations. From the book Shadow over Athens by the renowned Greek cartoonist Phokion Demetriades (Maris Publisher, 1970).
Horror. Mass executions as reprisals. From the book Shadow over Athens by the renowned Greek cartoonist Phokion Demetriades (Maris Publisher, 1970).
The “ noble” looting of Jewish homes. From the book Shadow over Athens
by the renowned Greek cartoonist Phokion Demetriades (Maris Publisher, 1970).
The elusive, short-lived euphoria of the Liberation (October 12, 1944), War Museum of Athens. From a special anniversary issue in the daily Kathimerini, December 2014.
December 1944
From time to time, we have heard that the December “Uprising” was sparked by the murder of innocent EAM protesters by police and security battalions holed up in the Parliament building. I do not doubt the excuse, but the climate already existed. It smelled of gunpowder. It was obvious even to us children. And so, towards noon of that unforgettable December 3, 1944, we saw a platoon of ELAS drawn up on the opposite corner below our home. They set a machine gun on a tripod and trained it on our police station, four blocks further down, and started firing. Other armed men stationed themselves on the corners of the streets further up and the battle soon spread. We watched from behind the blinds of the closed windows with bated breath but also with unbridled curiosity.
The battle continued relentlessly until suddenly a metallic thud was heard on the sidewalk. We ran to the closed front window and the sight that met our eyes was horrific. Lying on his back was a young member of ELAS, the blond corporal who was supplying the machine gun from his white shoulder canvas bag, his helmet beside him, in a pool of blood. Never in my life, even in my professional life, have I seen so much blood. It had flooded the sidewalk for yards around his lifeless body. The boy had been hit in the head. Although the battle was still going on, his comrades took him to one side and covered him temporarily with a blanket, while we wept inconsolably behind the blind.
The uproar continued without interruption throughout the night. But before we removed ourselves to the back rooms for greater security, I went through one more upset. Mrs. Milka, the “Carmen” of our neighborhood, went bravely outside even though the shooting was still in progress. On her insistence the young members of ELAS lifted up their dead comrade and reverently placed him on the windowsill of a semibasement opposite our building. She washed his face and covered him gently with the blanket again, bringing a small votive lamp from her house that burned all night beside his blood-caked head, a lesson in humanity from a woman of “loose morals”.
I have never forgotten Mrs. Milka and perhaps it was from her that my sympathy for lively, controversial women began. Years later, as a medical student, I was in the morgue when she was brought in to discover her cause of death, perhaps from a drug overdose. If I hadn’t seen her name, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Life had been unkind to her and all her old beauty had vanished. I remember her uncared-for fingers, yellowed from smoking too many cigarettes. Something broke within me that day, closing the chapter “Kephallinias Street.”
The news of the withdrawal of ELAS at the beginning of January 1945 caused a sigh of relief throughout the whole neighborhood. There was no longer any enthusiasm, and the self-deception had evaporated. The savagery of the weeks we had lived through would never be forgotten. The same day I went to my mother, holding the paper with the hammer and sickle that had hung above my bed, and I tore it up in front of her. I had understood that the “Uprising” was a myth. In spite of reconsidering the events, especially after 1974, I never changed my mind. It had been quite right to take down those symbols.
Despair and destruction. Surveying the rubble of their home and helplessly watching their house burn. From a special anniversary issue in the daily Kathimerini, December 2014.
Futility. Blowing up buildings in vain, as the British tanks always got through.
From a special anniversary issue in the daily Kathimerini, December 2014.
Death. Rows of those arrested and executed. From a special anniversary
issue in the daily Kathimerini, December 2014.
Helikon
The school was run by Mrs. Nikomache Stavropoulidou, a teacher from Smyrna who with her husband had come to Greece as refugees and remade the school they had had in their lost homeland.
The school’s patriotism was expressed in the anthem we sang on days of celebration:
O Helikon … pure Greek shoot,
harvest laurels …
Mr. Stavropoulides had died and so the headmistress was Mrs. Nikomache, helped by her nephew, also a teacher, and her two nieces. Even now I consider her one of the most impressive women I have ever met. She was very short, her white hair pulled back into a bun, with a severe expression and a long, black dress. She looked like Queen Victoria, although not as rounded.
Our classes were taken over by Mr. Voritsis, tall and lanky and a great believer in striking the palms with the ruler, and Miss Marika, plump with an ample bosom, very sentimental and affectionate towards her pupils. To these two teachers I owe my basic education because each was a jewel. This was when I acquired the correct basis of the Greek language and when my Greek consciousness was formed, thanks to Miss Marika with the fiery patriotism of a persecuted Greek. She was from Varna in Bulgaria where, she explained to us, they hadn’t even dared to speak Greek.
The way she brought history alive for us was unforgettable. With what passion she presented the struggle of our race and with what anguish she gave the lesson about the Fall of Constantinople. That day, dressed in her best as if she were going to church, she recounted the final hours of the capital city: how Konstantinos Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, had taken holy communion in Aghia Sophia Church, how he was killed at the Romanos Gate, how “in the course of time it will be ours again.” At the end she wept, kindling in us too our race’s “eternal hatred” for the conqueror. Then we all stood together to sing the national anthem. Indelible memories. It is not strange that 70-something years later I gloat over the periodic difficulties and disasters in Turkey. If only Miss Marika knew what she had done.
The Peiramatiko School
As it still is today, the school was at the corner of Skoufa and Lykavettou Streets, in a unique building with spacious rooms and large windows. It was founded in 1930 thanks to the superhuman efforts of Nikolaos Exarchopoulos, professor of education. It was completely different from other schools. Yes, it was a school but it was also an annex of the university for the students to practice in. The school employed new teaching methods that were unknown in the rest of the country (its name, Peiramatiko, means experimental.)
Among other things, there was no class distinction since the pupils who had passed the difficult entrance examination belonged to all levels of society. It was a successful experiment in education based on achievements of former pupils, who went on to become servants of the state, filling the ranks in all walks of life.
Perhaps the best memory I have of our school was watching a performance of Antigone at the ancient theater of Delphi given by the senior class in May 1953. Everything was perfect that day—the marvelous Delphic landscape, the spring weather, the ancient stone seats on which we sat 2000 years after the play was first performed, listening to the ancient dialogue, in modern Greek, of course. We were privileged without realizing it—we, the elite, pupils of the best school in the country. For this experience alone it was worth going to the Peiramatiko.
My most important friendship at school was with my lifelong friend Markos Gregoropoulos, Makis to us. On the very first day sitting in class, we discovered that we were neighbors. Makis and I have much in common, starting with our heroic self-sacrificing mothers. Mrs. Lopi was certainly the equal of my own mother. She was left a widow when Makis was 2 years old, and I still remember how anxious she was, her deprivations and her fanatic ambition to see him make good.
The years at the Peiramatiko were good and creative, with a Greek education that distinguishes the truly cultured. All my fellow students make superb use of our language, something which gives me great joy when we occasionally meet for a reunion.
The Peiramatiko School
The Temple of Apollo, Delphi, 1953.
(Author’s photo).
Student Days
The results of the Athens Medical School came out on November 8, 1955, day of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. I came 46th, no small achievement among the thousands of candidates competing for the 200 places. The news was brought to me by my cousin Alekos, who added: “You poor bastard, from now on you will be the bearer of a great name.” He meant, of course, that he, too, was weighed down by the imposing shadow of his father, Uncle Gerasimos. At that moment, therefore, I decided that at the university I would simply have the same name as the family of professors but be no relation. I kept to this until the end of my studies and did not regret it. At least I avoided the malicious criticisms and insinuations that I was pulling strings to get through when my uncle’s impartiality was more than excessive. Shortly afterward the results of Thessaloniki came out and there I had come 14th. Naturally I enrolled at Athens University and one day in November I went to the first lecture in Goudi. I received my baptism of fire in the crowded biochemistry amphitheater.
Looking back, I would say that that first year in medicine, November 1955 to November 1956, was one of the worst of my life. It was a time of confusion, uncertainty, and pure misery. From the first moment I had the feeling that I was in an absolute vacuum or, to put it more colloquially, I was in a real mess. The second year involved sessions in the anatomy dissection laboratory, and that was the hideaway of Professor Apostolakis, who ran a concentration camp with refined methods of sadism. Stooped, always wearing dark glasses, dragging one leg, he was the master of cutting sarcasm—the terror of the medical school. When you got through his exams, you were already sure you would graduate. It was not unusual for some students to struggle for 10, 15 years, taking his exam again and again. The mere routine of entering the amphitheater or the laboratory was an insult to the name not only of student but of any human being. We had to enter in single file without dragging our feet, and it was not unusual that from the top of the stairs the supervisor would suddenly impose absolute silence. It makes one wonder how the mass of students, crushed by the prevailing system of education, had been reduced to this sorry state.
There were, however, admirable professors in physiology, pathology, and pharmacology who, because of their high demands, were obstacles to the acquiring of the diploma. The professor of pathology, lanky, a little boring, but dedicated to his work, was also a good teacher. The respected Ioakeimoglou in pharmacology was internationally renowned, as was Alivizatos in hygiene. And finally there was Choremis of pediatrics, philosopher, ascetic, and completely devoted to his work, but probably only for the few who followed him faithfully.
If I compare the 6 years of my studies at the medical school with what I saw and learned afterward, I would say that the essential knowledge was acquired in one or two laboratories and clinics and that with a correct system they could have been condensed into 2 or 3 years. There were professors who should not have had their positions and were simply improving their social image without offering anything. At one time one of these came into the laboratory holding a test tube of yellow liquid and asked the students what it contained. One of them said it was a solution of picric acid, another said potassium dichromate. “No, no. You’ll never guess. It’s the urine of Crown Prince Konstantinos.” It was his way of saying that he had become a court doctor.
The Navy
Both my enrollment in the Peiramatiko School and my enlistment in the Navy were beneficial to my life. I spent the 2½ years of my military service as a medical officer. It was now time for us to take the oath as officers and we proudly wore our new uniforms with the gold braid and the red stripe of the doctors. There were all together about 10 of us waiting to see where we would be sent for service. Naturally, we all wanted the big hospital, the NSBN (Royal Navy Staff Hospital) where admirals and their families were patients, which would mean staying in Athens. There were no strings I could pull, and so my orders were for AKIP, Headquarters of the Cretan and Ionian Seas, located at Souda in Crete. It was a bit of a shock.
This routine was interrupted by an urgent signal for my transfer to the destroyer Niki (Victory), American-built, like all our craft. The serving medical officer had fallen ill and the ship was leaving for maneuvers. I found myself with my orders in my pocket and only half an hour in which to board the vessel. Panting like a hunted animal and carrying two bags, I jumped and fell in a heap on the deck while the ship was casting off. As soon as I caught my breath, I presented myself to the executive officer and then went on deck trying at first to keep on my feet and then to understand how this world moved.
I quickly came to my senses. Suddenly my father’s dream of being an officer in the Navy became a reality for me. I was on a warship with its gray metal plates and the characteristic smell of paint, with the cannons raised, the torpedo-firing tubes and the depth charges ready at the stern. Increasing speed, the destroyer began to pitch and toss in the foaming waters of the Sea of Crete under a cloud covered sky.
On the destroyer Panther, in the Cretan Sea (1963).
Easter on the Panther.
Halfway through my time on the base, I was transferred to the escort destroyer Panther, one of the so-called “beasts.” Every day I was up on the bridge from morning to night, which called forth the acceptance and the liking of the professionals who traditionally looked down on the enlisted men and especially the doctors—not without reason. It was the greatest compliment when they said: “You, doctor, should have been a professional officer, like us.”
The time passed quickly and June 1963 arrived with my expected transfer to a hospital after my sea service. My orders were for the the Naval Hospital of Piraeus. As the day of my transfer approached I felt strange. I had really loved the ship, the complete freedom on the bridge between the sky and the sea for as far as the eye could see, with the fellowship of officers and petty officers and the pungent smell of paint and grease. I should have been glad that I was going to a hospital to practice some serious medicine and make a start on my specialization, and yet it was with sadness that I counted the remaining hours of the only carefree and happy period of my life up to then.
The Naval Hospital of Piraeus
The hospital for the sailors of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean built by Queen Olga, Russian wife of King George I, looks out over the jetty of Zea: a beautiful three-story building with very high ceilings and wards of 10 or 15 patients, as was usual in old hospitals. The director of the hospital was the Senior Commander Ioannis (Yannis) B. Boudouris, who enjoyed the exceptional reputation of being undoubtedly the most talented surgeon in the Hellenic Navy but also the best administrator.
From the first moment he impressed me greatly. He was thin, grayhaired, and slant-eyed, which made his severe profile slightly exotic, like a Slav or a Tatar. He exuded intelligence, seriousness, and above all confidence. He liked to wear his naval uniform, blue wool with gleaming gold buttons, instead of the boring doctor’s white coat. The way he walked—elegantly and loose limbed—gave him the air of a big cat. When he made a visit or an inspection, there was no doubt as to who was in charge of the hospital.
You didn’t need to be a seasoned surgeon to realize that Boudouris was much more than skillful. His movements were the apotheosis of steadiness, precision, and finesse. There was something aristocratic about the way he moved, in the perfect ease with which he tied knots with one hand while holding the surgical instrument in the other. His sangfroid, his complete control over the always bloodless operative field, made a lasting impression. His every move was effective and he never went back to the part he had already dealt with. I could go on for hours about his skill and his delicacy in operating. In spite of my apprenticeship under great surgeons in the following decades, I must say that I never again met with the subtlety of movement and the respect for the tissues shown by Boudouris, except from the demigod Denton Cooley when I visited him in Houston. Countless times I have thought that if Ioannis Boudouris had been born in another country, he would have certainly become a star name in 20th century surgery.
He was a devotee of the American school and he had had the extreme good fortune of being able to do his postgraduate studies under the legendary Richard Cattell* in Boston’s Lahey Clinic. He admired the American ethic of hard work, reliability, and meritocracy and he was fond of saying that anyone who really wanted to get on should go to America. He repeatedly said to me: “Dr. Alivizatos, you must go abroad. England is good, I’m not saying otherwise, but it is America where you will really stand out, where you will shine, because only in America do they respect and recognize hard work.”
Another of his wise judgments concerned the reason for the misfortunes of our country. He said that Greece was being destroyed by the “rotten politics” and the vacillating attitude of the majority, in whatever position they found themselves, to be always with the winner or to be on good terms with everybody, thus perpetuating inertia, mental sluggishness, and idleness.
And so March 1965 arrived and I relived the days on the destroyer, counting down sadly each hour that passed. I knew that once again a happy period of my life was ending. This time I had the satisfaction of knowing that what I had learned was based on correct principles by the side of a talented teacher. Fortunately, I was able, much later, to show him how I felt and to support him, as much as I could, during his final, lonely days. At one point he confided in me: “Only the gods and wild beasts live alone, and I am neither the one nor the other.”
*International authority on the surgery of the pancreas and the gallbladder, he corrected the surgical damage to the common bile duct of Anthony Eden, prime minister of Great Britain.
Senior Commander Ioannis B. Boudouris.
My charismatic first teacher in surgery.
With the Director o N.H.P. Ioannis B. Boudouris.
In surgery with Department Head G. Diafas.
The Polykliniki Hospital of Athens
It was founded in 1903 by the brothers Nikolaos and Andreas Alivizatos, first cousins of my father. It came to cover the needs of the poor at a time when there were only three public hospitals—the Evangelismos, the State, and the Military—and a day’s wages were required to pay for a private consultation. Its constitution provided not only for free medical treatment but also free medications to needy patients, “irrespective of nationality and religion.” Famous doctors and professors of the time offered their services.
The surgical department was organized on the French model, in which the residents lived continuously in the hospital and were available day and night, responsible for a whole range of matters, even for making sure there was a ready supply of sterilized syringes! It was the easiest way to offset the shortage of experienced nursing staff.
The department was run by Professor Konstantinos Alivizatos, who spent half his time working at the Polykliniki and the other half at the Hippokrateion Hospital as the chair of the department of surgery. The cardiac surgical cases, as well as many general surgical ones, were done by Associate Professor Nikos Oeconomos, who had studied in renowned centers in France, as had his brother Doros, director of the neurosurgical unit. The two brothers were pioneers during the 1950s and 1960s, introducing techniques that were unknown in our country.
The internal medicine/endocrinology department, on the other hand, worked to American specifications under its chief John Alivizatos, pioneer of endocrinology in Greece. There was a very strict routine, with fixed visiting hours in the wards and excellent records, unrivaled by any other hospital of that time. It was not unusual for John to make a show of tearing up a patient history that was shoddily written. He had studied at McGill University in Canada and compared with his own team, we were like snipers, something like an irregular army, yet full of enthusiasm and dedication that made up for many organizational shortcomings. There I understood how much more effectively and with how much less effort one works in an organized system with a clear hierarchical structure, leaving one some time for oneself. We in the surgical department worked from morning to night, sometimes staying until midnight dressing wounds.
There were two types of heart operation. The first type, “closed,” after an incision in the left chest with immediate access to the mitral valve, went well. Oeconomos had had a great deal of experience in these when he worked with the great cardiac surgeon Charles Dubost in Paris. Together they had performed the first operation in Europe on an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, as well as the first kidney transplant. The other type, the “open heart” using extracorporeal circulation, was problematic. The first and most important problem was the inadequate diagnosis. We did not have a catheterization lab, and so the diagnosis was made clinically with a stethoscope, a chest x-ray, and an electrocardiogram, completely insufficient for the preoperative evaluation. So it was not unusual for the findings on the operating table to be completely different from what was expected, and then the surgeon had to improvise quickly because the extracorporeal circulation was far from safe. One didn’t need experience to realize that the period of pioneering improvisations had long since finished. However, this required self-knowledge and self-criticism and did not fit with the impression that the Polykliniki was a heart surgery center on par with the rest of Europe. That was when I finally realized that I would have to find another system of training in surgery, based on preparation, methodology, and collective organization. The words of Yannis Boudouris came back to me: “You, Dr. Alivizatos, must go to America.”
Two colleagues and friends at the Polykliniki influenced my later development. Thanasis Constantinidis, 10 years or so older than me, was a tortured individual from Northern Greece who had known tragedy during the Civil War. From him I learned something invaluable: the importance of expressing your opinion, especially under a regime of terror and oppression, because in this way you give heart to others to enable them to resist. It was a valuable lesson confirmed every day by the general submission to the professorial establishment.
The other, also older than me, was Sotiris Mantoudis, who proved to be of such importance in my life. He was the son of a “good family” that was also well-to-do. It was Sotiris who helped me later on get started in England. Sotiris was what we would call a gentleman: he had a fine appearance, perfect manners, and refined taste. Of course, coming from a well-off family, his happy marriage and comfortable financial situation somehow shielded him from the fanatical dedication to work that marked the rest of us.
Looking back over these 2 years, I can single out three great benefits. First, I learned that I should remain beside the patient day and night, something that prevented my doing research work and writing papers but made me a good clinical doctor. Second, I got the bug for cardiac surgery, realizing at the same time that this work demanded organization and was not to be done by one man on his own. Third, I was freed from the nightmare of the doctoral thesis and the humiliation of begging some professor to give me “the subject,” that is, the green light to eventually submit it.
The Polykliniki in an ordinary house, in the 1900’s.
Professor N. Alivizatos with his team.
The internist A. Alivizatos in the Laboratory.
The Polykliniki building, 50 years later.
Professor of Surgery
Konstantinos N. Alivizatos,
an exceptional clinician with the human touch.
Hippokrateion Hospital
At the beginning of March 1967, I transferred to the university department of the Hippokrateion Hospital, under the direction of K. Alivizatos. There you had to be on the alert near the operating room in order to grab the emergency case on arrival. The hours of being on call, however, were interminable and the exhaustion hard to overcome. Some slept on unoccupied beds in the wards, others in the doctors’ dormitories, but these were far from the operating rooms and so they would miss the chance of grabbing a case. I found that the best way was to spread a sheet over the wooden cupboard in the corridor so that when they wheeled the patient through they had to pass right by me and then I would leap up.
There I understood the importance of stamina in order to get the advantage over your tired rival and also the element of “theft” in surgery. Even playing by the rules, most of my colleagues finished their specialty having done very few real operations. All this would be incomprehensible in the American system, where the trainee himself, after operating, dictates and signs the operative report; underneath, the responsible surgeon who supervised him countersigns.
Waiting for the “prey” in the corridor of the operating room.
The great lesson that I learned from Professor Alivizatos was that the success of the teacher is not only due to his talent but also to his ability to assemble a team and allocate work to his subordinates. It was his great gift, and that’s why he left behind him people who followed in his footsteps, where others, known to be excellent surgeons, failed to do so.
The routine of the department was upset in April 1967 by the dictatorship of the colonels. Perhaps having acquired something of my father’s journalistic intuition, I was not particularly surprised. The rule of the dictators had other consequences. Twice I tangled with individuals who supported the regime as I was simply trying to do my work. I decided that it was time to think seriously about the dream of America. I gathered information about the examination I would have to take, the ECFMG (Educational Council for Foreign Medical Graduates), without which you are not allowed to come anywhere near a patient, let alone enter the operating room. I studied for 5 hours in the morning and 8 hours in the afternoon, 7 days a week. I had to reread everything I had learned in English, to refresh things that I had left behind a decade before and improve my knowledge of the English language.
There was, however, yet another uncertainty: I very soon discovered that contracts in America start on July 1, and so there was a problem regarding what I should do until then, even if I passed the exams. At this point appeared Sotiris, like a deus ex machina. He had already gone to England and had been appointed at the famous Hammersmith Hospital, working with Professor Richard Welbourn, who was also director of the school. Sotiris conceived the plan that I could perhaps do six months in the surgical unit of the Hammersmith until I went to America.
I had just finished with the ECFMG, when I went back to the Ministry of Health to arrange some papers. There I met an employee, Mrs. Sideri, bless her, wherever she is. Seeing my anxiety about when I would get my specialization and when I would be able to enroll in the medical association, she had taken a liking to me. Ushering me to the side, she said: “Dr. Alivizatos, do you have a passport? Can you leave in the next 24 hours?” Thunderstruck, I asked why. She explained to me that they had just signed a decision by which all airports and ports had been informed that no doctor under the age of 40 would be allowed to leave the country without having completed his compulsory service in the provinces.
The news was a bolt from the blue because it threatened not only my probable move to America but also my more immediate work at the Hammersmith. And so we all set to work and the first step was taken by my friend Kostis, who at one time had worked in a travel office, and in 48 hours he got me a passport. I rushed to let Sotiris know and also my fellow student and friend at the Polykliniki, Yannis Papadopoulos, who was doing his training in gynecology in London. In a flash my ticket was bought and thus on September 29, 1969, I left on Olympic Airways for Heathrow, London.
Up to the last moment I was scared that I would be stopped at passport control, but my fear turned to wild joy and my eyes filled with tears when the plane taxied down the runway and began to take off. I had an overwhelming desire to shout out: “Bastards, I’ve fooled you,” even though I was literally going into the unknown. I did not know if I had passed the ECFMG, nor what I would meet 2 months later at the Hammersmith if, finally, Welbourn appointed me. But the important thing was that I had escaped from the suffocating destiny offered by my country.