Manolis Paterakis

Manolis Paterakis (Greek: Μανώλης Πατεράκης)[1]:158 was a member of the Cretan resistance during World War II, who lived in the village of Koustogerako in the then-province of Selino. In English-language sources, he is also known as Manoli Paterakis.[2]

Life

The abduction team – Petrakis is second from right.

At the outbreak of World War II, Paterakis was a young gendarme on the island of Crete.[3][4] After the Battle of Crete he evacuated to the Middle East, where he trained with the British Commandos in sabotage.[5] He was returned to Crete, along with Georgios Tyrakis, as the permanent partners of Patrick Leigh Fermor and the three were sent by cell leader W. Stanley Moss as operatives on a mission to capture German general Heinrich Kreipe.[6] They caught the general and drove him to the mountains, continuing to a bay codenamed "X75" near Rodakino, from which Kreipe was embarked on a submarine destined for Cairo.

As the war continued, the Germans murdered Paterakis's father and his two brothers.[7] After the war, he found himself without work. Considerably later on, the Germans, ignorant of the part which he had played in taking Kreipe prisoner, brought him to work and appointed him a guard at the Maleme German military cemetery.

References

  1. ↑ His formal Christian name in Greek was Εμμανουήλ, (translit. Emmanuel, transcr. Immanouil, "Immanuel". Μανώλης is a less formal variety of this name — Kiriakopoulos, GC, The Nazi Occupation of Crete, 1941–1945 (Greenwood Publishing Group:1995) ISBN 0-275-95277-0
  2. ↑ Manoli is the accusative form of his name, and as the accusative functions as an informal vocative in Modern Greek, this is how his British colleagues would have addressed him and remembered his name.
  3. ↑ http://www.flashmes.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=341:h-a-&catid=84:-267
  4. ↑ http://politismosrethymno.blogspot.com/2011/09/blog-post_2577.html
  5. ↑ http://www.onalert.gr/default.php?pname=Article&catid=2&art_id=5244
  6. ↑ Antony Beevor, Κρήτη: η Μάχη και η Αντίσταση, Εκδόσεις Γκοβότση, 2004
  7. ↑ http://www.rethnea.gr/news/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=24427&cntnt01origid=57&cntnt01returnid=39
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