George Seferis and ‘Epiphany, 1937’: the poem that Mikis Theodorakis made a song of resistance to the colonels

Giorgos Seferis is a major figure in Greek literature and in 1963 became the first Greek Nobel laureate for literature

Patrick Comerford

TS Eliot’s poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’, which I was discussing yesterday, was written in 1927 after he joined the Church of England and is one of the five poems in his Ariel Poems published in 1930. The poem is truly a sermon in poem, and is one of the great works of English poetry in the 20th century.

Another Epiphany poem that comes to mind at this time of year is ‘Epiphany, 1937’, is a poem written in 1937 by Giorgos Seferis, a major figure in Greek literature who became the first Greek Nobel laureate for literature in 1963.

Seferis’s poem ‘Epiphany, 1937’ has had a lasting influence on Greek culture and identity. It was part of Epiphany, a collection that inspired the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis 30 years later to write a cantata, with songs that are still popular in Greece. When the poem was set to music as an cantata or choral work by Theodorakis, ‘I Kept Hold of My Life’, it became an expression of resistance to the colonels’ junta from 1967 to 1974.

Seferis’s poem ‘Epiphany, 1937’ and its setting by Theodorakis, continue to be major important and influential cultural works in Greece, and Theodorakis has ensured that the lyrics are widely-known and are regularly performed, in his choral adaptation or setting Κράτησα τη ζωή μου (Kratêsa tê zôê mou, ‘I Kept Hold of My Life’. One of the most moving performances brings together the voice of Maria Farantouri and the jazz instrumentation of Charles Lloyd.



A diplomatic assignment in London for George Seferis influenced the direction of his poetic creativity and marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship between Eliot and Seferis, who translated the works of both Eliot and Ezra Pound into Greek.

George Seferis (1900-1971) was born Giorgos Seferiadis (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης) in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Asia Minor in 1900. He went to school in Smyrna and then to the Gymnasium in Athens. When his family moved to Paris in 1918, he studied law at the University of Paris and became interested in literature. He returned to Athens in 1925 and joined the Foreign Ministry the following year. He had a long and successful diplomatic career, that began with postings in England (1931-1934), where he was introduced to Eliot and Pound, and Albania (1936-1938), where he wrote ‘Epiphany, 1937.’

Seferis moved to Crete with the Free Greek Government during World War II, and then into exile in Egypt, South Africa and Italy. Meanwhile, in 1941 he married Marika Zannou, the mother of two young daughters from her previous marriage to Andreas Londos.

He returned to liberated Athens in 1944. He continued to work in the Foreign Ministry, followed by diplomatic postings in Ankara (1948-1950), London (1951-1953) and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (1953-1956). He was back in London again as the Greek Ambassador from 1957 to 1961, his last post before he retired to Athens.

After the colonels’ coup in 1967, he went into voluntary seclusion and many of his poems were banned, including the musical versions written and arranged by the composer Mikis Theodorakis.

His poem ‘Denial’ (Άρνηση), first published in 1931 in his collection Turning Point (Στροφή, Strophe), became an anthem of resistance to the colonels. He died on 20 September 1971 and ‘Denial’ (Άρνηση) was sung by the crowds lining the streets of Athens at his funeral. He had become a popular hero for his resistance to the regime. His widow Marika cut off her hair and flung it into his grave.

Seferis’s exclusive use of demotic, or common, Greek as his language of choice earned him a privileged place among his generation of Greek poets, while his wide travels provide the backdrop and colour for much of Seferis’s writing.

As well as Strophe (1931), his early poetry includes E Sterna (The Cistern, 1932), and Mythistorema (1935). Later collections include Tetradio Gymnasmaton (Book of Exercises, 1940), Emerologio Katastromatos (Logbook I, 1940), Emerologio Katastromatos B (Logbook II, 1944), Kihle (Thrush, 1947), Emerologio Katastromatos Γ (Logbook III, 1955) and Tria Krypha Poiemata (Three Secret Poems, 1966).

Seferis first became acquainted with Eliot in London in Christmas 1931, when he found a copy of the poem ‘Marina’ in a bookshop on Oxford Street and was struck by its Mediterranean feeling. He published his translation of Eliot’s poetry in 1936 in The Waste Land and Other Poems, prefaced by his first essay in print, ‘Introduction to TS Eliot’, itself a major event in modern Greek literature. Seferis also translated WB Yeats, DH Lawrence, Ezra Pound and WH Auden.

In 1963, Seferis became the first Greek to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He received several honorary doctorates from Cambridge (1960), Oxford (1964), the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1964), and Princeton (1965).

The icon of the Baptism of Christ in the new iconostasis in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford … the Baptism of Christ is the main Epiphany theme in the Orthodox Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I believe his poem ‘Epiphany, 1937’ shows strong influence from Eliot’s Epiphany poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’. In the Orthodox Church, the Baptism of Christ is principal theme in celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany. While Eliot’s poem draws on the Epiphany theme of the Visit of Magi, these two poems share similar imagery, although Seferis is writing in a secular, non-religious way.

The poem starts by addressing a second-person singular, as a shared reminiscence of a locus amoenus, with the sea flowering and the mountains in the moon’s waning (verses1-5).

As the reader proceeds from this introductory section to the main part of the poem, summer’s eutopia gradually yields to an icier landscape, culminating with the terse third-person closure: ‘The snow and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.’

The whole poem can be read as the personal, almost internal, voice of a lone walker, traveller, or hiker who at times encounters other, equally lonely, walking figures during his journey. The speaker is travelling among yellow trees, climbing the mountains, his road having no end, having no relief, at times meeting a woman bent as she walks giving her child the breast, or a man who walks blindly across the snows of silence.

A second-person singular shows up at key positions of this main section, following or preceding the recurring phrase ‘I’ve kept a rein on my life.’ Who is this second-person singular? The identity seems to fluctuate along the flow of the poem, at times appearing as the distant nostalgic memory of the beloved, at other times as an alternative to the speaker’s own persona, now addressing himself in the second person

One eventually realises that even if the whole poem is nothing but the utterance of a first-person speaker in love, this is love experienced in sheer loneliness.

With the date 1937, Seferis offers a landmark in his own life. In that year, he was the Greek consul in Korçë (Κορυτσά, Korytsa) in south-east Albania, near the border with Greece. It had once been one of the wealthiest communities in northern Epirus, Greek had remained the language of business and trade, and it was briefly held by Greece during the opening years of World War I.

During the summer before his posting to Korçë, Seferis had fallen deeply in love with Marika Zannou, the wife of Andreas Londos, a former naval officer, and the mother of two girls. Their affair began during mutual holidays on the island of Aegina, but was cut short when Seferis returned to Athens in September 1936 and found he had been appointed to Albania. He endured the winter of 1936-1937 in isolation, writing several times a week to his beloved Maro, then still unhappily attached to Andreas Londos back in Greece.

Perhaps ‘Epiphany, 1937’ marks an epiphanic landmark in the writer’s his own poetic itinerary. The word epiphany (ἐπιφάνεια, epiphania) has very specific reference points too. Epiphanies are moments of revelation. But linking this noun with the year in the title ‘Epiphany, 1937’ also seems to refer to the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, when the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates the baptism of Jesus by Saint John in the Jordan.

The continuing presence of water in Epiphany evokes this feast, where immersion in water is combined with bestowing identity on the person being baptised. January also provides the setting for the ice-covered landscape of the main part of the poem.

In classical Greek literature, epiphanies are associated with acquiring an authoritative poetic identity. In Hesiod’s Theogony, for example, the anonymous shepherd pasturing his flock on Mount Helicon appears in his own poem with the name Hesiod only at the moment when the Muses’ epiphany to him is being narrated.



In January 1968, 31 years after Seferis completed ‘Epiphany, 1937’, the composer Mikis Theodorakis conceived of it as a choral piece, Επιφάνια-Αβέρωφ (Epiphania-Averof), naming the cantata after the prison in central in Athens. He had been detained there since August 1967, after the colonels right-wing junta had seized power on 21 April 1967, and was denied the Christmas amnesty extended to many other political prisoners in December 1967.

Gail Holst’s book, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (Amsterdam, 1980), shows that for Theodorakis setting the entire ‘Epiphany, 1937’ to music was a tour de force, his own epiphanic moment in the junta’s jail cells.

Theodorakis worked on the poem as a cantata to be performed with the help of his fellow prisoners. Each evening, while other prisoners listened to the radio in a communal hall from 7:30 to 8:30, Theodorakis used the hour to train his choir of 10 prisoners.

The poem’s first-person-singular refrain Κράτησα τη ζωή μου (Kratêsa tê zôê mou) is translated into English by Keeley and Sherrard as ‘I’ve kept a rein on my life’. It could also be translated as ‘I’ve kept a hold on my life’. In this refrain, Theodorakis heard a multiplicity of voices, the universality of their utterance further enhanced by the composer’s preference for a mixed chorus of both men and women.

This recurring phrase throughout the main part of the poem struck Theodorakis’s sensitivity and curiosity. Seferis’ refrain creates a sense of monotony and repetition and at the same time the sense of one carrying something heavy.

Epiphany, 1937, by George Seferis, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard:

The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning
the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels
the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day
and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair
golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran.

I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling
among yellow trees in driving rain
on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves,
no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.

I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line
a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist
on the sand of the past summer perhaps
they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear
an alien voice around the frozen lake.
The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman
bent as she walks giving her child the breast.

I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered
plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing
neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor
hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.

I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence
I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers
like the breathing of the cypress tree that night
like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles
like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.

I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters
under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells
groping with my veins for those veins that escape me
there where the water-lilies end and that man
who walks blindly across the snows of silence.

I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you
heavy drops on green leaves, on your face
in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir
striking a swan dead in its white wings
living trees and your eyes riveted.

This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try
to recall your childhood years, those who left, those
lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,
however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop
under the harsh branches of the plane trees there
where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still
and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,
the road has no relief;
I’ve kept a rein on my life.

The snow
and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.



Κρατησα Τη Ζωη Μου, Γιωργοσ Σεφερησ: Επιφανια

Τ' ανθισμένο πέλαγο και τα βουνά στη χάση του φεγγαριού
η μεγάλη πέτρα κοντά στις αραποσυκιές και τ' ασφοδίλια
το σταμνί πού δεν ήθελε να στερέψει στο τέλος της μέρας
και το κλειστό κρεββάτι κοντά στα κυπαρίσσια και τα μαλλιά σου
χρυσά· τ' άστρα του Κύκνου κι εκείνο τ' άστρο ο Αλδεβαράν.

Κράτησα τη ζωή μου,
κράτησα τη ζωή μου ταξιδεύοντας
ανάμεσα σε κίτρινα δέντρα κατά το πλάγιασμα της βροχής
σε σιωπηλές πλαγιές φορτωμένες με τα φύλλα της οξυάς,
καμμιά φωτιά στην κορυφή τους· βραδυάζει.

Κράτησα τη ζωή μου· στ' αριστερό σου χέρι μια γραμμή
μια χαρακιά στο γόνατό σου, τάχα να υπάρχουν
στην άμμο τού περασμένου καλοκαιριού τάχα
να μένουν εκεί πού φύσηξε ό βοριάς καθώς ακούω
γύρω στην παγωμένη λίμνη την ξένη φωνή.

Τα πρόσωπα πού βλέπω δε ρωτούν, μήτε η γυναίκα
περπατώντας σκυφτή, βυζαίνοντας το παιδί της.

Ανεβαίνω τα βουνά· μελανιασμένες λαγκαδιές· o χιονισμένος
κάμπος, ώς πέρα ο χιονισμένος κάμπος, τίποτε δε ρωτούν,
μήτε o καιρός κλειστός σε βουβά ερμοκκλήσια, μήτε
τα χέρια που απλώνονται για να γυρέψουν, κι οι δρόμοι.

Κράτησα τη ζωή μου ψιθυριστά μέσα στην απέραντη σιωπή,
δεν ξέρω πια να μιλήσω, μήτε να συλλογιστώ· ψίθυροι
σαν την ανάσα του κυπαρισσιού τη νύχτα εκείνη
σαν την ανθρώπινη φωνή της νυχτερινής θάλασσας στα χαλίκια
σαν την ανάμνηση της φωνής σου λέγοντας «ευτυχία».

Κλείνω τα μάτια γυρεύοντας το μυστικό συναπάντημα των νερών
κάτω απ τον πάγο το χαμογέλιο τής θάλασσας τα κλειστά πηγάδια
ψηλαφώντας με τις δικές μου φλέβες τις φλέβες εκείνες πού μου ξεφεύγουν
εκεί πού τελειώνουν τα νερολούλουδα κι αυτός ό άνθρωπος
πού βηματίζει τυφλός πάνω στο χιόνι τής σιωπής.

Κρατησα τη Ζωη Μου -Β

Κράτησα τη ζωή μου, μαζί του, γυρεύοντας το νερό πού σ' αγγίζει
στάλες βαρειές πάνω στα πράσινα φύλλα, στο πρόσωπό σου,
μέσα στον άδειο κήπο, στάλες στην ακίνητη δεξαμενή,
βρίσκοντας έναν κύκνο νεκρό μέσα στα κάτασπρα φτερά του,
δέντρα ζωντανά και τα μάτια σου προσηλωμένα.

Ο δρόμος αυτός δεν τελειώνει, δεν έχει αλλαγή, όσο γυρεύεις
να θυμηθείς τα παιδικά σου χρόνια, εκείνους πού έφυγαν, εκείνους
πού χάθηκαν μέσα στον ύπνο· τους πελαγίσιους τάφους,
όσο ζητάς τα σώματα πού αγάπησες να σκύψουν
κάτω από τα σκληρά κλωνάρια τών πλατάνων εκεί
πού στάθηκε μια αχτίδα τού ήλιου γυμνωμένη
και σκίρτησε ένας σκύλος και φτεροκόπησε ή καρδιά σου,
ο δρόμος δεν έχει αλλαγή·

Κράτησα τη ζωή μου.

Το χιόνι και το νερό παγωμένο στα πατήματα των αλόγων.



• Copyright acknowledgement: George Seferis, ‘Epiphany, 1937’ from Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (trans and edit), George Seferis, Collected Poems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, revised ed, 1995).

Reminders half a century later of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974

Two refugee boys from Northern Cyprus huddled in a tent … today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974. It is difficult to grasp that, after 50 years, a member state of the European still remains divided and part occupied, and that Nicosia, a European capital city, remains divided.

The memory of the invasion of Cyprus is still sharp in my mind. A few months later, I joined the staff of The Irish Times, and Cyprus later became one of the places I wrote about on a regular basis when I was a journalist on the Foreign Desk.

I first visited Cyprus earlier in 1987, 13 years after the invasion, and the memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw then and continued to hurt deeply. I stayed in Limassol at the end of the summer season that year, but travelled throughout the island, visiting Paphos, Larnaca. Ayia Napa, the RAF base at Akrotiri, Mount Olympos, the Troodos Mountains above Nicosia, and the grave of Archbishop Makarios in a tomb he had designed himself on Throni Hill, 3 km from Kykko Monastery.

Archbishop Makarios was the spiritual and political head of his people, and in the late 1950s he was a firm supporter of both enosis or full union with Greece and the armed guerrillas in EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston, the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) led by George Grivas.

After Cypriot independence, Archbishop Makarios became President of Cyprus in 1960. He believed Cyprus was too close to Turkey and that enosis was a dangerous demand. Turkey was much closer than Greece, with the Turkish coast a mere 40 miles away. But relations between both Athens and Ankara deteriorated, and EOKA B was formed to continue fighting for enosis, with daily kidnappings and murders.

The Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority remained polarised, and the colonels who had seized power in Athens in 1967 were determined to force enosis on Cyprus.

The presidential palace was attacked by Soviet-made tanks on 16 July 1974 and set on fire. The coup plotters claimed the president had been killed, but he survived the fourth attempt to murder him by escaping by the back door of the palace with his bodyguards.

He was spirited away to safety in Paphos, where he was born. From there, a British helicopter took him to the RAF base at Akrotiri and he was then flown to London and New York, where he addressed the UN Security Council on 19 July.

Meanwhile, the new Turkish prime minister Bülent Ecevit – a translator of TS Eliot into Turkish – warned the regime in Athens that unless the junta immediately climbed down and Cyprus reverted to the previous state of affairs, including restoration of Archbishop Makarios, Turkish military would intervene.

The colonels installed Nikos Sampson, a former EOKA hitman, as an acting, puppet president. Sampson had once been a reporter for the Cyprus Times but was also a target spotter for EOKA, and had spent time in Wandsworth Prison.

Cyprus had a ¬sizeable Turkish Cypriot minority, and the Turkish Cypriot leader was Rauf Denktash, a London-trained lawyer. Turkey began Operation Attila shortly after daybreak on 20 July 1974, with an air and sea assault, and Turkish ¬paratroopers were dropped to reinforce the Turkish Cypriot militia in the northern sector of Nicosia.

The fighting dragged on for almost a month, and reliable sources estimate between 4,500 and 6,000 Greek Cypriots were killed, wounded or missing, believed dead, and between 1,500 to 3,800 dead Turkish Cypriots. The refugee figures estimated 200,000 Greek Cypriots moved south and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots moved north.

There were countless broken ceasefires and failed rounds of peace talks in Geneva. In the last hours of the fighting, a Turkish tank attack captured Famagusta, the only deep-water port in Cyprus. The Ledra Palace on the Green Line in Nicosia became part of the buffer zone UN troops Canadians tried to establish between combatants.

Sampson resigned on 23 July and the presidency passed to Glafkos Klerides. Archbishop Makarios remained in London for five months. Meanwhile, the military policies and oppressive actions of the regime eventually brought down the colonels’ junta in Athens, and democracy was restored.

Archbishop Makarios secured international recognition for his administration as the legitimate government of the whole island, he returned to Cyprus and was restored as President on 7 December 1974. He was still in office when he died on 3 August 1977 aged 64.

Turkey occupied over one-third of the island, although the Turkish Cypriot community is less than one-fifth of the population, and a puppet state was set when the Turkish-occupied sector declared itself the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus in 1975. The name was changed to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983.



When I had visited Cyprus in 1987, the memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw. I visited both Greece and Turkey constantly in the years that followed, and continued to follow Cypriot politics closely.

After the Turkish invasion of the rock islet of Imia in the Aegean in 1996, I spent some days with the Greek navy in the sea around Rhodes, Kos, Kalimnos and other, smaller islands, and was taken to see Imia for myself despite Turkish threats to both Greek and international journalists, and was interviewed for a Greek television news channel. During those tense weeks and month, Greeks were reminded of the invasion of Cyprus and were in their fears that Turkish aggression is an ever-present threat.

That year, I also took part in a high-level conference organised by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Hellenic Centre in London on the Cypriot ambitions for EU membership, and analysed these hopes in a feature in The Irish Times.

On visits to Greek military headquarters in Athens, I noticed how the names of senior figures involved in the colonels’ regime and in plotting the failed coup in Cyprus had been wiped off the honour boards, their spaces left blank as an indication of the ignominy in which they are held.

The memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw then and continued to hurt deeply when I returned to Cyprus in 2000, spending Orthodox Holy Week and the Easter season on a working visit in Nicosia. I climbed the viewing platforms, crossed the Green Line at the Ledra Palace, visited churches, mosques and a Sufi tekke, met politicians, journalists, econmists, bankers, business leaders, and elderly men who had fought in EOKA, and spoke to UN peacekeepers. I also interviewed Clive Handford, the Anglican Bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf. In a personal touch, they prayed for me in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral in Nicosia, as I prepared for my ordination a few weeks later.

I wrote features in The Irish Times on Cypriot politics and economics, and an ‘Irishman’s Diary’ on the Irish links with Cyprus, including Sir Garnet Wolseley from Dublin who was the first British High Commissioner of Cyprus, and the Anglican chaplain in Ayia Napa, the Revd Robin Brookes, a former Rector of Drumcondra. I wrote features too on Church life in Cyprus for the Church of Ireland Gazette and diocesan magazines.

The following year, I reported on the election in Cyprus in 2001 for The Irish Times, and I interviewed Dr George Vassiliou, a former President of Cyprus (1988-1993) who was the Chief Negotiator for Cyprus during the talks on accession to the EU from 1998 to 2003.

During that Easter working visit to Cyprus in 2000, I bought a limited edition prints that were hanging on the walls and on the stairs of my home in Knocklyon, Dublin, for many year.

One is a bright, colourful picture of a bride preparing for her wedding. The other is a print showing two small boys, probably brothers, the older boy protecting his younger brother, who may have been blinded. They are Greek Cypriot refugees from Northern Cyprus, huddled in a tent after fleeing the Turkish invasion in 1974.

At the time I bought this print in Nicosia, I was hurt and broken as it reminded me of my own two sons back in Dublin, and I fretted and prayed about their future.

After framing the print, I came across a copy of the original photograph of the two boys who inspired this print or painting. It is still heart-breaking. I wonder whatever happened to these boys, who must now be in their 60s, and I still pray for them.

But the plight of the refugees in the Mediterranean still lives with us, and that image continue to remind me to speak up today for the refugees and to condemn our poor response to their plight and needs.

A bride prepares for her wedding in Cyprus … a limited edition print bought in Nicosia in 2000 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greeks have a word for it (21) Holocaust

‘The Ballad of Mauthausen’ … the Holocaust cantata by Mikis Theodorakis, who was buried in Chania today

Patrick Comerford

I am in Rethymnon in Crete, and for the past week I have been writing on my blog about words in the English language that are borrowed from Greek.

On this Friday evening (10 September 2021), Shabbat Shuvah, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, my choice of word is Holocaust.

The word Holocaust comes from the Ancient Greek ὁλόκαυστος (holokaustos), which, in turn, is derived from ὅλος (‘whole’) and καυστός (‘burnt’), used for one of the major forms of sacrifice also known as a burnt offering.

The word Holocaust was later used in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible, to refer to the olah (עלה‎), the communal and individual sacrificial burnt offerings in the Temple in Jerusalem. In time, its Latin form, holocaustum, was first used with specific reference to a massacre of Jewish people by the chroniclers Roger of Howden and Richard of Devizes in England in the 1190s.

But the Holocaust of the 20th century was not a sacrifice by the Nazis to God, and the 6 million Jews burned to death and murdered in the death camps were not burnt offerings. The former Regius Professor of History a Cambridge, Sir Richard J Evans, wrote in 1989 that the term Holocaust is unsuitable and should not be used.The Biblical word Shoah (שואה), meaning ‘calamity’ in Hebrew, has become the standard Hebrew term for the 20th-century Holocaust since the early 1940s.

Iakovos Kambanellis, author of ‘Mauthausen’ … is regarded by many as the greatest Greek playwright of the 20th century

All this week, the news in Greece has been dominated by the funeral of the composer Mikis Theodorakis (Μίκης Θεοδωράκης), who was buried today in his family’s home village near Chania. Television channels have been providing minute-by-minuted live coverage of the funeral and showing movies with music he composed, and restaurants here in Rethymnon have been playing his music and compositions constantly.

Theodorakis was the composer of the great Greek cantata of the Holocaust, The Ballad of Mauthausen. The poem was written by the Greek playwright and poet Iakovos Kambanellis and was set to music by Theodorakis in 1965, 20 years after the Holocaust.

The Ballad of Mauthausen (Η Μπαλάντα του Μαουτχάουζεν) is based on the experiences of Iakovos Kambanellis (1922-2011), who wrote four poems that Theodorakis set to music.

Kambanellis was a poet, playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, and novelist, best known as a screenwriter for films, including Stella (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis. It was first written the script as a play, Stella With the Red Gloves, based on Carmen, but was never produced on the Greek stage because of its sexual frankness. The film, shot in the streets of Athens, follows a singer (Melina Mercouri) who refuses to marry her lover and begins a passionate affair with a football player. The film made a star of Melina Mercouri and boosted Greek cinema’s international reputation.

Perhaps La Stella, the hotel where I am staying in Platanias, on the eastern fringes of Rethymnon, is named after Stella.

Kambanellis was born on 2 December 1922 in Hora on the island of Naxos. He had to leave school at an early age and to find work after the family moved to Athens. But he continued his studies at an evening technical school. He was arrested in 1942 after attempting to flee Nazi-occupied Greece, and was sent to Mauthausen in Austria, where he spent the rest of World War II.

The ‘Stairs of Death’ in Mauthausen

Unlike Auschwitz, Mauthausen was not an extermination camp, but countless people were murdered and died there in horrific circumstances. There the Nazis forced their victims to work in a stone quarry, hauling large pieces of rock and stone up the ‘Stairs of Death’ along steep and uneven ramps. The Jewish prisoners there included Simon Wiesenthal, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses, Romanies and Spanish republicans. Between 240,000 and 320,000 people, including Jews, intellectuals, and people classified as ‘political undesirables,’ were murdered in Mauthausen.

Kambanellis owed his survival to the protection of a Philhellenic German prison guard who assigned him to the architectural drafting office, where additions to the camp were designed.

Mauthausen was the last of the concentration camps to be liberated in May 1945. Kambanellis was not a Jew, and he was free to return with the other Greek prisoners to Greece. But knowing there were Greek Jews who dreamed of reaching Palestine, he elected to stay on in the camp until the last Greek Jew left.

Interviewed later in life, he said: ‘I don’t want to make myself into a hero. What could I do? I saw the eyes of the sick, of the weak, of the abandoned; could I have said okay, fine, I’m leaving now? I was their friend.’ He admitted he was deeply envious of them ‘because we all went back to an old world and we were scared of it. We couldn’t, after those three years, go back to the world of the past, of before the war. And they went to a new, virgin, country and started a new world in Palestine.’

On his return to Greece, Kambanellis began writing a newspaper column in Athens before turning to the theatre and film.

A recurring feature of his work is the use of multiple, often unexpected voices. He attributed this to the years he spent in Mauthausen, listening to the voices of nameless sufferers. His success as a writer seemed miraculous to him and perhaps contributed to his unique blend of realism and mysticism.

His most successful play, Our Grand Circus, was staged in 1973 at the height of the colonels’ dictatorship. Weaving history, myth, and the traditional shadow puppet theatre with folk motifs, the play ridicules the heroic view of Greek history favoured by the colonels, rewriting Greek history from a left-wing perspective.

By calling the performances a circus and transforming his bleak view of the regime and of Greek history into a series of amusing vignettes, he escaped the strict censorship of the time. Our Grand Circus broke all box-office records and made Kambanellis a popular symbol of resistance.

He wrote the scripts for about a dozen films and directed two of them. He died in Athens 10 years ago, on 29 March 2011. He is regarded by many as the greatest Greek playwright of the 20th century.

Mauthausen, his only novel, is a memoir recalling his experiences in the concentration camp. It was first published in Athens in 1965 and has been translated into English and German. At the same time, he wrote the Mauthausen Cantata with a setting by his close friend Theodorakis, when his publisher suggested that they publish their works together.

The book and the music were born in an incendiary political and cultural milieu in Greece. Two days after its first performance, all music by Theodorakis was banned from Greek state radio. Within two years, the military had seized power and the colonels silenced Theodorakis and many other voices for seven long years.

Kambanellis was inspired by a photograph of an unknown girl which he found in the camp and which he kept with him.

The memoir begins in the camp and the neighbouring villages in the weeks immediately after their liberation. The horrors the inmates have seen and have suffered are recalled by the author and the woman he falls in love with, a Lithuanian Jew, in merciless detail as the lovers exorcise their demons by revisiting the sites of the atrocities they witnessed. When the inmates are gradually repatriated, many of the Jews wait to find a way to get to Palestine.



The best-known song of all, performed by Maria Farantouri, is the first song, Άσμα Ασμάτων (Asma Asmaton, ‘Song of Songs’), which opens with the words:

Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου
με το καθημερνό της φόρεμα
κι ένα χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.

‘My love, how beautiful she is in her everyday dress.’

This first song recalls the poignant questioning of a man who describes how beautiful his beloved is and asks the other inmates if they have seen her. They tell him they have seen her on a long march, standing on a large square with a number on her arm and a yellow star on her heart. Maria Farantouri hauntingly sings the repeated line: ‘No-one knows how beautiful my beloved was.’

This song maintains the poetic structure of the Biblical Song of Songs, until the chilling line, coming as if in response to ‘have you seen him whom my soul loves,’ echoes with the question: ‘Young girls of Mauthausen, Young girls of Belsen, Have you seen my love?’ and the answer ‘We saw her in the frozen square, A number in her white hand And a yellow star on her heart.’



The second song, O Αντώνης (O Antonis, ‘Adonis’) is also known from the score of the film Z. This song tells the story of a Jew who collapses on the ‘Stairs of Death’ at the base of the quarry and is shot by the guard who then orders the Greek prisoner Antonis to lift a double burden or he too will be shot.

Antonis lifts this second rock and defiantly walks on with it. In this song we also hear the stairs being depicted in the introduction to every couplet.



The third song, Ο Δραπέτης (O Drapetis, The Fugitive), is the story of a prisoner who escapes the camp but cannot find refuge in the hostile surroundings. He is captured again and is shot.

The introduction to this song depicts the landscape of Austria with a Mozart-like melody.



In the last song, Όταν τελειώσει Ο Πόλεμος (Otan Teliossi O Polemos, When the War Ends), the poet addresses one of the girls he sees standing by the fence of the female camp and asks whether they can come together when the war is finally over, kiss at the gate, make love in the quarry and in the gas chamber until the shadow of death is driven away.

The song ends with an epilogue, returning to the first song and ending with the plaintive words that no-one knows how beautiful my beloved was.

The instrumentation includes bouzoukis, spinet, electric guitar, baglamas, flute, bass and percussion, all helping to create a desolate yet beautiful atmosphere.

Greek popular music in the 1960s became known all over the world thanks to the scores by two composers in particular, Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, for two popular movies, Never on Sunday (Ποτέ την Κυριακή) and Zorba the Greek. Both worked in the laika tradition of Greek popular music influenced by European melodic form. Each had his own muse or angel in a female singer who interpreted his music – for Hadjidakis she was Nana Mouskouri, for Theodorakis she was Maria Farandouri.

The recording of The Ballad of Mauthausen marked the beginning of one of the most fruitful collaborations in Greek music. Theodorakis discovered the singer Maria Farandouri when she was a 16-year-old young singer. He is said to have told her at the time, ‘You will be my high priestess.’ Her unique dramatic voice and style complements his music, and it is so productive a partnership that it has lasted for half a century.

Listening to The Ballad of Mauthausen, it is difficult to grasp that this is the voice of a teenager who has just left school, for she sings with a raw force and energy that reaches into the heart and soul with intensity.

Farandouri and Theodorakis had a life-long musical collaboration, intensified by their shared political activism. This album is both a classic and the high point of that collaboration.

Farandouri’s voice is a marvel of depth and beauty, and the songs are among the best by Theodorakis. The power and majesty of his music combined and the soaring beauty of her voice make The Ballad of Mauthausen a profound testament to the power of human resistance to tyranny and oppression.



The most accessible recording by Maria Farantouri (Μαρία Φαραντούρη) is complemented by a cycle of six songs for Farantouri, named ‘Farantouri’s Cycle’:

5, Κουράστηκα να σε κρατώ (Kourastika na se Krato, ‘I Am Tired of Holding Your Hand’).

6, Ο ίσκιος έπεσε βαρύς (O Iskios Epesse Varis, ‘The Shadow is so heavy’).

7, Πήρα τους δρόμους τ' ουρανού (Tous Thromous T’Ouranou, ‘I Took to the Streets of Heaven’).

8, Στου κόσμου την ανηφοριά (Stou Kosmou Tin Aniforya, ‘The Uphill Road’).

9, Το Εκκρεμές (To Ekremes, ‘The Pendulum’).

10, Τ' όνειρο καπνός (Tóniro Kapnos, ‘Dreams Go up in Smoke’).

The Ballad of Mauthausen is a difficult poem to read and a difficult cantata to listen to, and yet it is compelling.

It is difficult to realise how a poet could be inspired to write about love in the all-encompassing atmosphere of evil and death in a concentration camp.

Yet this is the dream of love, and love is the way a great soul not only survives such terror, but finds meaning and triumphs over it.

A sketch by Simon Wiesenthal in Mauthausen for ‘Café As’ … part of an exhibition in the Jewish Museum, Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Άσμα Ασμάτων

Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου
με το καθημερνό της φόρεμα
κι ένα χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.

Κοπέλες του Άουσβιτς,
του Νταχάου κοπέλες,
μην είδατε την αγάπη μου;

Την είδαμε σε μακρινό ταξίδι,
δεν είχε πια το φόρεμά της
ούτε χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.

Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου,
η χαϊδεμένη από τη μάνα της
και τ’ αδελφού της τα φιλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.

Κοπέλες του Μαουτχάουζεν,
κοπέλες του Μπέλσεν,
μην είδατε την αγάπη μου;

Την είδαμε στην παγερή πλατεία
μ’ ένα αριθμό στο άσπρο της το χέρι,
με κίτρινο άστρο στην καρδιά.

Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου,
η χαϊδεμένη από τη μάνα της
και τ’ αδελφού της τα φιλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.

Ο Αντώνης

Εκεί στη σκάλα την πλατιά
στη σκάλα των δακρύων
στο Βίνερ Γκράμπεν το βαθύ
το λατομείο των θρήνων

Εβραίοι κι αντάρτες περπατούν
Εβραίοι κι αντάρτες πέφτουν,
βράχο στη ράχη κουβαλούν
βράχο σταυρό θανάτου.

Εκεί ο Αντώνης τη φωνή
φωνή, φωνή ακούει
ω καμαράντ, ω καμαράντ
βόηθα ν’ ανέβω τη σκάλα.

Μα κει στη σκάλα την πλατιά
και των δακρύων τη σκάλα
τέτοια βοήθεια είναι βρισιά
τέτοια σπλαχνιά είν’ κατάρα.

Ο Εβραίος πέφτει στο σκαλί
και κοκκινίζει η σκάλα
κι εσύ λεβέντη μου έλα εδω
βράχο διπλό κουβάλα.

Παίρνω διπλό, παίρνω τριπλό
μένα με λένε Αντώνη
κι αν είσαι άντρας, έλα εδώ
στο μαρμαρένιο αλώνι.

Ο Δραπέτης

Ο Γιάννος Μπερ απ’ το βοριά
το σύρμα δεν αντέχει.
Κάνει καρδιά, κάνει φτερά,
μες στα χωριά του κάμπου τρέχει.

«Δώσε, κυρά, λίγο ψωμί
και ρούχα για ν’ αλλάξω.
Δρόμο να κάνω έχω μακρύ,
πάν’ από λίμνες να πετάξω.»

Όπου διαβεί κι όπου σταθεί
φόβος και τρόμος πέφτει.
Και μια φωνή, φριχτή φωνή
«κρυφτείτε απ’ τον δραπέτη.»

«Φονιάς δεν είμαι, χριστιανοί,
θεριό για να σας φάω.
Έφυγα από τη φυλακή
στο σπίτι μου να πάω.»

Α, τι θανάσιμη ερημιά
στου Μπέρτολτ Μπρεχτ τη χώρα.
Δίνουν το Γιάννο στους Ες Ες,
για σκότωμα τον πάνε τώρα.

Όταν τελειώσει Ο Πόλεμος

Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.

Χαρά του κόσμου, έλα στην πύλη
να φιληθούμε μες στο δρόμο
ν’ αγκαλιαστούμε στην πλατεία.

Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.

Στο λατομείο ν’ αγαπηθούμε
στις κάμαρες των αερίων
στη σκάλα, στα πολυβολεία.

Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.

Έρωτα μες στο μεσημέρι
σ’ όλα τα μέρη του θανάτου
ώσπου ν’ αφανιστεί η σκιά του.

Κορίτσι με τα φοβισμένα μάτια
κορίτσι με τα παγωμένα χέρια,
άμα τελειώσει ο πόλεμος
μη με ξεχάσεις.

The Song of Songs

How beautiful she is, my love
in her everyday dress
and the little comb on her hair
Nobody ever knew that she is so beautiful

Girls of Auschwitz
Dachau’s girls
have you seen by chance my love?

We saw her leaving on a long voyage
she was no longer wearing her dress
nor a little comb on her hair.

How beautiful she is, my love
the one pampered by her mother
and her brother’s kisses
Nobody ever knew that she is so beautiful

Girls of Auschwitz
Dachau’s girls
have you seen by chance my love?

We saw her in the frigid town square
with a number stamped on her white hand
with a yellow star pinned by her heart

How beautiful she is, my love
the one pampered by her mother
and her brother’s kisses
Nobody ever knew that she is so beautiful

Adonis

There on the wide staircase
the staircase of tears
in Wiener Graben’s deep stone-
quarry of cries and lamentation

Jews and partisans stroll by
Jews and partisans fall down
a rock they carry on their back
a rock a burden cross of death

There comes Adonis and a voice
a voice, a voice he hears
oh comrade, oh comrade,
help me to climb these stairs

But there on the wide staircase
that staircase of tears
such help is taken as insult
such a compassion is a curse

The Jewish man falls on the step
and red bleeds through the staircase
and you young lad come over here
a double rock you’ll carry

A double rock I’ll take, a triple
my name, they call me Adonis
come and meet me if you are a man
at the marble threshing circle.

The Fugitive

Janos Ber from the North
can’t stand the barbed wire.
He takes heart, takes wing
runs through the villages of the valley.

Ma’am, give me a piece of bread
and clothes to change into –
I have a long way to go
and lakes to fly across.

Wherever he goes or stops
fear and terror strike
and a cry, a terrible cry:
Hide from the fugitive!

Christians, I’m no murderer,
no beast come to eat you.
I left the prison
to go back to my home.

Ah, what deathly loneliness
in this land of Berthold Brecht!
They hand Janos over to the SS
They’re taking him, now, to be killed.

When the War is Over

Girl with the weeping eyes,
Girl with the frozen hands.
Forget me not when the war is over.

Joy of the world. come to the gate
So that we could embrace in the street.
So that we could kiss in the square.

So that we could make love in the quarry.
In the gas chambers,
On the staircase, in the observation post.

Love in the middle of noon
In all the corners of death
’Til its shadow will be no more.

Girl with the weeping eyes,
Girl with the frozen hands.
Forget me not when the war is over.

Simon Wiesenthal was a prisoner in Mauthausen-Gusen … a portrait in the Jewish Museum, Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meanwhile, this Shabbat, between Rosh Hashanah (last Monday) and Yom Kippur (beginning at sunset on Wednesday evening) is known as Shabbat Shuvah, or the Sabbath of return.

Repentance, is a core concept of the High Holy Days, and the services on this Sabbath, Shabbat Shuvah, have an emphasis on the themes of repentance and forgiveness. Sephardic Jews here in Greece read Hosea 14: 2-10 and Micah 7: 18-20, while Ashkenazi Jews read Hosea 14: 2-10 and Joel 2: 15-27. The selection from Hosea focuses on a universal call for repentance and an assurance that those who return to God will benefit from divine healing and restoration. Hosea focuses on divine forgiveness and how great it is in comparison to human forgiveness.

Shanah Tovah – a good and sweet New Year! – to you and to all yours

Shabbat Shalom

Yesterday: Rhapsody

Tomorrow: Hygiene

Drawing up a list of a dozen women who influenced my values

Street art in the former Jewish Quarter in Málaga … who are the women you most admire or who have shaped your values and your outlook on the world? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Some months ago, Boris Johnson struggled to name any women he regarded a influential in his life or who had influenced his values. When he did provide his list, he names included mythical figures, but surprised many by not including Margaret Thatcher.

As I read of Doreen Lawrence’s plight in the Guardian yesterday, I realised how difficult it is for a woman to have her voice heard when she speaks about justice for the male members of her family. How much more difficult is it for women, and black women in particular, to have their voices heard when they speak up for themselves.

As I drew up a list of the women who have been influential in my life, I decided to not list family members, teachers, or work colleagues. But then how would I define work colleagues?

Should I include women among the saints such as Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila or Saint Julian of Norwich?

If I included women in the Gospels, how would I write briefly about the Virgin Mary or adequately about the Samaritan Woman at the Well, the Syro-Phoenician woman in Tyre or Sidon, or the many other women who often remain unnamed in the New Testament?

When I considered women’s ordination, I opted for Regina Jonas who was ordained a rabbi some years before Florence Li Tim Oi was ordained a priest.

And what about women historians, writers, musicians, poets, actors and politicians? The women of Auschwitz and Hiroshima whose names are forgotten in Holocaust and annihilation 75 years ago>

Eventually – in the spirit of my recent ‘virtual tours’ of a dozen places or sites – I decided to shortlist 12 women … although, by the time I read this again, I may well have changed my mind many times over.

Frankyln Rodgers’s portrait of Doreen Lawrence … a commission by Autograph for the exhibition Devotion – A Portrait of Loretta

1, Doreen Lawrence:

Doreen Delceita Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, is a Jamaican-born British campaigner for human rights and the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in south-east London in 1993. She is outspoken as an advocate of police reforms and founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust.

Doreen Lawrence, a member of the ‘Windrush generation,’ was born Doreen Graham in Jamaica in 1952, and came to live in England at the age of nine.

When their son Stephen was murdered in 1993, Doreen and Neville Lawrence claimed the Metropolitan Police investigation was not being conducted in a professional manner due to incompetence and racism. After years of campaigning, and with widespread support, the MacPherson inquiry was established by the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, in 1999. The inquiry concluded that the Metropolitan Police was ‘institutionally racist’ and that this was one of the primary causes of their failure to solve the case.

She was made OBE for ‘services to community relations’ in 2003 and a Life Peer in 2013. She sits on the Labour benches in the House of Lords as a working peer. She has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Cambridge, the Open University and the University of West London. She was the Chancellor of De Montfort University, Leicester, in 2016-2020.

Barbara Harris … the first woman to be ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion

2, Barbara Harris:

Barbara Clementine Harris (1930-2020) was the first woman to be ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion. She was elected suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts in the Episcopal Church in 1988, and was consecrated in 1989.

Harris was long active in civil rights issues, taking part in freedom rides and marches in the 1960s, including the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by the Revd Dr Martin Luther King, and she spent summer holidays registering black voters in Greenville, Mississippi.

Barbara Harris attended the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia for many years. There she was an acolyte at the service in 1974 when the first 11 women, now known as the ‘Philadelphia Eleven,’ were ordained priests in the Episcopal Church on 29 July 1974, while women’s ordination was still being debated in the Episcopal Church.

Later, Barbara Harris was ordained deacon in 1979 and priest in 1980. She was the priest-in-charge of Saint Augustine of Hippo Church in Norristown, Pennsylvania (1980-1984), a prison chaplain, and as counsel to industrial corporations for public policy issues and social concerns. She became executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company in 1984, and publisher of The Witness magazine. She returned to the Church of the Advocate in 1988 as interim rector.

Her election as suffragan bishop of Massachusetts in 1988 was controversial, in part because she was divorced and had not attended seminary. She was also the first woman to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion.

When she was consecrated on 11 February 1989, the three-hour, televised service in Boston was attended by 8,000 people, 60 bishops participated in the laying on of hands, 1,200 dignitaries and clergy were in the opening procession, and four choirs took part.

She was a suffragan bishop for 13 years until she retired in 2003. She was an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Washington, DC, until 2007. She died in Lincoln, Massachusetts, earlier this year, on 13 March 2020, at the age of 89.

Vera Brittain … her ‘Testament of Youth’ has inspired successive generations of pacifists

3, Vera Brittain

Vera Mary Brittain (1893-1970) was an English pacifist, feminist, socialist, writer and nurse. Her best-selling memoir Testament of Youth (1933) recounted her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.

Her literary contemporaries at Somerville College, Oxford, included: Dorothy L Sayers, Hilda Reid, Margaret Kennedy and Sylvia Thompson.

Three years after her Testament of Youth was published, she was invited to address a peace rally in Dorchester in 1936, and shared a platform with Dick Sheppard, George Lansbury, Laurence Housman and Donald Soper. Afterwards, Sheppard invited her to join the Peace Pledge Union. She also joined the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. Her pacifism came to the fore during World War II, when she began the series of Letters to Peacelovers.

From the 1930s on, she was a regular contributor to Peace News. She was a member of the editorial board and in the 1950s and 1960s wrote articles condemning apartheid and colonialism and calling for nuclear disarmament.

She married the political scientist George Catlin (1896-1979) in 1925. Their son was the artist and writer John Brittain-Catlin (1927-1987); their daughter is the former Labour minister now Liberal Democrat peer, Shirley Williams, who was born in 1930 and became one of the ‘Gang of Four’ Labour rebels who founded the SDP in 1981.

Vera Brittain died on 29 March 1970.

The Scroll of Ruth in a synagogue in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

4, Ruth:

Among Biblical figures, Ruth and Esther alone give their names to books in the Bible. Ruth is one of the five women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, along with Tamar, Rahab, the ‘wife of Uriah’ (Bathsheba), and the Virgin Mary.

Ruth (רוּת‎) is unique, for she is not an Israelite but a Moabite. Ruth challenges matrilineal concepts of inherited Jewish identity, yet she is the ancestor of David and of Jesus.

She marries an Israelite, but both her husband and her father-in-law die, and she helps her mother-in-law, Naomi, find protection. The two women travel to Bethlehem together, where Ruth wins the love of Boaz of Judah through her kindness.

Boaz blesses Ruth for her extraordinary kindness both to Naomi of Judah and to the Judaean people: [Boaz] said, ‘May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter; this last instance of your loyalty is better than the first; you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich’ (Ruth 3: 10).

Ruth is a model of loving-kindness (hesed): she acts in ways that promote the well-being of others. In Ruth 1: 8-18, she demonstrates hesed by not going back to Moab but accompanying her mother-in-law to a foreign land. This is described in the Commentary of Rashi (ca 1040-1105 CE) as the first act of kindness: ‘that you did with your mother-in-law.’

She chooses to glean, despite the danger she faces in the field (Ruth 2: 15) and the lower social status of the job. Finally, Ruth agrees with Naomi’s plan to marry Boaz, even though she is free of family obligations, once again showing loyalty and obedience (Ruth 3: 10).

In Jewish tradition, Ruth’s kindness is seen as in rare contradistinction to the peoples of Moab and Amon, who were noted in the Torah for their distinct lack of kindness: ‘Because they [the peoples of Amon and Moab] did not meet you with food and water on your journey out of Egypt, and because they [the people of Moab] hired against you Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you ... You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live’ (see Deuteronomy 23: 4-6).

Leah Tutu with her husband, Archbishop Desmond Tutu

5, Leah Tutu:

Nomalizo Leah Tutu is a South African activist who has her own claims to leadership and is also a strong voice alongside her husband, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Nomalizo Leah Tutu was born Nomalizo Leah Shenxane in 1933 in Krugersdorp. She married Desmond Tutu on 2 July 1955. They have four children – Trevor Thamsanqa, Theresa Thandeka, Naomi Nontombi and Mpho Andrea – who went to school in Waterford in Swaziland, and nine grandchildren.

Leah Tutu is a teacher and a nurse. From 1970 to 1972, she worked at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. She co-founded the South African Domestic Workers’ Association, and was the director of the Domestic Workers’ and Employers’ Project of the South African Institute of Race Relations (1976-1984). She co-founded the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in 1988. She lectures to many churches and women’s groups.

The National Louis University awarded honorary doctorates to Leah and Desmond Tutu in 2000, and in 2009 they were awarded the Mattie JT Stepanek Peacemaker Award by the We Are Family Foundation. They renewed their marriage vows in Orlando, Soweto, in 2015.

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007) … Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988-1990 and 1993-1996

6, Benazir Bhutto:

Benazir Bhutto was the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation.

She was a student at Oxford when I was a regular visitor there in the 1970s. Despite her fast-paced lifestyle, she shared her father’s radical outlook and values, and took a strong stand against the Vietnam War.

In the 1970s, I was friendly with Brenda and Said Yasin, and I still recall how disturbed he was by the arrest of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 and his subsequent judicial murder, as Benazir described it, in 1979. Later that year, I visited Pakistan twice, staying first in Karachi, in Bhutto heartland, and returning later to stay in Islamabad during Ramadan.

Benazir Bhutto took a brave decision to return to Pakistan in October 2007. Her political performance was not always as graceful as she was, and her husband was certainly not beyond reproach. But her return to Pakistan was a necessary step in galvanising the movement for the restoration of democracy.

The Mushareef regime was kept in power by the same people who justified the invasion of Iraq with the excuse of toppling Saddam Hussein – and that led directly to the death of 85,000 civilians. Not surprisingly, the Mushareef regime tried to shift the blame for her death in 2007, whether it was to al-Qaeda at one extreme, or – in a more absurd manner – to Benazir herself, because she was standing up in her car.

But, as her son quoted her, ‘Democracy is the best revenge.’

Sheba Sultan, from the Church of Pakistan, spoke at the USPG conference in High Leigh in 2015 of the varied lives of women in Pakistan, from tribal people with few resources and many restrictions, to the elite women who have lives of luxury but find cultural values also stop them from living life to the full.

She reminded us of Benazir Bhutto, who had said women in Pakistan cannot achieve anything without tackling bigotry and intolerance.

Sam Harper, Archbishop Alan Harper, President McAleese and Dr Martin McAleese at the General Synod in Galway in 2008

7, Mary McAleese:

Mary Patricia McAleese was the President of Ireland in 1997-2011, succeeding Mary Robinson. But she is also an award-winning academic and author with a doctoral degree in canon law.

She graduated in law from Queen’s University Belfast. She has been Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin, director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies at QUB. In 1994, and pro-vice-chancellor of Queen’s University. She worked as a barrister and as a journalist with RTÉ, and is an honorary fellow of Saint Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

As President, Mary McAleese gave priority to justice, social equality, social inclusion, anti-sectarianism and reconciliation. Her theme of ‘Building Bridges’ was expressed in her attempts to reach out to the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. I was present when she received Holy Communion in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, which drew criticism from some members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

She welcomed to Áras an Uachtaráin a group of Christian and Muslim leaders from Egypt I had brought to Ireland in 2006, and in 2008 she was the first Head of State ever to address the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, when she received a rapturous welcome and a standing ovation in Galway.

She praised the Churches for their role in leading the people of the island of Ireland to mutual respect. She spoke of how we have been released from history’s vanities, how the context has changed, and of the Gospel challenge to love one another, to forgive one another and to be charitable to one another.

She praised the role of the Churches in working for peace and building cross-border relationships, working as problem-solvers and reminding us that we are part of a bigger and deeper global family. The things that once paralysed us are now behind us. Now we had to be a light to a world brought down by violence, poverty and disease. ‘Love does triumph,’ she declared.

Ireland is neither Catholic nor Protestant, she reminded us. It is a homeland for all, with a multi-faith heritage in the making.

Professor Mary McAleese was the preacher in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in 2016 at the ordination as priest of two of my students, the Revd Kevin Conroy and the Revd Nigel Pierrpoint.

Mary McAleese remains a practising Roman Catholic, yet is not afraid to be outspoken about her views on gay rights and the ordination of women as priests.

Mary Lawlor … defending human rights for almost half a century

8, Mary Lawlor:

Mary Lawlor took up the mandate of UN Special Rapport on the situation of human rights defender earlier this year, following a decision by the UN Human Rights Council.

For decades, Mary Lawlor has worked in human rights, defending the rights of human rights defenders and founding and/or growing successful, effective NGOs. I first got to know her when she was chair of the Irish Section of Amnesty International in the mid-1980s.

Mary Lawlor has a BA in Psychology and Philosophy and postgraduate degrees in Montessori Teaching and Personnel Management. She was the Director of the Irish Section of Amnesty International in 1988-2000, after being a board member from 1975 and chair in 1983-1987.

She founded Front Line Defenders, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, in 2001 to work for human rights defenders who are at risk, provide them with ‘round-the-clock’ practical support so they can continue their work to build civil and just societies.

As Executive Director in 2001-2016, she had a key role in the development of Front Line Defenders, which was awarded the King Baudouin International Development Prize in 2007 and the UN Human Rights Prize in 2018.

She is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Social Innovation, School of Business, Trinity College Dublin, where she takes a lead on Business and Human Rights. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the School of Business in TCD and a member the Advisory Board of the UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life, School of Philosophy, UCD, and the Norwegian Human Rights Fund.

Her awards and recognitions include the Irish Life WMB Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2008), the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year Special Recognition Award (2011), the French insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur (2014), an honorary degree of Doctor in Laws from TCD (2014), the Franco-German Award for Human Rights and the Rule of Law (2016) an an honorary Doctorate in Law from UCD (2017).

Adi Roiche … has worked for most of her life with children suffering from the Chernobyl disaster

9, Adi Roche:

Adi Patricia Roche is an anti-nuclear activist, campaigner for peace, humanitarian aid and education. She founded and is CEO of Chernobyl Children's Project International, and has worked for most of her life with children suffering in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Adi Roche was born in Clonmel, Co Tipperary in 1955, and first worked with Aer Lingus. We first met in the late 1970s at the sit-ins and protests at the proposed site for a nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point, Co Wexford. She started worked full-time as a volunteer for the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1984. She developed a Peace Education Programme that she brought to over 50 schools. She was the first Irish woman elected to the board of directors of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva in 1990.

Adi founded Chernobyl Children International in 1991 to help children and families in Belarus, Western Russia and Ukraine who continue to suffer because of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. Under her leadership, Chernobyl Children International has delivered over €105 million to the areas most affected and has enabled over 25,500 children to visit Ireland for medical treatment and recuperation.

On the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, she made a landmark address to the UN General Assembly in New York in 2016. In an unprecedented move, the Belarusian UN delegates provided her with their speaking time at the General Assembly.

Maria Farantouri … the voice of Greek conscience

10, Maria Farantouri:

I have built up a modest collection of the work of the Greek singer and political and cultural activist Maria Farantouri over many years, buying her CDs in Crete and Athens. Her influence on Greek political and social activism is immeasurable, perhaps comparable only with the composer Mikis Theodorakis, and they have collaborated closely throughout their careers.

Her voice is a deep contralto with about an octave and a half range, and is immediately recognisable to every Greek, stirring deep emotional reactions. The international press has called her a people’s Callas (The Daily Telegraph), and the Joan Baez of the Mediterranean (Le Monde). The Guardian said her voice was a gift from the gods of Olympus.

She has worked with prominent Greek composers such as Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hatzidakis with the Australian guitarist John Williams, she has recorded in Greek, English, Italian and Spanish, and she has recorded poems and works by international writers from Brendan Behan to Federico García Lorca.

In their collaboration, Maria Farantouri and Mikis Theodorakis have radically transformed modern Greek music and have made Greek people familiar with the poetry of the Nobel Prize-winning poets George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis and many other Greek poets.

The Irish journalist Damian Mac Con Uladh, who lives in Greece, and the Irish diplomat Patrick Sammon have painstakingly researched the story of her recording of Το Γελαστό παιδί Mikis Theodorakis’s interpretation of Brendan Behan’s poem ‘The Laughing Boy,’ with Greek lyrics translated by Vasilis Rotas for a Greek setting of the play The Hostage.

The song featured in Costas Garvas’s movie Z (1969) and became one of the emotional anthems in the resistance to the colonels’ junta in 1967-1974.

Maria Farantouri was born in Athens on 28 November 1947, when Greece was recovering in the aftermath of World War II. Her creative career began in her teens when she was soon recognised for her rich contralto voice and became a soloist. She was 15 in 1963 when Mikis Theodorakis heard her singing his song Grief. He was deeply impressed, met her backstage, and asked: ‘Do you know that you were born to sing my songs?’

‘I know,’ was her immediate response.

Maria became a member of Theodorakis’s ensemble, which included Grigoris Bithikotsis, Dora Yiannakopoulou and Soula Birbili. Soon, she was singing at important political and social events. Theodorakis’s new work The Hostage was performed at every peace demonstration, and with her militant young voice, Maria made his Greek version of Brendan Behan’s song The Laughing Boy known throughout Greece.

Around this time, Theodorakis composed the first work he had written for her voice, The Ballad of Mauthausen, a cantata based on the writings of the Greek playwright Iakovos Kambanellis (1922-2011). This cantata would become identified with her voice throughout the world. The best-known song of all, Άσμα Ασμάτων (Asma Asmaton, ‘Song of Songs’), which opens hauntingly with the words:

Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου
με το καθημερνό της φόρεμα
κι ένα χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.

‘My love, how beautiful she is in her everyday dress.’

Theodorakis wrote Farandouri’s Cycle for her, and she remains the only artist to whom he has dedicated a song cycle, and she toured Greece and abroad as a member of his ensemble.

A military coup brought the colonels’ junta to power in Greece in 1967. The new regime banned Theodorakis’s music; he went underground and was on the run for four months. She was just 20 when she went into exile in Paris. There she started singing in concerts and became a symbol of resistance and hope. She worked throughout Europe, recording protest songs with Theodorakis, who wrote the score for Pablo Neruda’s Canto General.

While Theodorakis was in internal exile in the remote mountain village of Zatouna, he secretly supplied her with tapes of his new songs recorded crudely on a small tape-recorder. These included State of Siege, his setting of a poem by a woman prisoner, broadcast from London’s Roundhouse. In this concert, Maria was supported by Greek artists such as Minos Volanakis, and the cast of the musical Hair.

She met Tilemachos Chytiris, a poet from Corfu and a student of philosophy at Florence, while she was giving a concert for Greek students. Theodorakis too went into exile in Paris in 1970. When his health began to recover, he began his tours of Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East, with Maria playing a leading part in his concerts.

Her packed concerts encouraged and emboldened Greeks in exile, and recordings were smuggled back into Greece. By the early 1970s, she was living in exile in London. In Paris, she made such an impression on François Mitterrand that in The Bee and the Architect he compared her to Greece itself: ‘For me, Greece is Maria Farantouri. This is how I imagined the goddess Hera to be, strong, pure, and vigilant. I have never encountered any other artist able to give such a strong sense of the divine.’

When the Greek junta sent tanks in against protesting students in Athens on 17 November 1973, causing the deaths of at least 24 people over a number of days, Maria Farandouri added stanzas to Το Γελαστό παιδί, deliberately linking the song with that event.

After the dictatorship fell in 1974, Mikis Theodorakis and Maria Farandouri returned to Greece. There they gave moving concerts to audiences who had experienced seven years of fear and repression, and at a concert by Theodorakis in Athens in October to mark the fall of the junta and the restoration of democracy she sang that new version of that song.

As Damian Mac Con Uladh points out, while Brendan Behan's original ‘laughing boy,’ Michael Collins, was killed ‘on an August morning,’ Maria’s extra lines referred to ‘November 17,’ and instead of saying the laughing boy was killed by ‘our own,’ the Polytechnic version refers to the killers as ‘fascists.’

About 125,000 people attended her performance with Petros Pandis of Theodorakis’s Canto General in the Karaiskakis Stadium. Her Songs of Protest from all over the World in Greek became a gold record.
With her longing for peace and friendship between Greece and Turkey, Maria took the daring step of collaborating with the Turkish composer Zülfü Livaneli. They staged concerts in Athens and for Turkish audiences.

Her most important collaboration with the Theodorakis was The Ballad of Mauthausen in the Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.

The Greek Prime Minister and Pasok leader Andreas Papandreou invited Maria to stand as a Pasok candidate in 1989. From the opposition benches, she worked on cultural issues with Melina Mercouri and Stavros Benos. She remained a member of the Greek parliament until 1993, and her husband Tilemachos Chytiris is a Pasok politician too.

Maria returned to singing and recording in 1990. She has continued to work with Theodorakis to this day, and also works with a new generation of young Greek composers. In 2001, she filled the Theatre of Herod Atticus in Athens with a concert of ‘A Century of Greek Song.’

In recent years, she has given a new dimension to the traditional Greek rembetiko and to Byzantine music. In a recent CD Το Μυστικό (The Secret or Mosaic), she has worked with Ross Daly, the Irish composer who lives in Archanes in Crete.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) … ‘a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range’

11, Simone Weil:

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher, Christian mystic and social activist, who was born in Paris into an agnostic Jewish family. She wrote extensively with both insight and breadth about the political movements she was involved in and later about spiritual mysticism. Her biographer Gabriella Fiori says she was ‘a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range.’

Despite her youthful pacifism, she fought in the Spanish Civil War. After clumsily burning herself over a cooking fire, she left Spain to recuperate in Assisi, and there, in the church where Saint Francis of Assisi had prayed, she had an experience of religious ecstasy in 1937, leading her to pray for the first time in her life.

She had another, more powerful revelation a year later, and, from 1938 on, her writings became more mystical and spiritual. She thought of becoming a Roman Catholic, but declined to be baptised until the very end of her life – a decision she explained in her book Waiting for God.

During World War II, she joined the French Resistance. After a lifetime of illness and frailty, she died in August 1943 in Ashford, Kent, at the age of 34. The 1952 book Gravity and Grace consists of passages selected from her notebooks.

Weil does not regard the world as a debased creation, but as a direct expression of God’s love – although she also recognises it as a place of evil, affliction, and sees the brutal mixture of chance and necessity. This juxtaposition leads her to produce an unusual form of Christian theodicy.

Weil also writes on why she believes spirituality is necessary for dealing with social and political problems, and says the soul needs food just as the body needs food.

Regina Jonas (1902-1944) … the first woman ordained a rabbi, she was murdered in Auschwitz

12, Regina Jonas:

In Berlin two years ago, I was stayed around the corner from the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse, which survived the attack on Kristallnacht, and which remains one of the most eye-catching buildings in Berlin today. The congregation in the New Synagogue today is Berlin’s only Masorti synagogue, and Gesa Ederberg became the first female pulpit rabbi in Berlin when she became the rabbi of the New Synagogue in 2007.

Gesa Ederberg is the first woman rabbi to serve in Berlin since the Holocaust and has helped to reinvigorate the German community that once represented the cutting edge of liberal Judaism. But she is not the first woman rabbi in Germany.

Indeed, it was in the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse that I heard the story of Regina Jonas, the first woman rabbi who was ordained in Germany in 1935. She served the Jewish community of Berlin and continued to help guide the Jewish community until her death in Auschwitz in 1944.

Regina Jonas (1902-1944) was born in Berlin and was orphaned at a very young age. She trained as a teacher but later enrolled at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies and took seminary courses for liberal rabbis and educators.

She graduated as an ‘Academic Teacher of Religion’ and completed the thesis that was required for ordination. Her theses asked, ‘Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?’ Her conclusion, based on Biblical, Talmudic, and rabbinical sources, was that she should be ordained.

At first, she was refused ordination because she was a woman. Rabbi Leo Baeck, the spiritual leader of German Jewry who had taught her at the seminary, also refused because the ordination of a woman as a rabbi would have caused serious divisions within the Jewish community in Germany. However, on 27 December 1935, Regina Jonas was ordained by Rabbi Max Dienemann, head of the Liberal Rabbis' Association, in Offenbach am Main.

Regina Jonas found work as a chaplain in Jewish social institutions while she tried to find a pulpit. Despite Nazi persecution, she continued her rabbinical work as well as teaching and holding services. She was arrested by the Gestapo on 5 November 1942, and was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. There she continued her work as a rabbi, and Viktor Frankl, the psychotherapist, invited her to help in building a crisis intervention service to help prevent suicide attempts. She met the trains at the station and helped people cope with shock and disorientation.

For two years, she worked tirelessly in Theresienstadt until she was deported with other prisoners to Auschwitz in mid-October 1944, and she was murdered soon after at the age of 42. The actual date of her murder is not known, but it may have been 12 October 1944, a date observed by many Jewish communities and marked by many Jewish women’s groups.

Regina Jonas was largely forgotten until her work was rediscovered in 1991 by Dr Katharina von Kellenbach, a German-born researcher and lecturer in the department of philosophy and theology at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland.

She travelled to Germany to research a paper on the attitude of the German religious establishment, both Protestant and Jewish, to women seeking ordination in 1930s. In a former East German archive in East Berlin, she found an envelope containing the only two existing photographs of Regina Jonas, along with her rabbinical diploma, teaching certificate, seminary dissertation and other personal documents.

A large portrait of Regina Jonas was part of an exhibition in Berlin in 2013 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933 and the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938.

Regina Jonas … a portrait by Jared Wright of the first woman rabbi who was ordained in Germany