During the Battle of Crete in May 1941, women not only joined in the fight against the invading German paratroopers, they tended the wounded, buried the dead and provided food and supplies for their men and Allied soldiers on the battlefields. During the harsh four-year German occupation, women of Crete sheltered and cared for Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers “on the run”, and participated in resistance activities. They gathered intelligence, provided communication support, carried food, supplies and weapons to resistance fighters and at times took up arms, all this while under the constant threat of reprisal executions. At the same time, they maintained their roles as carers and providers – raising children, making clothes, baking bread, tending goats and sheep, planting and harvesting crops – providing everything needed “more or less out of their own hands”.

Between 2006 and 2020, New Zealand filmmaker John Irwin recorded over 30 hours of interviews with women of Western Crete, wishing to establish a record of their unacknowledged roles in resisting the spread of fascism. These have provided the basis for a series of 6 documentaries with the overall title “Out of Their Own Hands: Women of Crete and the German Occupation”, the first of which will be premièred on Thursday 21st March as part of the commemorative activities for the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Crete.

Entitled “The Sisters of Galatas”, it tells the stories of the three Tapeinakis sisters, Anna, Vera and Despina, whose lives were turned upside down by the arrival of the German paratroopers in May 1941, the 8-year-old Despina being critically wounded in a bombing attack and only saved by the intervention of a German army doctor.

Details of the showing:
Thursday 21st May at 8.00 pm
Cultural Centre of Chania
Run time 60 minutes
Greek language with English subtitles
Admission free
Sponsored by the Regional Unit of Chania.