Caught up in Greek History: The Life of Kostas Matheou 1918 - 1943

Central Greece, October 9th, 1943. Kostas Matheou, a 25-year-old Greek army officer, is in charge of a team of resistance fighters. A massive, German force encircles his position. Other resistance teams agree to break up into small groups and hide. Kostas decides to stand his ground. “Caught up in Greek History” is a reconstruction by Kostas’s grandson, Alexander Matheou, of the brief life of his grandfather, right up to that fatal moment in the mountains of central Greece. Based on letters, family memories and newspaper articles, Alexander weaves his family history into the dramatic events unfolding in Greece in the first half of the 20th Century, from the Asia Minor War to the Axis Occupation. It is the story of how one family was forged by the building blocks of modern Greece: military service and an education system aimed at rekindling Greece’s ancient glory, and of how this combination inspired both tragedy and heroism.