The 11th Day: Crete 1941 is a 2005 documentary film featuring eyewitness accounts from survivors of the
Battle for CreteThe Battle of Crete was a battle during World War II on the Greek island of Crete. It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Unternehmen Merkur...
during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The film was created by producer-director Christos Epperson and writer-producer Michael Epperson, and funded by
Alex SpanosAlexander Gus Spanos is an American real estate developer and self-made billionaire of Greek origin who founded the A. G. Spanos Companies and owns the San Diego Chargers.-Early life:...
. Among the eyewitnesses are British
S.O.E.The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
operative and famous writer
Patrick Leigh FermorSir Patrick "Paddy" Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer", with books including his classic A Time of...
, and
Cretan ResistanceThe Cretan resistance was a resistance movement against Nazi Germany by the residents of the Greek island of Crete during World War II. Part of the larger Greek Resistance, it lasted from May 20, 1941, when the German Wehrmacht invaded the island in the Battle of Crete, until the fall of 1945 when...
hero George Tzikas. The non-veterans giving historical commentary include Chase Brandon of the CIA and Dr
Andre GerolymatosAndré Gerolymatos is a Greek-Canadian professor at Simon Fraser University, and holds the Hellenic Canadian Congress of British Columbia Chair in Hellenic Studies....
of
Simon Fraser UniversitySimon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...
.
Plot
On May 20, 1941, thousands of elite German paratroopers assaulted the island of Crete. It was the beginning of the
Battle of CreteThe Battle of Crete was a battle during World War II on the Greek island of Crete. It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Unternehmen Merkur...
- the largest
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
airborne operation of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. They had expected to control the island within a few days; after all, they only needed to occupy Paris for a week before France surrendered. What they hadn’t expected was that the men, women, and even children of
CreteCrete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
would fight them to their dying breath.
Together with hundreds of stranded soldiers from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, and a handful of British special operations commandos and US special operation paramilitary officers from the
OSSThe Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(the precursor of modern day CIA
Special Activities DivisionThe Special Activities Division is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as "special activities"...
) who had parachuted in to help, the Cretan resistance dealt Nazi Germany one of its most crippling victories of the entire war.
Abduction of General Kreipe
They would even kidnap the German commandant of Crete, General Kreipe - the famous
AbductionThe Kidnap of General Kreipe was a Second World War operation by the Special Operations Executive, an organisation of the United Kingdom. The mission took place on the German occupied island of Crete in May 1944....
masterminded and led by British
Special Operations ExecutiveThe Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
officers
Patrick Leigh FermorSir Patrick "Paddy" Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer", with books including his classic A Time of...
and
Bill Stanley MossIvan William "Billy" Stanley Moss MC , was a British army officer in World War II, and later a successful writer, broadcaster, journalist and traveller. He served with the Coldstream Guards and the Special Operations Executive . He was a best-selling author in the 1950s, based both on his novels...
. It was the only successful kidnapping of a German general throughout the war.
Newspaper reviews
Availability
In 2005,
The 11th Day toured theaters throughout the United States and Canada. In November 2006, the film was released on DVD (with Greek and English language tracks and a photo gallery of over 500 images), and is currently available in libraries, stores, Amazon.com, etc. It can also be purchased from the official film website listed in the "External Links" section below. Also on the official film website, the producers have made freely available their vast collection of research material, including over 2000 photos--more than 500 of which are rare and unpublished. It is the largest on-line archive of World War II photos and documents in the world.
About the filmmakers
Producer-Director Christos Epperson is an award-winning director and documentary cinematographer whose work can be seen on the
Discovery ChannelDiscovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
. His production company, Archangel Films, is based in
Sacramento, CaliforniaSacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...
.
Writer-Producer Michael Epperson earned his Ph.D. from the University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in 2003 and is currently teaching in the Department of Philosophy at California State UniversityThe California State University is a public university system in the state of California. It is one of three public higher education systems in the state, the other two being the University of California system and the California Community College system. It is incorporated as The Trustees of the...
, Sacramento. His published works on history and philosophy include the book Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Fordham University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8232-2319-1).
The great-aunts and uncles of Christos and Michael Epperson were members of the Cretan resistance in World War II. In 1943, their uncle Kyriako Xirouhakis and his sisters Eleftheria and Rita joined the resistance group "Pibli" in Hania, CreteChaniá , , also transliterated Chania, Hania, and Xania, older form Chanea and Venetian Canea, Ottoman Turkish خانيه Hanya) is the second largest city of Crete and the capital of the Chania peripheral unit...
. Eleftheria spoke three languages and worked in a German office where she had access to classified documents that she would steal, translate and give to the resistance group. On June 11, at a wedding reception the Germans arrested the siblings except Artemisia who was a baby at the time.
During a search of their house, the Germans found a diagram of the "Perivolitsa Camp" behind a painting on the wall. They interrogated the siblings and Eleftheria took responsibility for the diagram in order to protect her brothers and sisters. Her exact words according to German Lieutenant Volf Sinter were, "I am a spy, I work with the resistance group 'Pibli' and I will not reveal anything else."
They were all taken to the prison at Agia where Eleftheria was severely tortured by the Germans Hoffman and Fritz Sterling to reveal her contacts in the resistance. She was hung naked in the ladies room and beaten repeatedly for three days and nights, but did not reveal any information. There was a German guard next to her 24 hours a day to prevent her from sleeping.
On July 13, 1944 the Germans executed Eleftheria. Her last words according to the records of German nurse Fritz Nider who went to check that she was dead were, "Away with your dirty hands so you don’t pollute a Greek woman. Long live Greece."
Kyriako, Manoli and Dimitri were sent to the Dachau concentration camp and Rita was sent to another concentration camp somewhere in Eastern Europe. They all survived and returned to Crete after the war was over. The three brothers returned the same day their parents were having a memorial for them in the belief that they had died.
On April 4, 2004 the cultural group "Omonia" honored Eleftheria with a statue at the church grounds in Aroni, Crete.
The Epperson brothers' later production was Outpost HarryOutpost Harry was a remote Korean War station located on a tiny hilltop in what was commonly referred to as the "Iron Triangle" on the Korean Peninsula. This was an area approximately 60 miles north of Seoul and was the most direct route to the South Korean capital.More than 88,000 rounds of...
- a documentary feature film that recounts the little-known story of how 150 Greek and U.S. soldiers stationed in a remote outpost defeated over 3000 Chinese infantrymen in one of the sieges of the Korean WarThe Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. They were ordered to 'hold at all costs' against an enemy that vastly outnumbered them and flooded into the outpost every night for over a week. (see www.OutpostHarry.org and The Outpost Harry Survivors Association)
External links
The source of this article is
wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the
GFDL.
