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| Mataroa vessel, (C) NZ Maritime Museum |
'All passengers ready for disembarkation; it's 1945' is an essay on the New Zealand 'liberty ship' Mataroa, and more specifically, on a particular voyage realized in the 22nd of December, in 1945. About 200 young Greek intellectuals embarked on it, in order to travel from Greece to Paris, at a time where the Greek civil war burst out, and in that respect, to save their lives. The essay aims to provide information on the historical context of the aforementioned journey and, more importantly, to elaborate on the view that Mataroa came to be a medium for salvation and thus, it can be seen a symbolism to self awareness.
The term Liberty ship refers to cargo ships developed in the United States of America during the second World War. Producing them under a single design, the aim of the US Maritime Commission was to reduce their cost and speed of construction in order to built cargo vessels faster than German U-boats could sink them. 'A Liberty ship was designed to carry about 10,000 tons of cargo, but in wartime conditions often carried much more'[1].
After the World War II was over, Greece was in a very bad condition[2]. Two months after the invading army left the country and the streets of Athens were gradually stopped being crowded, by dead bodies of civilians -who starved to death or got executed by soldiers, in retaliation for rebel attacks against them- a civil war between the Communists and the Right wings burst out, regarding who would going to be in charge of the country. Having said that, from December of 1944, Athenians experienced further chaos: bombings, assassinations, arrests and battles in between the debris and the barricades. Due to the war, everything was out of order; people would postpone academic education -if not cancel it permanently, and Universities were occasionally open. By that time, it became clear enough that anyone -either Left or Right wing supporter- who would wish to survive and to be developed intellectually, artistically or politically had to leave the country. The artist and writer -and currently, one of the few remaining passengers of Mataroa- Nelly Adrikopoulou wrote in her book ''.. we had to postpone our lives indefinitely. But life is not the sort of thing you can postpone. Either exist or not.''[3]
During that time, the internationally spoken language -of Diplomacy[4]- was French and the most relevant and active foreign cultural institution in Athens was the Institute Francais d' Athenes[5] -something like a French British Council of the time- and on that basis, Octave Merlier[6] who served as its director from 1938 until 1961 was a very powerful man. Considering the fact that Merlier was a Left wing supporter himself, and that he was aware that many educated and promising young people in Greece were leftists and, therefore, they were in danger of being lost in one way or another, he convinced the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs to assign him all of the unrealized -due to the war- scholarships[7] of the previous academic years -ranging from 1939. As a result of that, in August of 1945, the Institute Francais d' Athenes called for entries and 800 young people applied for a scholarship to study in Paris. Eventually, there were selected people from 60 different specialties and fields, ranging from architects, fine artists and composers to archaeologists, social scientists and doctors.
One of the most interesting points, is that the criteria for the selection of the people who would be awarded, was not how good users of French language were -since most of them were very poor and thus, the same applied for their education- but how good and talented they were in their field and practice. To make a long story short, the aim of this operation was to select a representative sample of people -both Left and Right wing supporters- who deserved to be saved from oblivion. Amongst the people who were selected for embarking in the 'arch' included -the youngsters at the time- Social Science graduate Cornelius Castoriades[8], Historian Nikos Svoronos[9] and many others.
The selected applicants were informed that a New Zealand ship, called Mataroa, would be the one on which they would embark on, in order to start their journey towards salvation. Nelly Adrikopoulou comments that '' the lucky ones who got the scholarship started to pack their stuff; books, manuscripts, typewriters, music records, clothes, all sort of stuff they where emotionally attached with.'' She continues by stating that ''we wanted to leave... for various reasons... each one of us had their own.''[10]
Early in the morning of the 22nd of December of the same year, Mataroa sailed from Peireus, Greece and arrived to Taranta port in Italy in the 24th. After the passengers disembarked they travelled by train during the night of the same day to Bologna (26th). At this point Nelly Adrikopoulou comments ''we were very hungry and it was very cold... When the train passed through the Swiss boarders I saw an intact world, untouched from the war and the hunger, with Christmas trees and snow all around.''[11] Finally, and after all sort of difficulties in the Swiss boarders they arrived in Paris at midnight, in the 28th of December.
At this point, we should probably say that not many things has been written for the ship Mataroa -as well as this particular journey; not even the omniscient Wikipedia has a single article regarding that ship. One could possibly find documents related to the background story and preparation of the aforementioned voyage, in the archive of the French Institute, in Athens. In addition to that, documentary material and digitized photographic post cards of the ship can be found through the website and online archive of the New Zealand's National Maritime Museum (NZNMM) and various other related web sites. Does that mean that Mataroa is not relevant? I think not. I, myself am not a ships enthusiast -at least not before this project, neither I am particularly interested in the maritime history. But, I am interested in life and in the discourses that leeds people to the condition of being able to live their lives. Even if that is a literal journey -e.g. immigration- or an existential one -e.g. Psychoanalysis.
Everybody has or had in the past a family or a personal album. Everybody has a personal history. Is he or she aware of their discourse, of the sequence of the hidden meanings that lay beneath their everyday life and all sort of expressions of themselves. In fact, what drew me to the journey of this vessel in the first place, is the potential symbolism that this journey can acquire as well as the parallelism with a small existential trip that people embark on, in order to become really aware of themselves in order to live in a more conscious way, and therefore, potentially more free. And that potential is what consists salvation. Because today, 67 years later, we now know about Cornelius Castoriades, the internationally famous Marxist philosopher and writer of the Imaginary Institution of Society (1975) and many other theories and books and we are still studying in the cultural departments of -the Greek- Universities the history books written by Nikos Svoronos.
In conclusion, from the engineer's point of view, Mataroa was not literally what it can be described as a Liberty ship, but it can be seen as a 'liberty ship'. As a Passenger-cargo ship, she carried -at different moments in history- thousands of people including troops, men, women and children. As far as concerns the voyage of the 22nd of December in 1945, she saved the life of 200 young people by giving them the opportunity to escape and thus, to live their lives free; as they had dreamed of. She came to be the medium for individual salvation and therefore, freedom. As it is mentioned earlier on, 'a Liberty ship was designed to carry about 10,000 tons of cargo, but in wartime conditions often carried much more' than that.
Nikos Georgopoulos
London,
February 2012
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Notes.
1. Unknown (2007) 'Capacity of one Liberty Ship' [Online]. American Merchant Marine at War. Available at: http://www.usmm.org/capacity.html [Accessed 10 February 2012]
2. Extremely worst than the current socioeconomic and debt crisis.
3. Adrikopoulou, Nelly (2007) The journey of Mataroa, 1945: The mirror of memory. Estia Publications : Athens. p55
4. The English language became the internationally spoken language after the war. Before this happened, French was the official language in the west as well as the official language of Diplomacy, of which still is.
5. Institute Francais d' Athenes (the French Institute in Athens) had each year around 600 applications for students to study in France, whereas the British Council around 200 at that time.
6. Octave Merlier (1897-1996), was born in France and studied at the Sorbonne and Ecole pratique des hautes etudes.
7. Due to the war, the scholarships for Greeks students to study in France were untouched. In that respect, Merlier asked the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to assign him the current one as well as the previous ones. He gathered 50 scholarships each one per one academic year. He then, divided each one per 3 months of academic study. Τhe 200 scholars managed to stay in Paris because the universities wanted them.
8. Cornelius Castoriades (March 11, 1922 - December 26, 1997) was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.
9. Nikos Svoronos (1911-1989), was a Greek historian. In 1975, he was named Docteur des Lettres in Sorbonne. He served as course director in Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (IV Section) for the Institutional History of the Byzantine Empire.
10. Adrikopoulou, Nelly (2007) The journey of Mataroa, 1945: The mirror of memory. Estia Publications : Athens. p37
11. Adrikopoulou, Nelly (2007) The journey of Mataroa, 1945: The mirror of memory. Estia Publications : Athens. p102
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