October 28 is Oxi ( roughly pronounced o-hee) commemorates the day the Greek prime minister defied Mussolini's "request" for Greece to join the Axis powers. The prime minister responded with one word- NO- Oxi in Greek. The Greeks repelled the invading fascists, and eventually fell to the Nazis, but only after fierce resistance. This prompted Churchill to say...
"Hence, we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks."
On Oxi day in Athens, school children parade and in Thessoloniki, it's a military parade. In March, it reverses for Independence Day. It seemed like more than a hundred schools marched by, first the wee primary grades then up through older teenagers, concluding with Special Olympics.
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