A couple of weeks ago, I flew to San Francisco and taped “Uncommon Knowledge,” a public television show on politics. The host of the program, Peter Robinson, an ex-speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and an old friend, let slip that someone had suggested he ask me how my family was rich in 1940 and continued to be rich in 1945. The implication was obvious: my father must have collaborated with the Germans. Robinson was outraged. “Taki was four-years-old back then.” He was twice as outraged when I told him the truth. From the main English newspaper of Greece upon my father’s death in 1989: “John Theodoracopulos was a member of the Greek Resistance and was awarded with the Order of the Phoenix and Golden Cross Resistance medals and published the then illegal newspaper Greek Blood.” He did better than that. He won the highest medal for gallantry in action during the 1940 Albanian campaign, blew up the Gestapo headquarters in Athens, and shut down his factories for the duration despite German demands to keep production going. By 1945, he was ruined, but in appreciation for his wartime activities was given a second chance by the Truman administration when he was allowed to purchase a Liberty ship. (These ships were sold at rock-bottom prices by Uncle Sam to those who had lost ships during the war. My father was the only non-ship-owner permitted to buy).
Who started this whispering? I am not at liberty to say—he did, after all, whisper it à la Iago—but if any of you have read my recent columns, you will guess it rather easily. Such are the joys of modern neoconservatism.
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