Penelope Tyraki is 85 years old. She has 10 children and 17 grandchildren. She survived the Nazis.
This is how she remembers it: Early one morning, 75 years ago, German soldiers from Hitler's army banged on her door in Koxare, a small town on the island of Crete. Together with her father -- an Orthodox priest -- and her mother and brothers, she was hauled out of the house in her pajamas. They were thrust into the town's small church, where many of their neighbors were already waiting in similar conditions. After barring the gates, the soldiers locked them in and wired the building with explosives. They planned to blow it up with all the townspeople inside.
"We were terrified, even despite the fact that, as children, we didn't quite understand what was going on," she said. "At the last moment, the leader of the German soldiers got a phone call and that seems to have saved our lives. There weren't enough young men inside the church. We were just a few people. It wasn't worth wasting explosives on a bunch of old men, women and children. They took us out and led us to an elevated spot in town where they forced us to watch while they blew up each one of our homes. It was awful. Three days later, we came back to town, destroyed, and my parents and brothers picked up the charred remains of what had been our home, a beautiful home. I was left without a school and, even worse, without a future, without the possibility of an education."
"Why do they now want to do the same thing to my children and grandchildren? Justice, I only ask for justice," she says. "Write this down, please: Help us."
Tyraki's big blue eyes well up with tears, but she flicks them away with a swipe of her hand. At 85, she still transmits the strength and rage that can only be explained by that feeling of injustice that has lived within the majority of Greeks since 2010, a feeling that grew on Monday, when the government closed banks and markets.
They know -- the grandmother especially -- that a tough week awaits them. She was widowed when she was young and has 10 children and 17 grandchildren who have struggled to make ends meet since this financial crisis started destroying their lives five years ago.
She is sitting in her kitchen in the Ilioupolis neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens. The neighborhood, whose name means "City of Light," is a middle-class neighborhood that was upper-middle-class until five years ago, when the crisis prompted problems that sound a lot like the ones that Spaniards have: unemployment, mortgage defaults and plummeting home values. This evening, during the first week of the Greek corralito, Ilioupolis seems quiet. The stores are open and people greet each other, much like they do every day. Though perhaps there's a bit more complicity and solidarity, says Manuel, one of Tyraki's sons.
"Look, do you see anything out of the ordinary? Do you see people standing in lines or raiding stores? We are worried, but we are not scared," he says wearily. "The foreign camera crews don't come to this neighborhood. You know why? Because there's no news, just normality." He just arrived from one of his two jobs as a cook at Athens' oncology hospital. He is tired of watching news clips in which Greeks are portrayed as lazy bums who live off their pensions.
"We are so fed up with it," he says. "I think that now they are trying to scare off the tourists, since they must have realized they can't scare us. That would hurt us."
"I owe them nothing, absolutely nothing, and now they want to steal the future of my children and my grandchildren."
Tyraki insists that we eat something, that we drink; it is Greek hospitality asserting itself before we settle around the kitchen table -- her domain. She laughs somewhat bitterly at my question regarding her fear during that first day and the fear for her pension.
"Fear? Yes, I might be a bit scared, but hope weighs more. I've gone through a lot in this life. I became a widow and no one wanted to rent me a house because I had 10 children -- one died when he was young. All those kids would supposedly destroy any rentable place."
She puts her hand on Manuel, before continuing: "You see, this is one of my sons. My granddaughter is also here and the rest are out, working whatever jobs they can find. Do we look like bums or like people who will destroy a rented house? My father died shortly after the German occupation and my mother was left to raise her children in Crete, four children she couldn't send to school because it had been burned down. I couldn't go to school, and I will never forget that. My mother pulled us upward."
"When I was 12, I started working in a typography workshop. I didn't go to school, but I ended up setting books, sewing their backs and binding them. It was a wonderful and exhausting job. There were books of all kinds: the Bible, books for reading and books for studying. Some of that rubbed off on me. I loved sewing the backs onto books. Yes, true to my name, I honor sewing," she says. "My mother got sick because of something in the ink. This is my life. What do I owe the Germans, who already stole my childhood? I owe them nothing, absolutely nothing, and now they want to steal the future of my children and my grandchildren."
It's curious that Tyraki, who, like the majority of the Greeks, follows all the news in Greece as well as everything that is said from Brussels, blames the Germans -- specifically German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble -- before blaming Merkel or the European Union. She knows the Finns and the Danes back harsh measures against Greece, but the ghost of Nazi Germany has reappeared in her life since the austerity measures have been imposed on her country.
"You know why I believe in Tsipras or Varoufakis? Because they are young and they are not tainted by corruption. The old politicians, the previous governments, have sold out the Greek people. They sacrificed us while they stole and they forgot to defend us from the Germans and from all of Europe. I love Europe, you know? But I owe nothing to the Germans. Quite the opposite. When the war ended, I tried to forgive them, to understand that we had to assist them so it wouldn't happen again. All Europeans helped them, even those whose countries were occupied and razed by the Nazis. Why can't they now think about the Greeks, about the Greek people? Neither I nor my sons are corrupt. We didn't forge any state accounts. Let them hold accountable those who actually stole."
She starts getting agitated again, but she restrains herself: "I help my children with my pension. Five years ago, I received 900 euros [monthly] and a supplement of 400 euros for being a widow of an Orthodox priest. I could split it up then, especially to help some of my grandchildren with education. Now I receive 730 euros and 123 as a supplement. Yes, I know, you say that we have very high pensions compared to [Spain], but I assure you that I earned it, and that without my help over the past five years my family wouldn't have made it. Some of them live with me. They watch over me, we support each other, we eat together."
A million Greek households are supported by their grandparents' pensions.
"As Greeks, we don't want compassion. We want justice."
Penelope Tyraki calls Diana, one of her 17 grandchildren, who is on summer vacation. The girl, barely ten years old, walks into the kitchen and is surprised to see her grandmother's wet eyes, her tense face and the sadness in her voice. But when Tyraki realizes that she is affecting everyone around her, she straightens her back.
"As Greeks, we don't want compassion. We want justice. You know why I am mad? Because the rest of the Europeans don't want to help us. I don't mean the people, I mean your governments. There are Spanish political parties and people who support them, but governments like yours fear that the 'No' will win in Sunday's referendum, because if it is possible to resist here, then your governments might lose in your elections."
She opens the palms of her hands over the Formica table. They are old hands, stained by the marks of age, but they are clean and strong with a single ring, perhaps her wedding band.
"It's true that in Europe there are other people -- like yours -- who I support. But right now you are like we were before: with old and corrupt politicians. I know that if Merkel chose to, if she stopped listening to that Schäuble and those other hardliners, this would be fixed. I don't belong to any political party. I am Greek."
Next Sunday, Tyraki will vote oxi --'no'-- to the austerity measures demanded by Brussels. "It's not yes or no to the euro, we know that," she says. "But I will vote 'no' to those measures because if we have to leave the euro, I am aware that two or three very hard years await us. But we are used to that, and afterwards we'll have our own new politicians to find our way. We can't do this anymore. I don't see why I have to stand Schäuble or his accusing finger ordering me around anymore. I know that we must forgive. But never forget. I could tell Mr. Schäuble that perhaps his grandfather was one of the men who burned down my house, my school. My brothers were forced to move to North America. My uncles and my cousins died in the war or shortly after. Return to the drachma? Today a kilogram of feta cheese costs 5 euros. Do you realize all the numbers we need in order to buy everything we need? Five years ago it was less than half. Write this down please: I only ask for justice."
Penelope Tyraki leaves the table. She doesn't want to get agitated yet again in front of her son.
"One last thing," she says, turning around with a smile. "In Koxare, my town in Crete, the place where I was born and the place they razed, my childhood home is now the museum that houses the charred remains of all the homes that Hitler's troops burned down."
She would like to take Schäuble there.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost Spain and was translated into English.