Captain Corelli's Mandolin
9/3/01
"Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is a love story loosely structured around 
what Hollywood portrayed as an ill fated misfortune of the assassination 
of 100 Italian soldiers on Cephalonia (a Greek Isle in the Ionion Sea, at  
38.5 degrees latitude, approximately the same as Reggio di Calabria). 
 
I am a great admirer of Nicolas Cage, and he turns in his usual sterling 
performance, and I will support the film because of Cage and "Mandolin"
permits me the all too seldom connection with my ancestral land.  

However I can not work up the appropriate degree of enthusiasm for 
"Mandolin" , because whereas Hollywood typically engages in gross 
exaggeration, contrarily and puzzling in this instance, Hollywood woefully 
underplays an instance where NOT 100 Italian soldiers were assassinated, 
as pictured, but 10,000 ITALIAN TROOPS WERE MASSACRED IN 
ONE DAY!!!!!!!! 99 % less in Reel Life than in REAL Life!!!

The scene of 100 Italian soldiers being machined gunned is a horrible 
sight, and a gut wrenching illustration of man's inhumanity to man.
BUT multiply it by 100 times to try to fully understand the catastrophic
nature of this appalling baleful calamitous REAL Greek Tragedy!!!!    

This would be similar to reducing the 6 million victims of the Holocaust 
of Jews, Gypsies, and Christians, etc, to a mere 60,000. Would the Jewish 
community stand for that?   

The Massacre of 10,000 Italian Soldiers occurs in the following manner:

When Italy drops out of the war, the Italian army on the island of
Cephalonia (Greece) has a tough choice to make. They don't trust a
surrender to the Germans on the island fearful of a double cross
knowing all too well that the Germans had massacred Italian troops in
Africa for the same reason.

They decide to fight the Germans and defend the island. But they are 
terribly out gunned, and when they finally surrender, 10,000 Italian soldiers 
are machine gunned as traitors by the Germans in one afternoon!!!!!

While the film is dedicated to the memory of those Italian soldiers 
who died defending Cephalonia, the credits give no suggestion as to 
the overwhelming number that were massacred in one day. 10,000 !!!!!

At the end of hostilities, Mother Nature showed her disapproval of the 
event, when Cephalonia is devastated even more by an earthquake. 

The real Captain Corelli survives his wounds and in the movie version 
he is put on a boat by Greek partisans and taken back to Italy.
Closer to the truth... he stayed on in Greece and fought he Germans
along side the Greeks. Today as a hardy soul, Corelli is alive and well 
in Italy at age of 91.

The son of a one of the 10,000 Cefalonia martyrs (now a lawyer) spent
years researching this tragic event, is the author of "Cefalonia", and 
wrote the book as a wake up call to the event, which under pressure 
from the US government on the Italian government, was kept under wraps, 
apparently not to embarrass Germany any further while under reconstruction.
But why then the Nurenburg Trials and the Holocaust revelations?

It is written in Italian and available currently only in Italy. 
The book reportedly is creating shock waves in Italy.
The author Filippini Massimo created a  rather complete Web Site 
in memory of his father and the Massacre. (In Italian)

http://www.cefalonia.it/

The author is looking for an American Publisher, which would require 
an English translation.