13.12.41
Starvation and misery in the streets and houses. People get swollen. They die in the streets. Germans take everything. The price of food is inconceivable. The spectacle of people unconscious from starvation on the pavements of Panepistimiou Avenue becomes more frequent daily. [...] At the station a woman collapses before my eyes as if thunder-struck. She is helped up, people crowd around her and give her money. What's the use of it though?

(Asim. Panselinos, Phylla Imerologiou (1941-1943), Athens, Kedros, 1993, pp. 118-119)

'Queues are long, pathetic, with sad people following a strict discipline of their own - that of a herd. [...] Mother offered to join the queue at the bakery. I left home at nine in the morning. She had woken up at six thirty. She believed that she would be among the first. She found two hundred people waiting. I came home at nine in the evening and she was still there, at the same spot waiting for flour to be brought, kneaded, baked and distributed: thirty grammes per person. I held and supported her on the return home. That's why I bought bread from the driver. You buy it with a British gold sovereign.'

(Giorgos Karagiorgas, Oi tragoudistades tis Lefterias, cited in: Chatzipatera-Phaphaliou, Martyries 40-44, second edition, Athens, Kedros, 1993, p. 328)

Occupation. At street corners the rubbish bins don't expect the car or rather the cart to empty them. They expect hungry people to look in them for something edible: lemon rinds, onion leaves...
[...]
The grocers' shops are empty. The only thing we could find was mustard. Mr Vangelis - our grocer - wonders why everybody buys mustard... One day I answered his question: 'Great food,' I tell him...

The words 'I am hungry' echoed constantly in our ears. Children wandered pale and skeleton-like along the pavement shouting 'I'm hungry' so that residents in the ground floors who could hear them would be moved to give them something, if they had anything.
[...]
Sometimes the bakeries gave us bread on ration. It was from sorghum seeds. If you held it in your hands to take home, somebody might have snatched it from you without shame...

(Eri Melekou, in: Chatzipatera-Phafaliou, Martyries 40-44, second edition, Athens, Kedros, 1993, p. 305)