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THE HEROIC insurrection of Polytechnic students on November 17, 1973 had given
hope for the speedy downfall of the dictatorship of Papadopoulos. Yet an even
more sinister period began with Papadopoulos' successor - the new dictator,
Yiannis Joannidis, head of the military police.
The prison camps of the horrendous exile island of Yiaros were opened again.
Arrests and torture became more frequent than ever. Papadopoulos had kept up
appearances and always pretended that democratic rights were suspended only
temporarily until order would be re-established in Greece. Joannidis was less
circumspect and did not hide his hideous intentions.
The ferocious ESA, the military police, excerpted its terror daily and openly
on the streets of Athens and silence reigned among the Greek people, the
silence of the grave yard, as people said those days.
During the melancholy weeks after the events at the Polytechnic, a visitor
showed up at my office. "Just call me John," he said. "I heard you have been
covering the upheaval at the Polytechnic. Please tell me everything you have
seen."
Since he was a friendly, intelligent man I didn't refuse. I told him about
some of the scenes of the unbelievable courage I witnessed - well known
nowadays through numerous newspaper reports and the documentaries shown over
and again on TV. I was also able to describe scenes that were not part of
public knowledge.
He was fascinated by my account of the Hotel Acropole across from the
Polytechnic on that famous day. He heard how I had to shelter from snipers'
bullets in a building which was not only crowded with students but also with
school children. He was amazed to hear how the hotel manager himself went
around with dishes full of sandwiches and said, "It's not good to fight for
the freedom of our country on an empty stomach."
He heard too, how despite of the rain of bullets, a young student ventured
outside and was hit a few metres from the door of the hotel. I explained how
two schoolgirls did not hesitate to run outside like nurses on the
battlefield, veritable Florence Nightingales helping the boy and carrying him
back into the hotel, only to have a policeman yank him from their hands.
He listened attentively to the story of a Norwegian girl, an unsuspecting
tourist, who was hit in the neck from a stray bullet and who lay dying in the
lobby of the hotel. She had been on her way to make a phone call to her
parents from the OTE building a few metres along Patission Street. She had
wanted to tell her parents about her incredible experiences in Greece.
I will never forget the expression on his face when I described the students
calling desperately from their loudspeakers for medical help and ambulances.
The ambulances with their incessantly screaming sirens arrived - not full of
nurses and doctors, but with club wielding, blood-thirsty policemen, some of
them even camouflaged in white doctors' uniforms.
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A tank is seen moments before it crashed through the gates of the Polytechnic
on November 17, 1973
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And then the most horrendous and surrealistic scene of all; one which will
never leave my mind. The tanks - more than 25-arrived; as if they had to
annihilate a well fortified fortress and not a university campus full of
unarmed children yelling for freedom. They came rolling in at about midnight.
One enormous grey monster stood just in front of the gate of the Polytechnic.
From the open turret an officer appeared with a pistol in his hand.
The students begged the army not to use force and not to harm them. The
officer shouted down from his tank that the Greek armed forces would not
negotiate with anarchists. In the Acropole Palace, children were crying and
many were kneeling and loudly praying to God to stop the madness. One of the
most incredible and shameful things was that at this very instant, as the
children of Greece were about to die for freedom, in the same hotel, at a
short distance from the oncoming catastrophe, a room full of two hundred
people, mostly women but also some men, were playing cards, totally impervious
to the clamours and weeping of the youth of their country.
My visitor said that his son had been one of the youngsters at the Polytechnic
that day, but he was a very modest boy and didn't like to talk about it. The
man asked permission to come again.
During the following visit, he said he felt immensely touched by the heroism
shown by the Greek youth during that time. He thought most children were
mollycoddled and spoilt nowadays, even in the poorest families. He told me
wonderful anecdotes and jokes to illustrate it. "Did you know," he asked me,
"that Jesus Christ was a Greek?" "Really?" I queried, not quite sure whether
he was serious.
"Yes," he replied, a wide grin breaking across his face. "He believed his
mother was a virgin and she looked at him as if he were a god. Not only that,
he didn't start work until after he was thirty!"
He related another tale about the sometimes foolish ambitions that Greek
parents have for their children. He had a neighbour, a mother with twin boys
of about two years old. One day he met her in the street without her children
and asked how one of the children were doing. "Who do you mean?" she replied,
"the doctor or the lawyer?"
One day my visitor started to talk about his son of 16. He described him as a
wonderful boy, and couldn't wait for the day he would go to university; to the
infamous Polytechnic to become an engineer or an architect.
"I am blessed with this child", he added, "he is so clever and studious. But
don't believe he is a monk," he added, smiling. "He loves girls and the girls
love him!"
He showed me a picture of a very handsome boy. Inwardly I smiled at all that
praise and thought about the irony of just one more of those doting Greek
parents.
My visitor kept coming again and again. He always had parcels in his hands;
one day it would be toys to go to a poor children's home and another time
books or an expensive leather jacket for his son. He used to talk about many
different subjects; he seemed to be well educated, but the conversation always
ended in the same way - with the praise and the glory of his beloved son.
One day his mood seemed different and he kept staring out of the window. I
lived next to a cemetery in those days. At last he sighed and said, "We will
all go there one day - perhaps it will be my turn soon. Then he snapped out of
his apparently uncharacteristic melancholy and exclaimed, "I am happy that my
son has still a whole life before him - he is still so young."
On several occasions I asked why he never brought this wonder boy to visit.
"He is too busy studying and flirting with girls," was his usual reply.
After his frequent visits, my visitor stayed away for a year or two. I started
missing him. But suddenly he was there again. This time he was jubilant. His
son had passed the entrance examinations for the Polytechnic - with excellent
grades. Once again he was carrying parcels and parcels and even an airline
ticket in his son's name.
The youngster was to stay with his American relatives for the summer. There
was to be a wonderful party with at least fifty boys and girls attending; he
was popular among his friends.
After my visitor left, I went to the book shop to find out his telephone
number. I thought I should at least buy a present for his son who seemed like
a friend I had never met.
When I rang John's house, a lady answered and I asked her whether she was the
boy's mother.
"I want to congratulate you and your brilliant son. I heard he has passed all
his examinations with flying colours. Your husband tells me he is to become an
engineer. May I pass by, just for a short while, to bring him a little
present?"
"My son," she answered in a tone that stifled grief, "will never be an
engineer and he will never enter the university; he died three years ago."
Then her voice drowned in a heart-rending sob. "He was killed by a police
bullet, fired at point-blank range at the gate of the Polytechnic on November
17, 1973."
* Veteran journalist Albert Coerant worked as a correspondent for Dutch
and Belgian TV in Greece during the military dictatorship.
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