By Tanya-Maria Yeritsidou
I am a person who grew up in the post-74 era, I am the generation that comes next in line after the Polytechnic generation, the one who studied under the ‘free-for-all’ education regime and the one who never learnt history, the one who learnt Greek as a diminishing language with ever-increasing simplifications, foreign linguistic add-ons and distortions; yet, I am a person who, like all Greeks, grew up loving Greece and my Nation, holding respect for all the blood shed so that today it would still be our flag flapping on the Acropolis instead of any other.
On my own, I had to delve deep into our modern History to be able to understand how it was possible that with so much fighting, so much blood and so much love for Ideals such as Humanism, Freedom and Equality, to have ended up in a regime – once rendered invisible to the many, but now visible to everyone – of totalitarianism, lawlessness, nepotism and cold crushing of the people at each social class.
And what I finally realized was that the reason we are still beset by the very ills that beset our ancestors was THE REFUSAL TO ACCESS TO INFORMATION BY THE NEW GENERATION.
Because at K. Karamanlis’ funeral, nobody told me about his involvement in the Merten case, deluged by the way they were boasting about his ‘achievement’ to get us into the EU.
Because when they were talking about royalty and kingship, they told me that all kings were ousted many times over, but none told me that Frieda was so pro-German and against not only the interest but also the will of the People on whom she reigned catachrestically, that she herself made everything in her power so that , via the then governments ‘Greece would amnesty her killers’, as the international press had put it sometime in the 1950s commenting on the law that absolved every German war criminal in Greece for whatever heinous crime he had committed and every obligation to stand trial, answer and pay for it.
Back then, the excuse was to ‘foster Greece’s development, to bury the past’ and ‘to avoid problems in view of the loan contract with Germany’ so much so that together Parliament and the Palace, protected the German Nazis.
Because I was never taught about the precise trajectory of the Papandreou family in politics, nor about their causing of so much havoc (in collaborations of course with other, also prominent names) in our Country from the internecine civil war till the junta and the current economic destruction of the People, net of course of their own caste.
Because I was never told that Rallis was part of the governments under occupation, of the junta governments and of the right-wing governments. Neither was any reference made to the fact that collaborators of German Nazis held minister posts in post-war Greece.
I was never told that whole series of ministers had and still have under the control of their families, huge businesses that control the wealth, the resources and the manpower of Greece, who, under their own power as ministers, secured protection for businesses of their own and those of their friends, while by installing relatives and friends in key administrative posts of the public sector tapped on the People’s money from Public Fund Offices and revenues which they used for investment capital.
Because, being an underage pupil I never learnt about the old scandals with mines, State Electric Company (DEI), Organization of Pireaus Harbour (OLP), the exchange deals – the ceding – the covert selling of National Lands, where so many prominent names make their appearance, the same people who nowadays have the effrontery to run for office again.
Because I was under the impression that Greece had declared bankruptcy only once, under Trikoupis, and I was kept uninformed as to how magically all the ‘benefactors’ had all of a sudden become even richer. Neither was I told what it really meant to become a ‘benefactor’ for the State back then.
Because I was under the impression that during the German Occupation, the People was sloth and passive, and excepting the rebels, sheep-like, and I was never taught that every month at least during 1943 hundreds of thousands demonstrated with tens of demonstrators dead in each one of them, costly in lives but effective nonetheless in showing the results of the efforts of the People and of their courage.
Because none told me that during the German Occupation, all of you were in key administrative positions, in at least two of the three governments of the Greeks (that in the Asia Minor, the collaborating one under the German Occupation and that of the Mountains which you infiltrated), that you accepted property holdings belonging to other Greek Citizens offered to you by the Germans, in return for justifying the horrid countermeasures of the Germans on the undefended populace, forgetful of the International War Conventions and permitting our ‘allies’ to carpet-bomb whole inhabited areas, despite their declaring themselves as friendly, and acceding to the suffering of the Greek People , just as Seferis reports.
And of course because I was never told that when hundreds of Citizens were daily executed in the cities, you were leading cosmopolitan lives and proceeded with charities to collaborating security men, with your prominent names imposing themselves on the charity lists of the dailies of the day, without giving a dime as to whether the rest of the people were dying of hunger in the streets while you were painting the town red.
Because all of them, in collaboration of all the journalists and other critics of mine as a People, as youth and as Citizen blind me and cut me off from knowing my immediate past, and replace it instead with mottos that I cannot control and inflict on me a sense of doom and fatalism that as a People, I keep on doing the same mistakes.
But if I had known which my past mistakes were and which conditions had given rise to them, I would not have committed them again, but this is very well known to you, the power holders, and that is why you do all you can in your power so that I will never learn anything about your past and mine.
It is only recently that I alone, searching in dirty old newspapers, whenever I could find them, since you forbid me by law (unconstitutional, of course) to have access to old documents and evidence which I had to collect on my own, to find out who I am as a Greek but especially to see who you are.
Whichever name of yours I pick to search for, I find it wrapped in filth and crime worthy of the Hague Tribunal, names, that your Mafioso omerta hid from me when I was receiving state education as a Citizen, so that I could learn about your kind and keep away from you, and so that I could know who I am rather than keeping myself in a state of wonton amnesia: From Karamanlis to Mitsotakis, from Tsatsos to Kanellopoulos and Papandreou and Florakis and Kyrkos, and Rallis to Samaras and Karatzaferis: all of you stink and are responsible for every minute of misery inflicted on every Greek.
But now I am in a position to teach myself. I am in a position to see that just as back then you enforced misery, hunger and destitute onto the people, you do the same now, while you are having the fun of your life, you celebrate conspicuously and proceed with ‘acts of goodwill’ and ‘endorsements’ in the style and demeanor of a feudal lord addressing his serfs.
But this time it is different.
Now, I am blind no more, I can see you.
And now I will do everything so that the rest can see you too.
This is my Revolution and this is my contribution to my Nation: Not to permit these characters to appear as ‘above board’ unmarred Citizens, them who, some decades ago decimated my ancestors, with the sole reason of your anonymity and impunity being that THE YOUNG GENERATIONS WERE SIMPLY KEPT UNINFORMED ABOUT YOUR KIND.
Knowledge is power.
Translation provided by Michael T.