Gregoris Lambrakis ΓΡΗΓΟΡΗΣ ΛΑΜΠΡΑΚΗΣ
Born April 3, 1912 Died May 27, 1963
Section 14, Number 1A
A Greek Tragedy
Inside a hospital in Thessaloniki a man lies in a coma. Doctors from England, Italy, Poland and Athens have been consulted. Beside him, as witnesses to the immanent tragedy, is a Greek chorus consisting of musician Mikis Theodorakis, poet Yannis Ritsos, and Greek resistance hero Manolis Glezos. They keep watch as crowds continue to gather outside. The atmosphere is electric: Salonika is hanging from the beat of a dead hero’s living heart, wrote one newspaper.
Gregoris Lambrakis was struck down on the evening of May 22, 1963 after delivering the keynote speech at a peace rally in Greece’s second city. Eye witnesses claimed that two men in a three wheeled vehicle drove up beside him and one reached out and struck him on the head with a club. He lingered for five days.
Government officials attempted to persuade his wife that, when the time came, his body should be transported to the small Peloponnesian village where he was born rather than brought to Athens for a public funeral. They feared demonstrations and public unrest. She refused. His body was transported by train to Athens at night - with no stops allowed en route. Crowds stood in silent homage at every station and a large crowd had congregated at Larissa Station as the casket arrived.
An astounding 500.000 people would follow that cortege from Athens’ Metropolitan Cathedral to his final resting place in the First Cemetery.
Grigoris Lambrakis was widely popular at the time of his death, especially among the country’s youth and yet, at the same time, he had upset the equilibrium of the government in power to such a degree that certain members attempted to cast doubt on the manner of his death and to suppress the public outpouring of grief that followed.
Who Was Grigoris Lambrakis?
He was neither a long time fanatic radical, nor a wild-eyed political revolutionary. On the contrary, he was a poor boy from the Peloponnese who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a respected gynaecologist, a member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Athens, and all the while a formidable athlete participating in countless Balkan competitions and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
24 year old Lambrakis with Jesse Owens in Berlin
A noted philanthropist throughout his life, he donated his time and sometimes money to indigent patients. And well aware of the horrors that war had brought to Greece in his own lifetime, he had become a passionate pacifist during the 50s supporting a world-wide movement led by British philosopher Bertrand Russell. At the time of his murder, he had been a sitting member of the Hellenic parliament for two years under the banner of The United Democratic Left (EDA), the only legal left-wing political party allowed in the country at the time.
A Little Background
Lambrakis was politically and socially active at a time when Greece had first undergone the Metaxas dictatorship, the German occupation, and then a polarizing civil war between left leaning and communist led EAM-ELAS and the returning royalist nationalist government (1). The Nationalists were backed by the British and supported by the right, a group which included in their ranks many who had been in the notorious security battalions towards the end of the Second World War.(2) After the defeat of EAM-ELAS and, as the Cold War raged, ideas concerning social justice coming from the vanquished left were labelled ‘communist’ or ‘communist fronted’. It was an era when people were encouraged to choose between two narrowly defined camps: kommounistosymmoritites (communist gangsters) or ethnikofrones (sound patriots). There was no safe middle ground.
Historian Evi Gkotzaridis put it this way:
The years between 1949 and 1967, that is until the Colonels’ coup d’Etat, is a period characterized by poverty, institutional imbalance, a vying for supremacy between different power centres, rabid anticommunism at the level of the State, a great deal of social discontent and agitation, a political culture premised on a protracted ‘state of emergency’, and more generally, a persistent lack of freedom hiding behind the façade of a nomocratic and democratic order
The situation of any thoughtful citizen thinking of taking a stand in this era was complicated. The communist party was banned outright so leftist and centrist parties did have their share of followers who would have voted communist if they could have. This made it easy for some of their efforts (especially those which went against the party in power) to be labelled as communist inspired. Secondly, there were a number of ad hoc right wing paramilitary organizations which were tolerated (although perhaps not publically labelled ‘good people’ a la Trump) by those in power. They were a perceived necessary counterbalance to the constant threat of ‘the communists’.
In times like these, the center could not hold...
His Life
Grigoris was born in 1912 in Kerasitsa, Arkadia, a tiny agricultural community on an elevated windswept plain in the middle of the Peloponnese 10 kilometres south of Tripoli. You may have driven through it to see nearby ancient Tegea. His father Georgios had fathered 18 children with two wives.
Trying to even imagine the logistics of their family life in a smallish two storey house (ground floor for storage and animals) is difficult in the era of one point something children per household. My own mother’s experience in Canada as child with six siblings when her father died during the Depression, helped me to visualize what must have been a strict hierarchy where older children were expected to help raise the younger ones and all would sacrifice for a child who showed academic promise.
Grigoris home for the first 18 years of his life ( shown here some 20 years after it was deserted and just before it was demolished.)
By his 18th year, he had completed his high school education in nearby Tripoli, a real accomplishment in those days. He then attended the Panagiotopoulos School of Commerce and Accounting in Piraeus until 1932 with the idea of becoming an accountant and returning home to Kerasitsa. He did return for a time and assisted in the small village shop owned by his father. His future in Arcadia must have seemed all too predictable: Keratsitsa boasted less than 600 souls at the time, all involved in agricultural pursuits of one kind or another.
He might have remained there but for his older step brother, Theodoros who had become a practicing surgeon in Piraeus. Influenced by him, Grigoris sat for the entrance exams for the Medical School of the University of Athens in 1933 and managed to obtain a much needed scholarship for three years running. He was already involved in athletics. By 1931 he was a national champion long jumper. He never lost his interest in sports and the athletes with whom he competed.
During the middle of his studies in 1936, Ioannis Metaxas, with the help of the Greek king, had transitioned from an elected member of parliament to dictator and his propaganda machine was gathering all Greek youth into his National Youth Organization (NEO), an organization based on Hitler Youth. Like every other student who wished to remain in school, Lambrakis acquiesced to this and graduated in May 1939 at the age of 27. He decided to specialize in gynaecology and endocrinology. He met his military obligations as a reserve officer on the island of Syros and all the while engaged in athletic competitions as a champion long jumper and runner.
Grigoris with his proud mom
During the Axis occupation (1941-4) he worked at his brother’s clinic in Paraeus participated in the Greek resistance and set up the Union of Greek Athletes (Ένωση των Ελλήνων Αθλητών) using revenues from the games he organized to fund food banks (λαϊκά συσσίτια). His connections with EAM-ELAS resistance during the war made him suspect and at the end of 1948 he was arrested (as were so many) but in his case held for only 6 months in the prison at Goudi.
He never lost his interest in helping those in need during the 50s and became increasingly concerned about the nuclear threat to the world in general and to Greece in particular.
1961-1963: The Final Years
Becoming a Member of Parliament in 1961 must have seemed like a perfect solution to Grigoris. As a member of parliament he would have immunity from harassment and arrest. Being a member of the government would also enhance his ability to present his pacifist agenda during a time which, by his lights, the Greek government was endangering the nation by allowing weapons of mass destruction on Greek soil and allying itself with the US which he considered to be an imperialistic power which cared nothing for Greece.
The EDA logo read Democracy, Peace, and Amnesty
As a parliament member, he gained an international standing for his peace initiative and his long time struggle to free the 1000+ political prisoners who had been held in Greek prisons or in exile on Greek islands since the civil war. (3) Of course, to the party in power, all such prisoners were murderous terrorists. This stance that was somewhat undercut by their willingness to release those who would promise to renounce their political ideals and eschew politics, a policy that was noted and ridiculed by many members of leftist Parties in Britain and elsewhere.
It all came to a head in 1963. Grigoris went to England to take part in Bertrand Russell’s famous yearly march to ban the bomb. The Aldermaston march that year was a triumph with a 30 km long line of protestors marching from Berkshire to Hyde Park in London. Grigoris met with Russell that year and was inspired to plan a similar march in Greece upon his return. He asked the London committee if it would be possible to take the official Greek banner of the Aldermaston march back home in order to use it during his own. They agreed.
The march was to take place on April 21st and the route was intentionally symbolic. It would begin from the funeral mound in Marathon where ancient heroes had repulsed foreign invaders so long ago, and on to the Pnyx Hill, the seat of ancient Athenian democracy just opposite the Acropolis.
The ruling party of Constantinos Karamanlis would have none of it. They banned the march. In the opinion of one ruling party member (Achilleas Gerokostopoulos) “the movement presented all the familiar characteristics of a communist front”.(4)
Was it?
Certainly, avowed communists were involved, but it was not that simple. Bertrand Russell himself had written an article printed in Greek newspaper on the eve of the march calling on all Greeks of conscience, no matter what their political persuasion, to join.
People gathering to join the march were stopped and arrested. Grigoris, with his parliamentary immunity marched alone for the first 28 miles, holding aloft the now iconic banner from Aldermaston Rally. Then he too was detained and held by the police until that evening. The interrupted march generated a lot of publiciy and energized his followers.
He would continue the fight.
He did not know then that a month later he would be dying in a hospital in Salonika at the age of 51 because of the actions of two right wing extremists, Emannouel Emannouilides and Spyros Gotzamanis.
The government claimed no direct involvement but, during an investigation prosecuted by , Christos Sartzetakis, connections with both the police and the army were uncovered. (5) The perpetrators were jailed, but not for long because Greece was already heading at warp speed to April 21, 1967 when a military dictatorship would take over, pardon Emannouilides and Gotzamanis, fire the judges who had sentenced them, and put prosecutor Sartzetakis in prison.
Prime minister Constantinos Karamanlis, damaged by the events surrounding Lambrakis’death, resigned in 1963 and went into exile in Paris, a new political organization was founded in Lambrakis name that same year by Mikis Theodorakis and others: the Lambrakis Democratic Youth (Δημοκρατική Νεολαία Λαμπράκη). The Athens Marathon would be held yearly in November in his memory. (6)
Many believe that the murder of Lambrakis led directly to the Junta. It is interesting that they chose, April 21, the date of his marathon march, to invade the streets of Athens, take over and make that date their own.
Today
Aside from plateias, street and statues (there are many) erected in his honour, and his almost forgotten connection with the yearly marathon, I like to think that there is an even more significant message left behind by Lambrakis, a man who searched for a society that would match his ethics and ideals.
Thinking people will always attempt to find a political party that represents their own aspirations for a better life and, yet, Greek political parties of every stripe have consistently risen, disappointed, and then disappeared. Two of his children would seek election after 2010, one with conservative New Democracy, and the other with centrist Potami. That is a broad spectrum and suggests that the right/left dichotomy so prevalent in Greece since the 1920s is hopefully passé.
When I pass Lambrakis’ grave today, I wonder if he would think today’s politicians or if we, as citizens, measure up.
The Grave
 |
The Map
Footnotes
(1)The royal family and many centrist and conservative politicians had fled Greece when the Germans invaded and waited out the war in Cairo or London. That was one reason why they never spear-headed a resistance movement as effective as EAM-ELAS. Nikolaos Plastiras the leader of EDES, intended to counter the influence of EAM-ELAS remained in Paris throughout the war.
(2)The Security battalions were formed during the German occupation to counter the communist threat. They had AXIS approval and, not surprisingly, many considered them collaborators. In the aftermath. EAM-ELAS members were asked to surrender their weapons, but not the members of the security battalions – a move that made leftists suspect any agreement with the returning provisional government.
(3) EDA fought for an amnesty for prisoners still in jail so many years after the civil war. It was a divisive issue but explains why the word Amnesty was on the EDA logo.
(4) Page 198 of Evi Gkotzaridis book A Pacifist’s Life and Death- Grigorios Lambrakis and Greece in the Long Shadow of the Civil War.
(5) A novel was written about Lambrakis by Vassilis Vassilikos inspired the Greek-French film maker Costa-Gravas to make the film Z in 1969 with Yves Montand as Lambrakis.
(6) His name is buried in the small print of the website now, buried by the sponsorship of businesses in a marathon that is now a popular international sporting event.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου