Dear reader,

This is our weekly round-up from Greece.
 

But first, please, consider becoming a member. It’s important because we want to grow this newsletter as there is more space for analysis around Greece. Support us so we can sustain AthensLive and grow our community.

You can give 2.5€, 5€, 10€, and 35€ on Steady. You can always make a one-off donation by clicking here. You can spread the word by FWding this email to your friends and inviting them to support us if you believe it’s worth it.

AthensLive needs your support so we can keep doing what we do!
 

And now, the news from this week.

Internationally renowned great Greek composer and legendary political activist Mikis Theodorakis has died.

The government reshuffle brought a Holocaust denier to the Ministry of Health.
 

Theodorakis was much more than a great composer: He was an embodiment of Greece’s history.

Legendary cultural and political figure Mikis Theodorakis died at his house on Thursday 2 September, 9.30 am, at the age of 96.

His life, running through almost a whole century, was like a movie. He had been incredibly successful as his songs were cherished and sung by millions of people across the globe. But he had also been deeply involved in Greece’s political and social struggles: he had been persecuted, tortured, exiled.

“I am not a hero,” he had said at some point. “Heroes die young. I am just a citizen doing his duty.”

Born on 29 July 1925 on the Greek island of Chios, Theodorakis spent his childhood in different cities of Greece. In 1942, living with his family in Tripolis (Greece), 17-year-old Theodorakis heard orchestral music for the first time in his life. It was Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the soundtrack to a German movie he happened to watch at the cinema. He was so thrilled that he became feverish. Mikis then told his father that this is what he was going to do in his life - and started music school in Athens.

By then, Greece was already under Axis occupation. In March, the same year, Mikis participated in leftist Greece’s National Liberation Front (EAM) demonstration in Tripolis. He was arrested and harshly tortured by the Italians - but he did betray any of his co-fighters. It was during his imprisonment there that he came to know Marxism from the people who were imprisoned with.

After that, he left for Athens in 1943 and enrolled at the Athens Conservatoire to study composition. He had already joined a Reserve Unit of EAM’s armed branch - the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS). After World War II, the EAM-ELAS partisans that had courageously fought the Nazis were now conveniently named “traitors” as it had been secretly decided in the Yalta Conference that Greece would be in the Western sphere of influence. British forces in collaboration with now foreign-appointed Greek authorities (many of whom had been Nazi collaborators) would now be in full war against the communists. A peaceful EAM demonstration was attacked by state forces leaving several dead and causing the infamous Dekemvriana clashes, an incident that sparked the Civil War. Theodorakis took part in the Dekemvriana, while during the Civil War, along with other communists, he was arrested, and sent into exile on the island of Icaria and later Makronisos. There, he was again tortured and subjected to mock executions by being buried alive. He also contracted tuberculosis. However, even under these grim conditions, he continued to write music, including his first symphony. His own experiences were often put into partiture.

In 1950, the civil war had ended, and Theodorakis was finally able to graduate from the Athens Conservatoire. In 1953 he married Myrto Altinoglou, with whom he would have two children. The following year, together with his wife, he left for France under a state scholarship, to study at the Paris Conservatoire. There he composed music for ballet and cinema scores. At the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, he was awarded the Gold Medal by a Jury chaired by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Theodorakis was becoming increasingly famous on an international level. He composed scores for Michael Powell’s films Ill Met by Moonlight (aka Night Ambush, 1957) and Honeymoon (1959); the latter featured “Honeymoon Song”, a famous piece which has by then been reprised by many artists including the Beatles. His ballet ‘Antigone’ was performed at the Covent Garden in London on 19 October 1959 - and it was greatly praised by the critics. Dancers included the legendary Margot Fontayne and Rudolf Nureyev. Mikis’s compositions in English lyrics have been sung by great artists like Shirley Basey, Edith Piaf, and Joan Baez.

What is extremely important is that Theodorakis achieved the seemingly impossible: He composed music for the poetic works of great, internationally renowned poets including Nobel winners Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, Yannis Ritsos and Pablo Neruda. These demanding poetic works slipped their way through Theodorakis’ imposing music to the last person of the society. As he was emphasizing humanistic ideals, human suffering, and struggle, he was adored by the lower strata of society.

Making great poetry popular through great music was probably his most significant contribution to contemporary Greek culture.

In 1960, Theodorakis returned to Greece and recorded his most prominent works. It is his works from this period that are often based on poems or entire poetic collections by Greek and foreign artists, including Axion Esti (Odysseas Elytis), Mauthausen (Iakovos Kambanellis), Romiossini (Yannis Ritsos), and Romancero Gitano (Federico García Lorca). It was then that he developed -especially with Axion Esti- his concept of "metal symphonic music": symphonic compositions that go beyond the "classical" status and mix symphonic elements with popular songs, Western symphonic orchestra, and Greek popular instruments.

It was also during this period that he composed music for Greek and international films including Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962), Raymond Rouleau’s The Lovers of Teruel (1962), and Michael Cacoyannis’ Electra (1962). In 1964, he also composed one of his most iconic tunes: the main theme for Cacoyannis’ Zorba the Greek, ever since considered the epitome of Greek dance music, usually referred to as “Zorba dance” or the “Syrtaki dance”.

After the assassination of progressive politician and peace activist Gregoris Lambrakis in May 1963, Theodorakis was elected president of the newly-founded Lambrakis Democratic Youth, a political organization that played a decisive role in Greece's progressive movement of the 1960s. At the 1964 national elections, Theodorakis became an MP with the left-wing party EDA. Due to his political views, many of his songs were censored or banned from airplay at the time. There was no junta (yet), but the regime was anti-communist.

And then, the Greek junta was imposed in 1967 (and lasted until 1973). They repressed, imprisoned, tortured, and exiled thousands of dissidents. Theodorakis went underground and founded the resistance movement "Patriotic Front" (PAM). Until this time, for most Greeks, Theodorakis and his music were symbolizing resistance. The junta knew that and it had forbidden his songs. Theodorakis was once again arrested. But his rebellious music was persistently sung by Greeks. It was like reminding them how valuable their freedom is. If you were caught singing a Theodorakis song during the dictatorship, it was considered an act of resistance - and you would have been arrested.

In prison, Theodorakis went on a hunger strike for which he was also hospitalized. Then, in 1968, he was sent into exile. His health deteriorated there, giving rise to a solidarity movement, including personalities like Laurence Olivier, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Dmitri Shostakovitch. Even the generals couldn’t do much under such international pressure, Mikis was released and allowed to leave for Paris in 1970, where he was soon joined by the rest of his family.

There, he began an international campaign of concerts and contacts with world leaders that helped topple the regime in Athens four years later. His most famous works from that period include a musical setting of Pablo Neruda's Canto General and the now-famous main theme for Sidney Lumet’s film Serpico (1973).

Theodorakis wrote anthems of wartime resistance and socialist tone poems about the plight of workers and oppressed peoples. His most famous work on political persecution was the haunting “Mauthausen Trilogy,” named for a World War II Nazi concentration camp used mainly to exterminate the intelligentsia of Europe’s conquered lands. It has been described as the most beautiful music ever written on the Holocaust.

After the Junta fell in July 1974, Theodorakis immediately returned to Greece. In 1978 he ran for mayor of Athens under the auspices of the Greek Communist Party. He was elected to Parliament with the Communist Party in 1981 and 1985. In a controversial move that surprised and disappointed many, in 1990 he ran as an independent candidate supported by New Democracy, and served as a Minister of State from 1990 to 1992, in the government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis (father of the current Prime Minister Kyriakos).

In 1983 he was awarded the Lenin Prize for Peace. In 1993, he was honored by the US Senate for his services to culture and humanity.

Theodorakis never rested on his musical glory. He was politically active until his very last years. His vast political activism includes facilitating the negotiations between the Israeli government and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1972. He participated in the Greek-Turkish cultural bridge for friendship in the mid-80s. He gave concerts against nuclear power, for Amnesty International, against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. All these, while non-stop composing. In 2002, for example, he presented his pacifist opera “Lysistrata.”

When Greece entered the Memorandums in 2010, which kicked the country into a lasting crisis, Theodorakis, at his 85, undertook political action once again. On 1 December 2010, he founded the movement “Spitha” to fight the Memorandums. On 1 February 2012, he joined forces with legendary partisan Manolis Glezos and Law Professor Giorgos Kassimatis to present the movement United Popular Democratic Resistance - a front against the Memorandums.

In February 2012, Theodorakis and Glezos participated in a huge demonstration at Syntagma square against the memorandums. They were both sprayed with tear gas by the riot police. The event that caused huge outrage and disgust across Greece. The whole country bowed once again to these two landmark figures of Greece that had never given up fighting for their ideals.

In 2017, Theodorakis was calling again the people to protest “against the 4th, catastrophic Memorandum.”

His last -controversial- political activism was his participation on 4 February 2018 in the demonstration against the Prespes Agreement with which the Northern Macedonia name issue was resolved. 

Addressing a personal letter to the Communist Party of Greece leader Dimitris Koutsoumpbas, dated 5 October 2020, Mikis wrote:

“Now, at the sunset of my life, at the time of reminiscing, all details are being erased from my memory and I cherish only the ‘Big Things.’ Thus, I now see that I spent my most crucial, strongest, and more mature years under the Communist Party flag. For this reason, I want to say farewell to this world as a communist.”

It’s worth noting his words in one of his last articles, on 11 January 2021, where he was writing with deep disappointment that culture has decayed to point zero in Greece since 2010 that the crisis began:

“The problems that the ship HELLAS is facing today are connected with the Engine Room and typhoon Turkey. But the port to which it should be heading is Education and Culture. And who would take care of the route, since both the government and the opposition are preoccupied only with the Engine Room and the stormy weather with no cultural vision?

At some point, the Engine Room will be fixed and there will be calm in the sea.

Then -and only then- the political leadership will discover that the port we are in is a sea lagoon with no exit and with its sole cultural sound the sound of the frogs.”

And about Freedom, he had said:

“Nothing is more necessary and valued for a Man than Freedom. If you don’t have food, if you don’t have conveniences in life, then you suffer. If you don’t have Freedom, then you don’t exist.”

Greece declared three-day national mourning for this Great Greek.

In something that seems like a farce of history, the decision was made by a far-right Minister, the Minister of Interior Makis Voridis.

As Mikis wrote, Greece is at point zero. To honor the memory of this landmark figure, would be to cherish freedom and fight for it; to cherish culture and fight for the cultural revival of the country.

Farewell, Mikis. Thank you for everything.
 

A Holocaust denier is Greece’s new Health Minister.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proceeded to a quite long-awaited cabinet reshuffle.

He removed Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoides, a hard-liner despite coming from the PASOK party. However, Chrysochoides seems to have been removed not for the beatings and arbitrary arrests of citizens (to which we have repeatedly referred in this newsletter) nor spending large on new police vehicles. Rather, it was probably to appease voters disappointed by the handling of the fires or because Chrysochoides hadn’t managed to proceed with a successful bid for the new IDs. He has been replaced by Takis Theodorikakos.

In the crucial Ministry of Health, minister Vassilis Kikilias has been moved to the Ministry of Tourism. He was replaced with far-right Thanos Plevris.

Plevris is the son of lawyer and politician Konstantinos Plevris, an unapologetic Junta theoretician and Holocaust denier. Of course, the sins of a parent should not be attributed to his children, but in this case, Thanos has been following his father’s steps.

He had defended his father and his comments suggesting the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland should be kept in good condition 'so it could be used again', arguing such views should not be considered hate speech or incitement.

“When you are here, you will not have social welfare, you will not be able to eat, drink or go to the hospital,” Thanos Plevris was saying in 2011 in an event of the far-right magazine “Patria” referring to migrants.  “They should be worse here than in their countries. Hell should seem like paradise compared to their lives here.” He clearly stated also he was in favor of shooting people at the borders: “Guarding borders cannot exist without losses, and -to make myself completely clear- when there are no dead people.” Of course, he has also taken a stance in favor of controlled closed structures for migrants.

Shortly after his appointment, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece KIS expressed concern over Plevris’s appointment and called him to apologize over his Auschwitz statement at a Greek court in 2019, where he defended his father, a declared anti-Semite, Konstantinos Plevris. Plevris apologized to the Jewish people and asserted he opposes any form of anti-Semitism. He posted his apology on social media on Wednesday afternoon.

It is worth noting that Plevris is the third Minister who has been called to apologise for antisemitism. The other two were now Minister of Interior Makis Voridis and Development Minister Adonis Georgiadis. All three were members of the now dissolved far-right party LAOS.

Moreover, Plevris has made dubious statements on vaccines. It was only last July he was saying that “the government’s responsibility is to make vaccines available, not to persuade the people to vaccinate against coronavirus.” He added: “If a citizen does not want to have a vaccine, is it my responsibility to persuade him to have it?” These statements came at a time that the government was emphasizing persuading the citizens to vaccinate.

In an earlier time, back in 2010, when Plevris was still a member of LAOS, he was stating as to the H1N1 vaccines that scientists were trying to persuade people to vaccinate “by creating fear, when we have a new product, not tested, on the experimental phase and while not all clinical trials have been concluded. WHO decided to make it earlier available, but that does not mean the prerequisites are fulfilled. We were listening to scientists saying that it is criminal negligence not to have the jab, without being able to answer what the necessity of it is… We are in the neoliberal era, the patient will decide what to do, and will not be under pressure.”

As to other appointments, the PM also removed deputy minister of health Vassilis Kontozamanis and replaced him with Asimina Gaga, a doctor - and the only woman who gets a post in the reshuffle.

The cabinet reshuffle included the introduction of a Civil Protection Ministry that will also have jurisdiction over the Fire Service. Head of Civil Protection Nikos Hardalias has been moved to the Ministry of Defense as Deputy minister. Evangelos Apostolakis, an admiral of the Greek Navy officer and Minister of National Defense under left-wing SYRIZA government was appointed to lead the new ministry. However, in a move that caught the government by surprise, Apostolakis turned down the position.

Apostolakis’ appointment triggered an outrage with SYRIZA that criticized the conservative Prime Minister that he attempted an under the table so-called “co-governance” with the left-wing.

Government sources had previously told the media that with Apostolakis’ appointment there were efforts for a cross-party appointment and that SYRIZA and KINAL were informed in advance.

After turning down the position, Apostolakis clarified he thought his appointment was in agreement with SYRIZA and that, since there is no cross-party consent, he cannot accept the job.

According to some media, before turning down the post, Apostolakis is said to have called SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras and told him that “they set a trap, they told me there was consent. I understand from your reaction that there is no consent.”

For the moment, it seems that the Fire Service remains under the jurisdiction of the Ministry for Citizen Protection and the Civil protection is run by the secretary-general of Civil Protection until a new minister is appointed.

Following the incident, the government called the ex-head of the Greek Armed Forces a coward:  “Mr. Apostolakis proved that he is not up to the task. He showed cowardice in the face of Syriza’s threats. He yielded to the party and withdrew from the call to serve his country. A shame for his legacy.”

The new formation:

Civil Protection Minister: Evangelos Apostolakis
Citizen Protection Minister: Panagiotis Theodorikakos
Health Minister: Athanassios (Thanos) Plevris
Alternate Health Minister: Asimina Gaga
Tourism Minister: Vasilis Kikilias
Deputy Foreign Minister for Greeks Abroad: Andreas Katsaniotis
Deputy Defence Minister: Nikos Hardalias
Deputy Rural Development and Food Minister: Simos Kedikoglou
Transport and Infrastructure Deputy Minister Michalis Papadopoulos
Deputy Infrastructure Minister: Giorgos Karagiannis
Deputy Minister for Rural Development: Simeon Kedikoglou (an MP from Evia, which was largely destroyed by the wildfires).
 

Read.
 

Foreign media on the death of Mikis Theodorakis.

The Greek Universities will welcome circa 14,000 students less than last year, as this year’s entry exams left almost 40,000 children out of Higher Education, thanks to a monstrous new system setting the threshold base put in place by Education Minister Niki Keremeos. Some departments were even left without first-year students. While these children were feeling their dreams have been lost, PM Mitsotakis was informing the media he was traveling to the US to register his daughter to the expensive Yale University. Shortly after, reports were referring to massive changes in Higher Education, including the closing down of departments. It seems like a well-designed plan.

“We do not want a repeat of uncontrolled massive migration flows like in 2015,” Greek PM tells BSF.

Council of Europe slams Greece’s deportations and returns bill.

Xenophobic protest as refugee children doll Amal walks through Larissa.

Pope Francis to visit Greece and Cyprus later in autumn.

Soccer player Semedo arrested in Athens over rape allegations; Olympiakos’ reaction.

Kyparissia: Body found inside a wall may belong to missing Romanian woman.

Greek gov’t sends 10K hospital workers home for being “unvaccinated”; strong reactions.

Council of State rejects appeal to “freeze” compulsory vaccination for hospital doctors & workers.

Anti-vaxxers protest in Athens: Religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis.

 

And don’t forget!

Become a member!

Your membership enables us to produce more 100% ad-free content and continue delivering our independent journalism. You can give 2.5€, 5€, 10€, and 35€ on Steady. You can always make a one-off donation by clicking here, but we prefer you to become a member so we can include you in our international community and start to interact in meaningful ways.

Do you have an Instagram account? We want to tell more engaging stories with photos from FOS PHOTOS archive. Follow us on Instagram. We won't use any unnecessary hashtags. Promise.
 
Are you a journalist? Do you have a good story? Here's how to pitch AthensLive.

Is there more stuff you'd like to hear from us? Do you have any ideas about how we could make our newsletter better for your understanding of Greece? Drop us a line at info[at]athenslive[dot]gr
 
If you enjoy our newsletter, then please share it with your friends and colleagues. The more people we can get involved with, the better this will be. Here's the latest version of our newsletter.
 
Thank you for supporting journalism and democracy.
 
Stay safe.

AL