2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the uprising that took place on November 17th, 1973 at the Polytechnic School of Athens,
The Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 was a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. The uprising began on November 14, 1973, escalated to an open anti-junta, anti-US and anti-imperialist revolt and ended in bloodshed in the early morning of November 17 after a series of events starting with a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic.
Prior to the crackdown, the city lights had been shut down, and the area was only lit by the campus lights, powered by the university generators. An AMX 30 Tank (still kept in a small armored unit museum in a military camp in Avlonas, not open to the public) crashed the rail gate of the Athens Polytechnic at around 03:00am. In unclear footage clandestinely filmed by a Dutch journalist, the tank is shown bringing down the main steel entrance to the campus to which people were clinging.
Documentary evidence also survives, in recordings of the "Athens Polytechnic" radio transmissions from the occupied premises. Here a young man's voice is heard desperately asking the soldiers (whom he calls 'brothers in arms') surrounding the building complex, to disobey the military orders and not to fight 'brothers protesting'.The voice carries on to an emotional outbreak, reciting the lyrics of the Greek National Anthem, until the tank enters the yard, at which time transmission ceases.
According to an official investigation undertaken after the fall of the Junta, no students of Athens Polytechnic were killed during the incident. Total recorded casualties amount to 24 civilians killed outside Athens Polytechnic campus.
These include 19-year old Michael Mirogiannis, reportedly shot to death by officer G. Dertilis, high-school students Diomedes Komnenos and Alexandros Spartidis of Lycee Leonin, and a five-year-old boy caught in the crossfire in the suburb of Zografou.
The records of the trials held following the collapse of the Junta document the circumstances of the deaths of many civilians during the uprising, and although the number of dead has not been contested by historical research, it remains a subject of political controversy. In addition, hundreds of civilians were left injured.
Four decades later, some of the leading characters in this uprising such as PASOK EU Parliamentarian Maria Damanaki, who was the voice we heard saying:"Polytechnic here, Polytechnic here", are still active in politics. (Good or bad.. that is another story) She, like many other members in her party, and the left, were the generation that ruled our country for the last four decades, and in all actuality brought it to the point that it is today, or to total economic collapse. Basically, most of the students who helped to overthrew a military junta, turned the tables on the Greek people and only became richer, selling fake leftist ideologies -based on sharing the wealth-, but only fattened their wallets.In fact most of the wealth in this country since then was acquired by people who always supported the left.
In Greece, November 17 is commemorated year after year and thousands of people flock to the center of Athens in order to partake in a march which in most cases always ends at the American Embassy. The central location for the commemoration is the campus of the Polytechneio in central Athens, -the campus of which remains closed on the 15th (the day the students first occupied the campus on 1973)-.
Students and politicians lay wreaths on a monument within the Polytechneio on which the names of Polytechneio students killed during the Greek Resistance in the 1940s are inscribed. The commemoration day ends traditionally with a demonstration that begins from the campus of the Polytechneio and ends at the United States embassy.
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