The bodies found in Greece Mass had

The workers were installing banks in a park in the old city of the Greek port of Bessaloniki when their excavator pushed the brown ground of a fragile white skull.

They turned off the motorized team and started working with pickox and shovels. The crew found two skeletons, then more. In March, 33 sets of bones He lies in a tight group of burial wells without marking in the shadow of a Byzantine fortress.

“We found many bullets in the heads, the skulls,” said Supervisor Engineer Haris Charismiadis, standing on the earth overturned for four months of cavation.

It is common to find old remains or objects in Greece. But Yedi Kule’s castle was a prison where communist supporters were tortured and executed during the 1946–49 civil war. Tens of thousands died in the first battles of the cold war era between the governmental forces backed by the West and the insurgent of the left, a brutal conflict with murder squads, children’s kidnappings and massive displacements. News themezone journalist George Polkthat he had represented the Greek right as corrupt, it was Among those killed During the war.

The archaeological service of Greece cleared the site for development because the bones are less than 100 years old. But the authorities in Neapolis-Sykies, a suburb of the coastal city of Bessaloniki, continued with excavation, saying that the possibility that finding has “great historical and national importance.”

The descendants have come to the site in recent weeks, leaving flowers and asking the authorities to perform DNA tests “so that they can recover the remains of their grandfather, great-grandfather or uncle,” said Simos Daniilidis, who has served as mayor of Neapolis-Sykies since 1994.

Up to 400 prisoners of Yedi Kule were executed, according to historians and the Greek communist party. The items that meet with the bodies (a woman’s shoe, a bag, a ring) offer glimpse in the cut lives.

War legacy

For the families of the murdered pro-communist Greeks, the finding in the National Resistance Park is reviving a legacy in times of war kept inactive to avoid reviving old animals. The small site has become the first tomb of the Mass of the Civil War of Greece to be exhumed.

The government forces executed Agapios Sachinis, 19, after he refused to sign a statement that renounced his political beliefs.

“These are not simple matters,” said his homonymous nephew during a recent visit to the site.

“It is about carrying within you not only courage, but the values ​​and dignity that will not be committed, even to save your own life,” said Agapios Sachinis, 78.

A retired member of the Communist City Council, Sachinis was imprisoned in the 1960s for his political activity during the dictatorship. Today, the Communist Party of Greece belongs to the political current, largely thanks to its role in the resistance of World War II.

If the remains of the uncle of Sachinis are identified, he said, Maline will and keep the ashes in his house.

“I want Agapios to be close to me, at least while I am alive,” he said.

Cold War Play Book

The Civil War of Greece began as a result of World War II. After the destruction of the entire continent, he quickly lost international attention, but the conflict marked a turning point: the policy of US president Harry Truman of anti -communist intervention, the Truman doctrine, he presented himself to Congress in 1947 as a means to direct military funds and support to Greece.

Recorded in the bones freshly excavated in Salares, then, it is a play book that went on to produce decades of repression, social divisions and more unmarked tombs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Then, governments went to the abuses and atrocities of the Cold War era faced a painful choice: to dig up the past, as tried with the investigation commissions in Eastern Europe and many Latin American countries, or suppress it for fear of a new division.

Greek emergency laws gradually rose and only abolished in 1989. The records of summary judgments and executions were never made public. No political force pressed for the excavation of the suspicious burial sites.

Politicians still use highly cautious language when addressing the past and the discovery of Thessaloniki found a moderate public reaction. The finding has not been approached directly by the central government of the country’s right, a reminder that many Greeks still find it easier to go through the country’s ghosts than to confront them.

Decades ago, the neighborhood park in Thessaloniki, a densely populated port city of one million with ruins of the ancient Greek, Roman and Ottoman epochs, with influences from historically strong Balkans and Jews, it was a field on the outskirts of the city. Today, it is frequented by retirees and ringed by apartment buildings full of middle -class families. During the construction, the residents whispered that bones were discovered when foundations were placed, but no investigation was conducted.

“Flowers of your generation”

The executions of the army shooting squads extended to the 1950s and were announced publicly, but the tombs were unmarked and secret. The author and historian Spyros Kouzinopoulos, native of Thessaloniki, spent decades investigating the executions in Yedi Kule, including the indignities suffered by the prisoners in their last hours.

After a military court issued a death sentence, the main guard would take the prisoner convicted of lonely confinement in small cells barely large enough to stand. Many would use their last hours to write letters to their families. At dawn, the main guard and two others would recover the prisoner and deliver them to the shooting squad. Most were charged in trucks to avoid attracting public attention. Sometimes they were taken to their death on foot.

Most of the victims were just adults, young kouzinopoulos called “flowers of their generation.”

Two 17 -year -old schoolgirls, Nikolaidou Efpraxia and Eva Kouozidou, were executed while using their uniforms, he said.

“It shook me to the nucleus,” said Kauzinopoulos.

DNA test

The city officials are taking measures to perform DNA tests in the remains and urging the families of the disappeared to present genetic material. In this way, bodies can be identified and returned to relatives.

Agapios Sachinis, the septuagenarian whose uncle was executed, is among the anxious to provide DNA.

Mayor Daniilidis has ordered an expansion of excavation to other parts of the park in the coming weeks.

In a statement, the city said the efforts to find other massive tombs would continue “so that all the skeletons of the people who lost their lives in this way during the dark years of the civil war and were not given the honors traditionally attributed to the dead.”

In:
• Civil war
• Greece