Dimitris Verionis in “A” / We must always honor the victims of the Junta

“I wrote the book I wanted to read,” says o Dimitris Verionis, to immediately explain that his aim was “to honor these dead, to give justice to their families and to shed light on a hitherto unseen side of History in the Junta period”. In his book “Deaths in the junta. Murders. Anti-dictatorship action. Suspicious deaths during the period 1967-1974” (Topos publications) it encapsulates one of the hardest pages from the black book written by the April regime in our country. This page is written with names, photos, information from the life and activities of these people, but also all the information that the author’s eleven-year research on their death was able to provide. In the book 247 deaths are recorded, cases known or hidden in obscurity are investigated. Behind the tragic human stories lie mechanisms, practices and impunity. Fifty years after the fall of the Junta, the memory of these people comes back to the fore as a tragic proof of the deeds of the seven-year regime. As we discuss his book, Dimitris Verionis vividly unfolds the evidence found by his research, he talks about people who “killed themselves”, about blatantly misleading causes of death, about memory and revisionist narratives, about the challenges he had to face while researching in all these cases, he speaks mainly of historical memory. As today’s anniversary of this tragic page in our recent history brings back hard memories, the author emphasizes that “today and always we must honor the victims and not condemn them to a second death, that of oblivion”.

The recording of the dead of the Junta is an ambitious plan. How did you go about it?

It all started in 2013 after a visit to the SFEA museum in Freedom Park. During my visit there, I found that many of the posted photos of Junta victims depicted faces unknown to me. I have searched the Internet and have not been able to gather any information about these individuals, except for a 2000 Freelance article with a simple name entry. It is the well-known list of 88 names that was read every year at the Polytechnic. Searching for these dead people became my obsession. I began to search the literature and articles of the first years of the Post-colonial period. There was little, sporadic information, no extra details, just some nominal entries. From that moment on it was impossible to stop searching who these photos belonged to, who these people were and what had happened in their lives.

You gave names to all these deaths. What did you aim for with this book?

I have always been concerned with the memory-forgetting dichotomy. It was very difficult to come to terms with the idea that some people had been victims of the tyrannical regime and remained in obscurity, ignored or forgotten. It is awesome to see a photo of a young man, to know roughly what has happened as you see this particular photo next to those of the dead of the Polytechnic and other victims of the Junta, but almost nothing has been recorded about him. I was tormented by the question of who they are. Who was Lambros Tzianos, for example, Giorgos Konstantinou, Giannis Kailis, Panagiotis Petropoulos, all of them new guys. Little by little, researching, I began to learn and was gradually led to other cases as well. In a sense I wrote the book I wanted to read. However, my main aim was to honor these dead, to give justice to their families and to shed light on a hitherto unseen side of the History of the period.

For more than half a century, this side of history remains invisible. Where do you attribute it?

Postcolonial institutions seemed rather reluctant to investigate the deaths that occurred during the period of the dictatorship and shortly after its fall, but the Left was also mainly concerned with the big picture and the very current stakes of the country’s democratization, inevitably leaving behind these affairs. Some efforts were made through the Progressive Union of Mothers of Greece (PEME) and the Association of Imprisoned and Exiled Resistance 1967-1974 (SFEA), but without any result, as both were operating in a rather inhospitable political landscape. So little by little the dust settled on these cases.

In your book you talk about the “deniers” of the Polytechnic. How do you manage the revisionist narratives surrounding the dictatorship?

Historical revisionism began as early as the early Postcolonial period, based on a paradox. Those who claim that there are no dead people at the Polytechnic, apart from their so-called naive spatial approach, contradict even the announcements of the Junta that admitted 12 dead at the Polytechnic. In addition, the Tseva finding in Postcolonization records 18 confirmed deaths and 16 anonymous cases of death and deems credible the accounts that they died during the Polytechnic uprising and the violence that followed, but does not record their names. We must add that, according to the thorough research of Leonidas Kallibretakis, the dead of the Polytechnic reach 24, last year the name of Vassilis Balafoutis was added who died two months after his injury at the Polytechnic and is mentioned for the first time by the director Stavros Stagos in 2023 documentary ‘Us, not me’. In addition, in my book there are two cases of deaths of people who died due to their injuries at the Polytechnic in the following years. They are the builder Odyssea Younderis and the student Panagiotis Stasinos. There is also Giannis Filinis, the brother of Costas Filinis, who died during the police raid on his home, in the pogrom that was unleashed in the following days of the Polytechnic, as well as the students Lambros Tzianos and Giannis Kailis, who were murdered and their deaths were attributed to suicide.

It is impossible to rationally approach revisionist narratives that start from far-right ideological starting points and ideologies. We must, however, respond by understanding the hidden aims of such a discourse. A dictatorial regime cannot be judged positively or given mitigating circumstances in its actions, as it subverts the constitution, imposes itself by force and nullifies the most basic human rights through terror and silence. Through the stories of the victims recorded in the book, the murderous mechanism of a regime that served only itself, those who imposed it and their interests is demonstrated. In such a regime everyone else, even the conservative right, was seen as their enemy. Democratic police officers, such as Vlasis Sotiropoulos, clerics, such as Timotheus Lagoudakis, and military personnel, such as Ioannis Varsos, were tortured, exiled and put to death. I considered it my duty to speak about these people, to keep their memory alive and to tell the truth, because the truth rests on the memory. If, after all, the Juntas were as patriotic as they claimed, why did they go out of their way to hide their guilt for the crimes they committed, instead of being proud of them?

There are extensive references in the book to those who “killed themselves” or died in traffic accidents or from “sudden” illnesses and bullet ejections or accidental shootings. Were the murders well camouflaged?

They were very consistent in trying to camouflage themselves. Staged suicides and accidents, “sudden” illnesses, “willing” witnesses, sealed coffins and cemetery insurance blurred the image of deaths and controlled any reactions. Pharmacy student and active at the Polytechnic Lambros Tzianos was found dead in his home in December 1973 with a nylon bag over his head and his death was attributed to suicide or an accident. Yannis Kailis, student of ASKT, was found dead after falling from the fourth floor of a building in Exarchia in February 1974, but his body was found 5.5 meters away from the point of fall, in the yard of the house next door. During the exhumation, which was ordered by the prosecutor in June 1975, after the lawsuit by the lawyer Psirri, it was found that he had many fractures that had been done while he was still alive. And his own death was attributed to suicide. In 1974, the soldier Alcibiades Tzivenis allegedly shot himself with his military rifle, but he carried the bayonet. Generally, there are many “suspicious” deaths of soldiers just days before they are discharged. The soldier Yiannis Fountoulakis allegedly died of a heart attack in 1972 in a camp in Komotini where he was serving, but during the exhumation in 1975 a bullet hole was found in his shoulder blade. Another case attributed to suicide is the death of NTUA student Giorgos Konstantinos, who was found hanged in May 1973 at his home in Kypseli. His parents did not stop for a moment to question in every way the cause of death, considering that their child was murdered by the Junta. Also, there are at least four official dead during the “countermovement” of Constantine, who were killed during an exchange of fire on December 13, 1967, Sotiris Kotronias and Christos Bournakas in Komotini, Dimitris Rizos in Tanagra and Evangelos Vasilakos in Elefsina, which are systematically silenced. Deaths from disease are also recorded in places of exile, where people were literally left to their own devices. It is characteristic that the suicide of a prisoner in Leros, Konstantinos Katis, is recorded, while in other cases dying exiles were released a few days before they died in order not to die by their own hands, apparently to avoid the displeasure of world public opinion. The death of sixty-year-old Vassilis Rammos, a person who was mentioned only by name in the list of 88 names read at the Polytechnic, who died in May 1967, while on guard at the General Hospital of Patras, cannot be ignored. according to his family. he had bruises and blood on his face and body. As a patient, that is, he was tortured to death. It is worth saying that his family resorted to Justice, initially they were vindicated, then the Greek State filed a statute of limitations appeal which was decided positively at the Supreme Court due to statute of limitations on the grounds that the family did not appeal to Justice within the Junta. What haunts me is the inability to find more information on several of the victims. In many cases there is the photograph and date of death, but no other information, as no relatives or friends could be located.

How many deaths do you record in the book?

I am referring to 247 deaths for which the April regime was responsible or blamed. Deaths from anti-dictatorship action or in exile, disappearances, murders and suspicious deaths of civilians, soldiers, students, even police or military personnel. That is, the Junta state and its circles against everyone. These deaths occurred from the first day of the Junta until December 1974, that is, a few months after its fall.

What were your sources?

It is the bibliography and articles of the time, the archive of the lawyer Filanthis Psirri, the illegal resistance press, the resistance press abroad, the numerous interviews of their relatives, what from the municipal and community archives responded positively to my request. The contribution of the Archives of Contemporary Social History (ASKI), the KKE archive and the SFEA archive was important. If we want to really see what happened during the Junta period, we should open the state archives, the army archives, the police archives, because there are serious indications that much more remains in the dark than we know. This is the real duty of the State. There are many difficulties that a historical researcher faces, the inaccessible or even closed archives, the different interpretations of the regulation on sensitive personal data, but also sometimes the choice of families not to publish the stories of their dead.

You write that locating the file of lawyer Filanthis Psirri was a pivotal moment for your research. Why;

I found the name of Filanthis Psirri in the minutes of the Polytechnic trial, in the testimony of the journalist Grigoris Papadatos, who had drawn up one of the lists of victims of the Polytechnic, in September 1974, when the investigation process had begun by Tsevas. I contacted her lawyer and family and they gave me access to her file. Until then the information I could gather from other available sources was very limited. In this file I found a lot of information about “suspicious” deaths, cases for which the lawyer had filed lawsuits “against unknown perpetrators and participants.” Her file turned out to be a treasure because it mainly gave me the opportunity, and all this necessary information, to start looking for relatives of the victims, as well as important details of their cases, where they existed. This file was a good starting point with about 40 names of people who had “suspicious” deaths and were sued during the Postcolonial period. Filanthi Psirri fought these cases, often unpaid, against a state unwilling, as it turned out, to investigate the matter further. Despite her efforts, virtually all the cases she handled ended up in the file.

In other words, we are again faced with cases that have not actually been tried, with impunity.

The Junta and its circles covered up their actions, but the Postcolonial, which should have investigated these cases, preferred not to touch them. We should not forget that both in the Judiciary, in the army and the police, and in the institutions of the state, approximately the same people who staffed or helped the dictatorial regime remained. The impunity, the audacity, the political agendas of the post-constitutional state and the Justice played a decisive role in the silence of all these deaths.

Why don’t you talk about the culprits in the book?

I refer to the guilty only where there is a conviction, but again not extensively. Because in my book I wanted to give a voice to the victims. The issue is to open the discussion about the deaths of these people on a solid basis and not to close it with some conclusions of my own, which, after all, are of no interest to anyone. My goal is to continue the investigation into these and possibly other cases.

Why do you think it is useful for someone to read your book?

Because within its pages there is an important piece of history on a personal level, which has been ignored by the History of the period, and without it the picture we have of the Junta is not complete. Because even today and always we must honor the victims and not condemn them to a second death, that of oblivion.