Il passato oscuro della Grecia è scoperto dopo che 33 corpi si trovano in una tomba di massa dell’era della guerra civile

Απόσπασμα:

>Workers were installing benches at a park in the ancient [Greek](https://apnews.com/hub/greece) port city of [Thessaloniki](https://apnews.com/hub/thessaloniki) when their excavator pushed brown soil off a fragile white skull.

>They turned off the motorized equipment and set to work with pickaxes and shovels. The crew found two skeletons, then more. By March, 33 sets of bones lay in a tight cluster of unmarked burial pits in the shadow of a [Byzantine](https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-health-travel-religion-greece-7028ebc7d05921bd82759a27e89560f4) fortress.

>“We found many bullets in the heads, the skulls,” supervising engineer Haris Charismiadis said, standing on earth overturned by four months of digging.

>It’s common to find [ancient remains or objects](https://apnews.com/article/greece-antiquities-smuggling-crete-police-59b29b3b9aaa9cd403d95526d09e0071) in Greece. But hulking Yedi Kule castle was a prison where Communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during [Greece’s 1946–49 Civil War](https://apnews.com/article/greece-athens-cold-war-battle-churchill-2bb1bbc54e1b2d575a64abe0b1d21898). Tens of thousands died in the early [Cold War-era](https://apnews.com/hub/cold-war) battles between Western-backed government forces and left-wing insurgents, a brutal conflict with assassination squads, child abductions and mass displacements.

>Descendants have been coming to the site in recent weeks, leaving flowers and asking authorities to conduct DNA testing “so they can retrieve the remains of their grandfather, great-grandfather or uncle,” said Simos Daniilidis, who has served as Neapolis-Sykies’ mayor since 1994.

>As many as 400 Yedi Kule prisoners were executed, according to historians and the Greek Communist Party. Items found with the bodies — a woman’s shoe, a handbag, a ring — offer glimpses into the lives cut short.

>For the families of slain pro-Communist Greeks, the find in the Park of National Resistance is reviving a wartime legacy kept dormant to avoid reigniting old animosities. The small site has become Greece’s first Civil War mass grave to be exhumed.

Επίσης μου έκανε εντύπωση αυτό το κομμάτι που αναφέρει το γεωπολιτικό πλαίσιο του εμφυλίου + τις πολιτικές-ψυχολογικές του επιπτώσεις μέχρι σήμερα:

>U.S. President Harry Truman’s policy of anti-communist intervention — the Truman Doctrine — was presented to Congress in 1947 as a means to direct funds and military support to Greece.

>Etched on the newly excavated bones in Thessaloniki, then, is a playbook that went on to produce decades of repression, societal divisions and more unmarked graves in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Governments later addressing the Cold War-era abuses and atrocities faced a painful choice: To unearth the past — as attempted with investigative commissions in Eastern Europe and many Latin American countries — or suppress it for fear of fresh division.

>Greek emergency laws were gradually lifted and only fully abolished in 1989. Records of summary trials and executions were never made public. No political force pushed for the excavation of suspected burial sites.

>Politicians still use highly cautious language when addressing the past and the Thessaloniki discovery was met with a subdued public reaction. The find has not been directly addressed by the country’s center-right government – a reminder that many Greeks still find it easier to walk past the country’s ghosts than confront them.

Ας κλείσω με μερικά άρθρα στα ελληνικά:

* [ Συγγενείς αγωνιστών που εκτελέστηκαν επί Εμφυλίου ξεκινούν τη διαδικασία ταυτοποίησης DNA ώστε να βρουν, έστω 70 χρόνια μετά, τα οστά των ανθρώπων τους στους ομαδικούς τάφους που εντοπίστηκαν στην περιοχή πίσω από το Γεντί Κουλέ, στο Επταπύργιο Θεσσαλονίκης ](https://www.reddit.com/r/greece/comments/1jciyfo/)
* [ Γεντί Κουλέ: Οι άταφοι νεκροί ξετυλίγουν το νήμα του Εμφυλίου [ Οικογένειες που αναζητούν 75 χρόνια μετά τον Εμφύλιο τα άταφα εκτελεσμένα κορμιά των συγγενών τους. Διηγούνται τις ιστορίες των νεκρών τους και το αίτημα τους να αποκαλυφθούν οι φάκελοι του Στρατοδικείου Θεσσαλονίκης. ] ](https://www.reddit.com/r/greece/comments/1jo39a3)