Greece: Black humor is also liberating

Greece is commemorating two major events in its history these days: the 80th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944 and the 50th anniversary of the restoration of democracy after the overthrow of the junta regime in 1974. The Parko Eleftherias art center combines both historical anniversaries in an impressive exhibition worth seeing: “1974 & 1944. Athens celebrates its freedom”. The rather small municipal museum was opened in 2017 as part of Documenta 14, which took place in the Greek capital as well as in Kassel. It is part of a former military dictatorship building complex. The site, which formally still belongs to the Ministry of Defense despite an “artistic overwriting,” is also home to the volunteer-run “Museum of Democratic Resistance Against Dictatorship.”

The exhibition design, designed by Argyro Batsi and Maria Florou, allows visitors to experience the two most painful periods of 20th century Greek history from their end: from the joy of the end of tyranny back to the memory of millions of suffering, persecution, arrests, torture, Deportations and countless murders.

At the entrance, the visitor enters a circle lined with screens showing snapshots of the liberation celebrations on the streets and squares of Athens. The images from 1944 and 1974 are similar: people dancing, hugging each other and waving flags; crowded cars wind their way through the streets. Everyone believes that after years of repression they can finally look forward to a hopeful future.

Both the barbarism of the Nazi occupation and the crimes of the military junta remain open wounds in Greece.

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From this circle you can turn left or right. One path leads back to the tyranny of the German occupation from April 1941 to October 12, 1944, the other to the reign of terror of the Greek colonels, the clique around the colonel of the Greek army Georgios Papadopoulos and Dimitrios Ioannidis, head of the feared military police, from June 1967 to July 1974. The 500 exhibits are lined up along two serpentine timelines. You can see photos, leaflets, newspaper articles and film clips. Resistance fighters are presented in short biographies. You don’t have to have any historical background knowledge, everything is presented clearly.

The consequences of the two black chapters of Greek history up to the present day are also briefly indicated here. A separate exhibition in the National Historical Museum is dedicated to a serious consequence of 1974, the split of the island of Cyprus, associated with the name of the junta’s mastermind, Ioannidis. Under the title “Cyprus ’74: Never forget”, the theme here is quite patriotic, in keeping with the general concept of conveying Greek history from Ottoman rule to the present day in the central museum housed in the old parliament building in Athens. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus 50 years ago, which the Greek military tried in vain to reverse, is denounced. At that time, the strange constellation arose where two NATO states engaged in a military conflict during the Cold War. To this day, Cyprus is a bone of contention between Greece and Turkey.

The exhibition shows, among other things, posters against the Turkish occupation in the north, which continues to this day. They come from Greek and Cypriot artists and NGOs as well as their international supporters. The imagery of the peace and solidarity movement is taken up here, including in particular the dove of peace. Whether these borrowings were intentional or accidental, stood for true anti-imperialism or were intended to hide stupid Hellenic nationalism, is difficult for the outside German observer to judge. In order not to question Greece’s status as a victim too much, the National Historical Museum of Athens leaves it with a “pretext” of just a few lines about how Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus came about.

How did this come about? The military dictatorship, battered by the student revolt in November 1973, had shed its skin; The winner of internal conflicts was the military police chief Ioannidis, who instigated a military coup against the elected president, Archbishop Makarios III, in Cyprus, inhabited by Greeks and Turks. The high priest had not been a friend of the Greek junta. Turkey, as a guarantor power for the Turkish Cypriots, now used the opportunity for military intervention; To date, 37 percent of the island is under Turkish control. The conflict is frozen; the spheres of influence are defined exactly to the square meter. The loss of large parts of Cyprus to Turkey was the final nail in the coffin for the Greek military dictatorship, which now also lost its support among conservative Greeks. Immediately after the Cyprus debacle, the country got rid of the junta and brought Papadopoulos and Ioannidis to justice. Some of the leading figures of the military dictatorship were tried, and the majority of those involved were granted amnesty. There was no comprehensive examination of the dictatorship and its crimes; the motto was “national reconciliation,” which may have sounded like sheer mockery to the victims of the junta and their relatives.

In the cultural venue Technopolis, a former gas power plant in the west of the city, a special attraction was offered for a fortnight as part of the overarching motto “1974 & 1944. Athens celebrates its freedom”: the comic exhibition “A Sweet Daybreak: 14 Stories about Athens”. German occupation”. This exhibition was already shown in 2016; She encourages a comic book in which the historians Yannis Koukoulas and Menelaos Charalambidis disseminate historical knowledge through city walks.

Not surprisingly given the subject matter, the brutality of the Nazi occupation and the terror with which Greek resistance was responded, the stories told are dark. A recurring motif is the hunger in Greece caused by the German raid. The number of Greeks who died directly or indirectly as a result of hunger during the years of German rule is estimated at 450,000. However, the German government continues to reject Greece’s demands for reparations for the country’s economic plunder. To depict the atrocities of the German occupation, the comic artist Tasos Maragos resorted to an artistic stylistic device that is probably only permissible in comics: splatter: in “The Roast Beef,” for example, Greek partisans observe the hated chef and Nazi collaborator Michaelis, how he feeds human flesh as roast beef to the Gestapo commander. Sometimes dark humor can be liberating.

Even if these three exhibitions do not express it explicitly: both the barbarism of the Nazi occupation and the crimes of the military junta remain open wounds in Greece and continue to have traumatic effects decades later.