[ad_1]
Without the slightest doubt or Civil war it is the worst kind of war. The worst crimes are committed in these wars. This is the war that has a “name”. A foreign conqueror will prevail, he will also commit horrible crimes, but he will remain anonymous even after his departure. In a civil war, however, the perpetrators and the victims will have to live together after the end of the war. This is what prevents wounds from closing and burning for decades to come.
Nobody and nothing is forgotten. This is what happened in the case of actress Eleni Papadaki. A horrible, almost catastrophic event, which still causes unimaginable tension today.
Eleni Papadaki was a beloved theater actress who for many in the few years of her career on stage managed to show her undoubted talent, which at some point would make her the best Greek actress. Fate, however, had other plans …
Eleni Papadaki one step before the horrible murder
The point of the tribute you are reading is not to spend it on Papadaki’s career and construction. All this is known and it is a fact that they would take her to the top. However, Eleni Papadaki’s rise to the top appears to have played an important role in the tragic subsequent development.
The explanation is simple since there are many who, being cold observers of a complex matter, and with the consolation that now gives them the passage of time, affirm that all this was a game of envy and jealousy that at some point escaped everything control, passed to the political level and finally to the criminal.
Papadaki has been in the sights of many since the time of the occupation. Accusations that she had an illicit affair with the docile Prime Minister Ralli were circulating not only in art circles but throughout Athens.
The truth is, nobody really knows if the two of them had an affair. That they were close to each other was a fact. For some, this was enough. The charge was launched and, as usual, does not return.
This is exactly the element that Papadaki’s rivals seem to have wanted to harness to “overthrow” her from her throne.
The “trial” in the Association of Greek Actors
October 1944 could be described as the point at which the “clock” begins to count down. The Association of Greek Actors, under the leadership of Emilios Veakis, at the end of that month compiled a list of names of actors that should be eliminated because during the occupation they had kept one in one way or another (and this is an extremely mild characterization) pro-German attitude.
Wait: the dismissal from the Greek Actors Guild at the time spelled the end of his career in National theater. So theoretically many or many were interested in Papadaki being on this list.
The elected members (either as a coalition or as an opposition) in that SEI board were sacred monsters of the art space such as Horn, Kalouta, Rena Vlachopoulou, Orestis Makris and Vassilis Avlonitis (from the right wing) and Emilios Veakis, Katrakis Hands, Titos Vandis, Dimitris Myrat, Christos Tsaganeas (from the EAM-supported faction).
In the rudimentary essay that preceded the publication of the list, few (from both factions) chanted any objections to Papadaki’s presence on this list.
During this trial, the loudest voices heard were those of Papadaki’s opponents. One of them was that of Miranda Myrat, Dimitris Myrat’s half-sister, who used curb phrases and an incredible euphemism for her supposed friend and neighbor. The prewar Zen prizes Giorgos Pappas and Nikos Dendramis tried to articulate a contradiction but without success.
The trial is completed through several statements and the presidium (Theodoros Moridis, Spyros Patrikios, Christos Tsaganeas, Panos Karavousanos), decides that Papadaki’s name should be included in the list.
Arrest, gruesome execution and national mourning
Beginning in November 1944, the country was advancing rapidly towards the Civil War and the damn december. In this climate, people like Eleni Papadaki who were on similar lists were in a difficult position.
Friends and people close to her favorite actress had told her to hide for a while until the “storm” passed because it was a given that OPLA. (Organization for the Protection of Popular Combatants) its famous militia KKE would have been aware of this list and would have looked it up.
She, however, refused and the evil did not take long to occur. The following is Dimitris Myrat’s shocking description of the arrest (on December 21) of Papadakis:
“The afternoon of her arrest, she was in our house, just below hers. She was hanging out with my mother, despite the large age difference. In the next room, my father was playing cards with some friends. No I play cards, I looked. Suddenly, a frightened young man comes in with an extended pistol: “Papadaki, where is Papadaki?” Seeing so many men gathered, the invader lost what little courage he had left: “I detain them all Go ahead, let’s go to the Militia. “
He forgot about Papadaki and started to leave. And here is the fatal moment. The door opened and Eleni appeared. “Here I am, sir, what do you want?” The candle had begun to go out!
In the militia we follow the militia, along with Eleni, Emilia Karavia and myself. They held Eleni, they chased us savagely. As soon as Captain Orestes arrived, the leader of the Patission Militia began to parade in front of him. As we learned at the trial, Eleni passed, the captain took his rings and sent him hostage. When a dozen more people passed, he remembered her. “How did you say her name? Papadaki?” Isn’t she the one who was convicted in the Actors Association?
That same night, Eleni Papadaki and other detainees were taken to a secluded location at the ULEN refinery in Galatsi. There, after being horribly tortured, he was executed with two bullets to the neck by the OPLA executor. Vlassi Makarona. Orestes’s order was to execute with an ax (“for the enemies of the people we do not waste bullets”), but Macaroni probably repented and preferred a more “painless” path.
For a month Papadaki was considered missing. But everyone knew what had happened. His body was found a month later. His funeral took place on January 26, where mourning alternated with anger. His companions are present Vassilis Logothetidis, Dimitris Horn, Anna Kalouta, Andreas Filippidis, Melina merkouri, Costas Mousouris, Marika Nezer, Marika Kotopouli and others.
Alexis Solomos closes his funeral with the phrase “Eleni, forgive us!”. On the verge of collapse, Achilles Mamakis says: “You are the victim of a vulgar and indecent artistic envy … You erased them from the stage and they erased you from life so that your audience would not have you as a measure of comparison and superiority.” THE Angelos Sikelianos wrote a dedicatory epigram:
Lord Mnsthiti: By the time the killing blade flashed
and the whole god of tragedy appears.
Remember the Lord: for the hour when all of a sudden the nine sisters bowed down
to be crowned for centuries.
Even Miranda Myrat withdrew much later what she said about Papadaki, emphasizing that she was seduced by the Communists. But now it was too late.
The official position of the KKE and the public execution of Captain Orestes
When Papadaki was arrested, the Patission Militia informed family and friends that they would question her about her relationship with Ralli and release her. This testimony seems to fit perfectly with the testimony of KKE leader Vassilis Bartziotas (Fanis) who wrote about that story:
“When sections of the People’s Militia arrested the well-known actress Papadaki, teacher of the main contest, Giannis Ralli, we gave the order not to disturb her. We had a lot to learn from her. “
And this is exactly where the dangerous game of envy-jealousy went to the political level and finally to the criminal. To reach this last stage, however, it was necessary the intervention of Captain Orestes who decided to execute him and in fact the same night before anyone could even question him.
It should be noted, in fact, that neither the representative of the EAM, the medical student Costas Bilirakis, nor the old Akronafpliotis and captain of ELAS managed to be notified about the arrest of Papadaki. Nikos Andrikidis. The latter, in fact, was the one who ordered him ΕΑΜ An investigation was launched to locate Papadaki’s executors. Andrikidis completed his investigation and in his report pointed out that Orestes had everything from suspicious to criminal behavior, there were many complaints against him, while he himself confessed that it was he who gave the order for Papadaki’s execution. Andrikidis, in fact, emphasizes that “as the interrogation progressed, it was revealed that he was an agent of the Intelligence Service on our lines”!
In a short time, the perpetrators were tried by an Appeals Court that accused them of acting under the orders of the British to defame EAM, they were sentenced to death and executed in public in Koliatsou Square.
The Papadakis Executor’s Trial and Zachariadis’s “Apology”
The natural author of Papadaki’s execution, Vlasis Makaronas, was tried, convicted and executed in 1948. During his apology, he had said: “I actually killed her, they let me hit her with an ax.” I couldn’t and killed her with the gun. I don’t remember how many bullets I fired. One or two να I did this execution because I was threatened and forced by Orestes “.
The criminal act of his murder was subsequently denounced by the KKE, through, in fact, his own Nikos Zachariadis. In the XII Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the party, he recognized the execution as “excess” and condemned it …
Finally, what should be mentioned is that the biographer of the undefeated actress Polyvios Marsan, has said that the main motive for Papadaki’s murder was the envy of his companions while the actress’s family filed a lawsuit against their SEI colleagues.
[ad_2]
