Grigoris Lambrakis

Grigoris Lambrakis ( Greek Γρηγόρης Λαμπράκης , born April 3, 1912 in Kerasitsa ; † May 27, 1963 in Saloniki ) was a Greek politician of left-wing socialism and an activist of the peace movement . He was murdered by right-wing extremists in 1963 after a peace demonstration.

youth

Lambrakis was born in the village of Kerasitsa in the Tegea district ( Arcadia , Peloponnese ). After high school in his hometown, he started studying at the Medical Faculty of the University of Athens .

Lambrakis was a track and field athlete. From 1936 to 1953 he held the Greek record in long jump . He also won gold medals at the annual Balkan Games , in which athletes from Greece, Yugoslavia , Bulgaria , Romania and Turkey participated.

From 1941 to 1944, during the occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers in World War II , Lambrakis took an active part in the Greek resistance. In 1943 he founded the "Union of Greek Athletes" and organized regular competitions. He used the income from these games to support food distribution points for the starving population.

Post-war activities

After the Second World War, Lambrakis completed his medical studies and worked as a lecturer in the department of gynecology . He also continued his commitment to the poor by running a small private clinic for people who could not afford medical help.

Although not a communist, Lambrakis' political and ideological orientation tended to the left. He was a committed pacifist and voted decisively against the Vietnam War . Its political platform was the Eniea Dimokratiki Aristera ( Greek Ενιαία Δημοκρατική Αριστερά ΕΔΑ , Association of the Democratic Left EDA ), the only legal left political party in the period between the Greek Civil War from 1946 to 1949 and the Greek military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974 was elected member of the Piraeus parliament in the 1961 elections to the Greek parliament . In the same year, on his initiative, the “Commission for International Disarmament and Peace” EDYE was set up in Greece. In his capacity as Vice President of this organization, Lambrakis took part in international peace meetings and demonstrations, despite frequent threats against his life. On April 21, 1963, the pacifist movement organized the first pacifist rally from Marathon to Athens. The police intervened, banned the march and arrested many demonstrators ( Mikis Theodorakis among them ). Lambrakis, protected by his parliamentary immunity , marched alone and at the end held the flag with the peace symbol that he had previously carried in Aldermaston, England during a demonstration against the stationing of nuclear weapons .

The murder

Following a peace rally on May 22, 1963 in Saloniki , Lambrakis only walked to the nearby hotel in the company of two colleagues. The police had previously cordoned off the area extensively. A small Piaggio Ape- style van appeared within the exclusion zone and ran over Lambrakis just outside the hotel. The driver and co-driver of the delivery van were the two right-wing extremists Emmanouilidis and Spyros Gotzamanis. Immediately after the incident, errors in the police's security concept raised suspicions that state or paramilitary agencies might be involved in the murder. In fact, many inconsistencies emerged later. Lambrakis died of severe head injuries as a result of the collision in hospital five days later. He was buried in the First Athens Cemetery on May 28, 1963 with great public sympathy .

The investigating magistrate Christos Sartzetakis led the criminal investigation . He relied on an uncompromising investigation of the incident and its connections and was able to prove how certain circles in the police and army had prevented investigations and were involved in cover-ups. However, charges were only made for "bodily harm resulting in death" and not for murder. The judges were accused of having made political judgments, which was followed by public outrage in large parts of the population. The judgment and history were based on the novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos , which was later filmed by Costa-Gavras .

Posthumous

Prime Minister Konstantin Karamanlis , chairman of the ERE government, was accused by Andreas Papandreou of "being the moral instigator of the murder of Lambrakis".

Karamanlis, who was seen by leftist and partly by centrist circles in his first term of office as a representative of the same repressive system, publicly asked with reference to the Lambrakis affair: “Who actually rules in this country?” With the clarification of numerous entanglements of the state organs with the subsidiary state (Parakrátos) he and the public probably became aware of his powerlessness in many things. He resigned on June 17, 1963. In the parliamentary elections on November 3, 1963 , the ERE received only 39.37% of the vote (after 50.81% in the 1961 election); Karamanlis emigrated to Paris.

In June 1963, shortly after Lambrakis' assassination that was Democratic Youth Movement Grigoris Lambrakis ( Greek Δημοκρατική Κίνηση Νέων Γρηγόρης Λαμπράκης [ΔΚΝΓΛ] ), founded in September 1964 in was Democratic Lambrakis Youth ( Greek Δημοκρατική Νεολαία Λαμπράκη ) renamed organization with the youth organization the Eniea Dimokratiki Aristera EDA united. The "Lambrakiden" were a dynamic political youth organization. In particular, they played an active role in the violent conflicts in the mid-1960s, which were sometimes accompanied by violent demonstrations, but were also involved in educational work and, for example, in the electrification of villages. Its first chairman was Mikis Theodorakis . Later the Lambrakis youth practically went into the political youth organization Rigas Feraios ; this was connected with the eurocommunist oriented KKE (domestic).

Established in 1983, the Greek athletics federation SEGAS aligned Athens Marathon is dedicated to the memory of Lambrakis.

The examining magistrate Christos Sartzetakis was President of Greece from March 1985 to May 1990 .

Web links

• http://arcadia.ceid.upatras.gr/arkadia/culture/personalities/Lambrakis/GLambrakis.htm
• "He's alive!" 50 years after the attack on Grigóris Lambrákis; by Egbert Scheunemann (PDF; 109 kB)