On Monday, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou
attended the ceremonial raising of the Greek flag on the Acropolis in honor of the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Athens from the Nazis on October 12, 1944.
President Sakellaropoulou also visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside of the Greek Parliament building.
After three and a half years of brutal occupation, the Nazi soldiers left Athens, taking down their flag which they had installed on the Acropolis after taking over the country.
By early November of 1944, every Nazi soldier had left Greece, signaling the end of one of the most violent and oppressive periods in Greece’s long history.
On October 12, 76 years ago, the streets of Athens were filled with joyous men, women, and children, all wearing patriotic symbols of Greece, celebrating their freedom from the hated German forces — and their own perseverance throughout the hellish years of the Second World War.
In her speech, President Sakellaropoulou made reference to the recent trials of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, which ruled that the fascist group had indeed been a criminal organization fronting as a political party.
She strongly denounced the criminal organization and its ideology awhile honoring those who fought for freedom so long ago.
In her remarks she stated “We bow with respect to the memory of those who fought for freedom, with the hope that we will never see again in our homeland, in the country that gave birth to democracy, those who are nostalgic for ideologies that steeped the world in blood, or those who express the ideas of, and support, Nazism and fascism.”
Source: greekreporter
