Today in Greece we celebrate, if that is the word, the
uprising against the military dictatorship. The students of the Athens
Polytechnic occupied the building, and on the 17th of November 1973
the government sent a tank crashing through the college gates. In the
subsequent fighting somewhere between 18 and 50 students and others were killed
and over 1,000 wounded. The dictatorship claimed that 11 of their people were
killed.
Although the day has not yet become an ‘Argia’ — a day, such
as saint’s days, on which shops etc. are closed — school pupils have the day
off, though there is usually a small peaceful march-past, or a singing of a song
written for the occasion, ‘Tipota den paei chameno’; ‘Nothing is ever in vain’.
The picture shows school pupils decorating the monument to
the students.
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