그리스 반나치 운동가, 마놀리스 글레조스 (Glezos) 98세 일기로 별세

2차 세계대전 당시 반-나치 운동가, 그리스 전설, 마놀리스 글레조스 (Glezos) 가 98세 일기로 별세하셨다. R.I.P 그리스 좌파들도 조선,한국만큼 비극적 역사를 안고 있다. 

2차 세계대전 이후, 승전국 미국-영국은 발칸 반도에서 그리스를 '자본주의 블럭'으로 편입했고, 소련 스탈린은 나머지 국가들을 '공산주의 블럭'으로 가져갔다. 반 나치 전선에 싸웠던 그리스 좌익들은 고향으로 돌아왔지만, 영국 보수당 처칠 수상은 특공대를 파견해 그들을 숙청했다. 비운의 그리스 빨치산들이었다. 

반나치 동맹국 소련과 미-영의 갈등은 2차 세계대전 도중에 잠복해 있다가, 대전이 끝나갈 무렵, 이 발칸 반도에서 '냉전 cold war'가 시작되었다. 그러나 소련과 미-영-프는 유럽에서 다시 전쟁을 일으킬 수 없었다. 

결국,1950년 소련 대 미-영 국제전쟁은 한반도에서 발생했다. 발칸 반도와 한반도에서 좌익의 숙명은 여러가지로 유사했다. 아테네 아크로폴리스 광장에서 독일 나치 깃발을 내려버린 마놀리스 클레조스, 죽는 날까지 신자유주의 독재와 맞서 싸운 그의 명복을 빈다.

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Greek Resistance Hero Manolis Glezos Dies at 98

By Tasos Kokkinidis -Mar 30, 2020

Second World War Resistance fighter turned politician Manolis Glezos passed away on Monday at the age of 98.

Glezos is best remembered for his heroic act, together with Lakis Santas in 1941, of climbing Athens’ Acropolis Hill at night and taking down the Nazi swastika flag flying there early the next morning, dealing a powerful symbolic blow to the powerful occupying forces.

This incredibly courageous move later proved to be just the beginning of the great Greek resistance to the Nazi terror.

It was a gallant act, an act of proud defiance, which ultimately raised the spirits of all the Greek people and made them believe that they could indeed resist the Nazis despite their military might.

It was a clear demonstration of the indomitable power of the human spirit against the power of guns.

Born in the village of Apiranthos (Aperathu), Naxos, Glezos moved to Athens in 1935 together with his family, where a few years later he participated in the creation of an anti-fascist youth group opposed to the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese and the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas.

Glezos asked to join the Greek Army along the Albanian front to fight against Italy at the onset of World War II, but he was rejected because he was underage. During the Axis occupation of Greece, he worked for the Hellenic Red Cross and the municipality of Athens, while still being actively involved in the Resistance.

The end of World War II was not the end of Glezos’ tribulations, however. On March 3, 1948, in the midst of the Greek Civil War, he was put on trial for his political convictions and sentenced to death multiple times by the national government.

His death sentence was reduced to a life sentence in 1950. Despite still being imprisoned, Glezos was elected as a member of the Hellenic Parliament in 1951, under the flag of the United Democratic Left, also known as EDA.

Over the course of four decades, Glezos had been imprisoned numerous times by the Germans, the Italians and then by Greek rightwing and military governments, and was even tortured and put in solitary confinement.

“They say to survive in prison you should love yourself, eat and read. Well, I never loved myself, I didn’t care about food — but I constantly read,” he told the Financial Times in 2016.

After the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974, Glezos participated in the revival of EDA. He was elected a member of the Greek Parliament on a Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) ticket in the elections of October, 1981 and June, 1985.

In 1984 he was elected Member of the European Parliament, again on a PASOK ticket.

Standing alone in the rain, and with the support of a cane, Manolis Glezos pays tribute to the dead of the 1973 Students’ Uprising at the Polytechnic University in downtown Athens.

Glezos was elected as an MP for the Coalition of Radical Left (SYRIZA) party in Greece’s June, 2012 parliamentary elections.

He also served as a SYRIZA candidate for the European Parliament in the elections of May 25, 2014. He was elected to that body with over 430,000 votes, receiving more than any other candidate in Greece.

At age 91, the Resistance hero also became the oldest individual ever elected to the European Parliament in the 2014 elections.

Glezos publicly apologized in January of 2016 for having trusted Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras after the government negotiated a painful third financial bailout. The political veteran remarked at that time “I’m not disappointed, I’m furious.”