The area where the 33 skeletons of the civil war executed in the Municipality of Neapoli – Sykes in Thessaloniki were found as a historic site in Thessaloniki, is demanding the Association of Greek Archaeologists.
In particular, the Association of Greek Archaeologists condens its request to “to define the area of executions as a historical place and to continue the investigation to identify all human residues that may be in the area of the unwanted dead in history”.
He points out the history of executions, but also in the agony of relatives of victims seeking to identify them and note that the materials of the Civil War “offer a great opportunity to carry out new historical and anthropological studies that will renegotiate the recent.”
Also reacts to the statement of her Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoniin the House, that the mass graves do not constitute an archaeological find, as they date in the 20th century and refer to “scandalous dismissal of responsibility and consequently non -protection of the significant finding”.
At the Museum and the Archaeological Site of Pella Lina Mendoni
The entire announcement of the Association of Greek Archaeologists:
“A shocking finding came to light a few weeks ago: As part of the work of the Municipality of Neapoli Sykes in Eptapyrgio, three group graves were identified with 33 human skeletons; soon, it became clear that they were 400 of the Civil War and the Civil War and the Civil War. Military courts. The image of the executed – well -to -do with that of the Faliro’s captives, in a creepy parallel – but also the images of the living who are still looking for their lost relatives, beyond the emotion they reasonably cause, brought back to the public dialogue one of the most difficult episodes of contemporary Greek history. This is the civil war, the materials of which are rarely preserved, offer a great opportunity to carry out new historical and anthropological studies that will renegotiate the recent past.
In this context, we were particularly awaiting the Ministry of Culture to move immediately and take all necessary steps to protect the finding area and further continuing the investigations. Instead, we were surprised to read the response of the Minister of Culture Mr. L. Mendoni to a question by MP K. Malama, that the mass graves found in the area of Eptapyrgiou (Yedi Koule) are not an archaeological find. Thus, the Ministry of Culture itself, through its political leadership, renounced its responsibilities, as they explicitly arise from Law 4858/2021 “ratification of the Code of Legislation for the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage” and which of course do not stop in antiquity or 1830, that is, where the authorities are completed. The reference to Article 2 of the Law of the Law is characteristic: ‘Historical sites are meant either land or sea or in the lakes or rivers that have been or indications that they have constituted the space of excellent historical or mythical events, or areas containing or in which it exists or in which there are 18 Subsequently of 1830, which constitute characteristic and homogeneous spaces, which can be delineated topographically, whose protection is required due to their folklore, ethnological, social, technical, architecture, industrial or generally historical, artistic or scientific significance. “
The scandalous dismissal of responsibility and the consequent non -protection of the important finding is therefore not a place based on the law: on the contrary, it is a clear bureaucratic overthrow that conceals the conservative shift of the Ministry of Culture, referring to the darkest times of post -Greek Greece. This ministerial-government position does not merely ignore the concept of the historical place, provided by the archaeological law itself; it mainly ignores the progress made in the Transition on the part of the official policy of recognizing the militants of the National Resistance and the restoration of the politically persecuted Greeks. It also ignores modern developments in the science of archeology, the development of the archeology of “modern past” and the transcendence of the partition between the present and the past it has brought about forming new forms of theory and practice.
The Eptapyrgio, a symbolic space with a heavy political and emotional burden, was not rehabilitated during its building rehabilitation after the transfer of prisons in 1989 (cells, isolation sites, the central church of St. Eleftherios were preserved after the relevant opinion of the Council). The Ministry of Culture’s response – which does not even mention that the dead are executed by the civil war, the bodies of which were never given to their relatives – attempts to put a historical chapter of Thessaloniki and Greece on the sidelines, drawn up with a dark historiographical and political era. But we have gone a long way to allow it to return to times.
We seek respect for historical memory with what is institutional and morally provided for the remains of those executed in Eptapyrgio.
The Association of Greek Archaeologists calls for the self -evident: to define the area of executions as a historical place and to continue the investigation to identify all human residues that may be in the area of the unwanted dead in history. “