Tomás Ó Flatharta

An Inspiration For All of Us Today

Manolis Glezos, Greek left-wing politician best known for his participation in the World War II resistance, passed away on Monday morning aged 98.

A sad day. Manolis Glezos, who tore the swastika down from the Acropolis in 1941, has died.

ERT has reported that the wartime icon, who had been hospitalised earlier this month with gastroenteritis and a urinary infection, died of heart failure.

https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/03/30/greek-resistance-hero-manolis-glezos-passes-away-aged-98/

98 years in the struggle for socialism, from the anti-fascist resistance to the fight against the Troika in Greece.

 

“Why do I go on? Why I am doing this when I am so old? I could, after all, be sitting on a sofa in slippers with my feet up. So why do I do this? You think the man sitting opposite you is Manolis but you are wrong. I am not him. And I am not him because I have not forgotten that every time someone was about to be executed during the war, they said: ‘Don’t forget me. When you say good morning, think of me. When you raise a glass, say my name.’ And that is what I am doing talking to you, or doing any of this. The man you see before you is all those people. And all this is about not forgetting them.”

During a visit to Corinth to take part in a farmers’ blockade, political veteran and activist Manolis Glezos did not mince his words in criticizing the Syriza-led government and PM Alexis Tsipras. In a tone that displayed his bitter disappointment over how things have turned out under the Syriza government, Glezos apologized to the Greek people for trusting Tsipras, saying that the current PM cares only about power.

 

Glezos, once a close associate of Alexis Tsipras and a former member of the European Parliament, also expressed his dismay for the use of tear gas by Greece’s riot police against protesting farmers in Thessaloniki and then went on to say that every ruling party governs in an authoritarian way.

https://greece.greekreporter.com/2016/01/29/manolis-glezos-apologizes-to-the-greek-people-for-trusting-tsipras/