myplace (memory, youth, political legacy and civic engagement

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MYPLACE: FP7-266831 www.fp7-myplace.eu

Deliverable 2.1: Country based reports on historical discourse production as manifested in sites of memory

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MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy And Civic Engagement)Grant agreement no: FP7-266831

WP2: Interpreting the past (The construction and transmission of historicalmemory)

Deliverable 2.1: Country based reports on historical discourse production asmanifested in sites of memory (Greece)

Editors Alexandra Koronaiou, Anna Mantoglou, Irini Chiotaki-Poulou, SteliosKymionis, Evangelos Lagos, Alexandros Sakellariou, Andreas Zachariadis

Version 2.0

Date 27.12.2012

Work Package WP2: Interpreting the past (The construction and transmission of historicalmemory)

Deliverable Deliverable 2.1: Country based reports on historical discourse productionas manifested in sites of memory (Greece)

Dissemination level PU: Public use

WP Leaders Anton Popov (UW) and Dušan Deák (UCM)

Deliverable Date November 2012

Document history

Version Date Comments Modified by

V1.0 30.11.2012 First draft AK, IC-P, SK,EL, AS

V2.0 7.12.2012 Final draft AK, IC-P, SK,EL, AS

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Page Contents

3 1. Introductory sections

3 1.1. Context information

4 1.2. Note on methodology

6 1.3. Theoretical framework

11 1.4. Historiographical outline

13 2. Memories of the ‘difficult past’ and the dominant historical narrative

19 2.1. Historical discourses of the ‘difficult past’ and the sites of memory

19 2.1.1 The ASKI and their ‘public mission’

21 2.1.2 The main body of visitors

23 2.1.3 The visitors’ interests

24 2.1.4 The traumatic past

27 2.1.5 Mainstream and alternative narratives of the past

27 2.1.6 Young people and ASKI

29 2.2. Young people’s experiences of memories about ‘problematic’ periods of national

history

30 2.2.1 The traumatic past

36 2.2.2 Memory and alternative narratives

38 2.2.3 Collective (oral) memory and official (written) history

42 2.2.4 Social Oblivion: The traumatic events’ absence from public discourse

44 2.2.5 The impossibility of the objective recording of historical events

46 2.2.6 Τhe overcoming of the division is the national entity “Greece”

46 2.2.7 Τhe influence of the past on the present and vice versa

49 2.2.8 The emergence of neo-Nazism in Greece: ‘Golden Dawn’

50 3. Concluding remarks

54 4. References

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1. Introductory sections

1.1 Context information

Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI) is the public institution we collaborated with in

order to study the discourses regarding Greece’s difficult past. The ASKI is a non-profit

organization and is interwoven with historical research, developed by a group of historians, political

scientists and former politicians. Their creation is connected with the Greek left-wing parties from

1940 to 1974 and from late 1990 they provide records of these parties in the investigation. The

access to their material is free, also through the Internet where a growing number of digitized pages

can be found.

The ASKI inherited a huge stock of party records (5,000,000 pages). Of particular interest is the

archive of the Communist Party (1940-1974), because this was an archive that for many years was

not open to the researchers and because the communist party was illegal until 1974. Also, there are

collections for other political parties and institutions, youth, trade and social organizations,

associations of resistance, political prisoners, student associations, active in Greece and abroad

during the dictatorship, women, and many personal collections of individuals. Special collections

are home to the illegal partisan press, leaflets, and posters. Moreover, as one expert underlined

(GRE1)1, ASKI is one of the few archives, not to say the only one, that systematically collect

material from very recent times. The most recent archives are about the December riots of 2008 or

the educational reforms. The library specializes in the periods of occupation, the resistance, the civil

war 1946-1949, the imprisonment and exile 1936-1974, dictatorship and dictatorship struggle 1967-

1974. The ASKI have decided that they don’t keep closed files and all their material should come in

the survey, die to an external ethics committee which declassifies the records.

The ASKI maintain a scientific profile and at the same time attempt to articulate a different

1The system of referencing to the expert interview starts with the country code (GR), is followed with E for expert

interview along with the number that is allocated to this particular expert.

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discourse on the past in relation to the dominant narratives. Considering that history should not be

left in enclosed pundits, ASKI believe in many alternative narratives in a democratized history, a

‘history from below’. Much of their material and activities are related to the civil war and the

dictatorship. The ASKI participate in the public dialogue on the historical narratives with regular

seminars, events and collaboration with universities, conferences, workshops and exhibitions (e.g.

in towns with material on local history). In the publishing area, ASKI edit Archeiotaxio, an annual

journal (with many texts devoted to the ‘problematic’/ ‘difficult’ past). In the series ‘Testimonies’

they collect memoirs of the resistance, civil war and dictatorship fighters. In another series called

‘Directories’, with highly documented introductions, they present the available material of their

collections. They organize events such as weekly seminars with ASKI scholars and other academics

e.g., Civil Wars in Europe in the 20th Century, 2000, The WW II (1939-45) and Greece (1940-44):

Focal Points for Research and Interpretation, 2005-6, The Historiographical Searches for the

National Resistance (1945-1982), 2006, The Greek Civil War (1946-1949): The View of the

Democratic Army of Greece, 2008, Tales of Files and Party Stories of the 20th Century, 2010-11,

Military Dictatorship 1967-1974: Facts and Alternative Interpretations, 2011-12.

1.2 Note on methodology

We conducted five focus groups and five interviews with experts, all of which took place in ASKI.

In the focus groups participated 24 young boys and girls (13 girls and 11 boys) aged between 17

and 25 years old all of them living in the region of Athens. All the focus groups were conducted

from February to June 2012. The participants were university students, school students, university

students who were also part-time employees, unemployed. One of the focus groups consisted of the

so-called ‘historical activists’ i.e. university students who were studying history basically in a post

graduate level and were also attending the archives of ASKI in order to conduct their research. As

we mentioned above we also conducted five interviews with experts interrelated with the ASKI,

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three men and two women, during the same period of time.

The material we gathered from the focus groups and the interviews was of about 15 hours

recorded time and of about 340 pages of transcription. During the focus group discussion we used

some visual elicitation tools. First of all we used a video from a film of a well known Greek

director, Pantelis Voulgaris, and his recent movie on the Greek civil war, entitled Psychi Vathia

(Deep Soul, 2009). Additionally, we used some photographs and documents from the archive of the

ASKI from the two of the main traumatic periods, the civil war and the military junta and the

uprising of the Polytechnic School.2 What was really interesting was that many young people could

not identify the places and the time of the events in the photos we show them and this of course is

related to the lack of the historical knowledge.

Conducting ethnographic research within an archive is not an easy task. Contrary to a museum,

where the researcher has the opportunity to study visitors’ reactions and ask them about their ideas

and thoughts this was not the case for our study. However, we visited the ASKI many times both for

the interviews and the focus groups, but also in order to discuss with the people who work there,

archivists, librarians and historians about the material of the archive. Furthermore, we visited all the

buildings of the archive which are all situated in the same area at the centre of Athens in a walking

distance of 5-10 minutes between them; they explained us the utility of each place and we managed

to get some photographs. Apart from this overview of the historical place we attended a two-day

book fair that was organized by the ASKI in their main building. There, except from buying some

books, we had the time to get some photographs and a short video of the place and the people

2 http://62.103.28.111/photographic/rec.asp?id=79641&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/photographic/rec.asp?id=88173&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/ds/rec.asp?id=87181&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/photographic/rec.asp?id=88107&nofoto=0 (fourth photo from the left)http://62.103.28.111/ds/rec.asp?id=81858&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/neolaia/rec.asp?id=70484&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/photographic/rec.asp?id=75084&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/photographic/rec.asp?id=75092&nofoto=0http://62.103.28.111/photographic/rec.asp?id=75956&nofoto=0

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visiting the fair. Many of them were young people, who were coming to see and buy books, which

were related to the left and the so-called traumatic periods of the Greek historical past, e.g. books

about the German occupation, the Greek civil war, the military junta and the uprising of the

Polytechnic School; in addition there were books of international interest regarding the USSR, the

Spanish civil war, the rise of fascism and the second world war as well as books of theoretical

content on Marxism, Leninism etc. both of Greek and foreign writers. Finally, additional participant

observation took place during the interviews conducted in the ASKI. As we observed, the main

visitors of the archive were young people doing their research, graduate and post-graduate

university students, which confirmed what experts told us regarding the profile of the people

visiting the archive.

1.3 Theoretical framework

The main debates, which were central and directly or indirectly influenced our research, were about

the concepts of memory, social memory, social oblivion and historical trauma. The concept of social

memory is, of course, a fundamental one when it comes to issues of history and especially of

traumatic historical times. Social memory is actually placed at the crossroads of individual and

social procedures and has to do with the co-construction of the past through the social interactions

of the present. During this kind of co-construction those participating are individuals, social groups,

institutions and society as a whole and all these components have a continuous conflictive or

interactive relationship (Moscovici, 1984).

The dynamic character of the concept of social memory is closely related with its temporal

perspective, which is extended in the past, the present and the future. Past, present and future

coexist, are interrelated and interdependent, from the moment the use of the past determines the

present and mortgages the future. Social memory has to do with a past that no longer exists; it is the

past’s present, of which individuals and societies maintain the memory. Despite the difficulty in

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defining social and collective memory, nowadays it is argued that collective is the memory of a

certain group, whereas social is the memory of the society (Ricoeur, 2000). As a consequence,

social memory is the intergenerational transmission of a significant knowledge about the past of the

kind which stigmatized a society and caused subversive changes both to the society and the

individual.

The basic criteria based on which past historical facts lead to memories of long duration or to

forms of social representations are:

to be interrelated with long term social changes which are connected with the present

to be emotionally charged

to be shared by the majority of a group

to be reproduced by the mass media

to be related with collective behaviors and memorial rituals which result to a cohesive

narration at an institutional and individual levels

The French social psychologist Jodelet (1992) underlines the representative character of social

memory’s frames which are formulated both by space, time and language (Halbwachs, 1925/1994)

as well as by the socio-psychological procedures of understanding which activate each time the

virtual representations, ideas and concepts. The prominent ‘specialist’ regarding memory, Maurice

Halbwachs, oscillated between the concepts ‘collective’ and ‘social’ memory. Today, it is argued

that collective memory refers to a group’s own memory, while social memory is related to society’s

memory on the whole.

Laurens (2000) from his part, argues that mnemonic procedures are respective to social

representations and asks himself of memory is the outcome of a primordial form of representations.

Between social memory and social representation exists a close relationship, because both these

phenomena refer to the social and symbolic reconstruction and co-construction of reality and both

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are related to forms of social reflection. Social representation is not just a reflection of reality, but a

meaningful connection, which’s importance depends on the one hand on specific factors, like the

object’s nature, the pressure exercised on the individual, the current framework and the expediency

of the situation; on the other hand it depends on factors like the social and ideological framework,

the subject’s place (be it an individual or a group) in the social organization, its history, the social

risking and the systems of values.

On the other hand social oblivion is another key concept which works supplementary to that of

social memory. The selection of the historical facts that are going to be preserved in memory and

those that are going to be forgotten takes place on the basis of the safeguarding of the personal,

social and national identity both in the present and in the future. In that sense, social oblivion is

social memory’s dimension which is related with a forbidden and traumatic incident. Some

researchers have tried to construct a typology of oblivion and forgetting (Connerton, 2008). Even

though it is not easy to follow specific types and categories on issues like social memory and social

oblivion we could include the silence that dominated Greek society after the military ending of the

civil war in the category of prescriptive forgetting. Like repressive erasure, which mainly appears in

totalitarian regimes, prescriptive forgetting it is precipitated by an act of state, but it differs from

erasure because it is believed to be in the interests of all parties to the previous dispute and because

it can therefore be acknowledged publicly. The Ancient Greeks provide us with a prototype of this

kind of forgetting. They were acutely aware of the dangers intrinsic to remembering past wrongs

because they well knew the endless chains of vendetta revenge to which this so often led. And since

the memory of past misdeeds threatened to sow division in the whole community and could lead to

civil war, they saw that not only those who were directly threatened by motives of revenge but all

those who wanted to live peacefully together in the polis had a stake in not remembering

(Connerton, 2008:61).

However, trauma is the most controversial and difficult to define concept. Can we talk about

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trauma within history and culture or trauma is just a psychiatric term? We discussed this issue

during one of our expert interviews. According to V. Karamanolakis (GRE1), when we talk about

trauma in history we have to keep in mind that this notion comes from psychiatry and

psychoanalysis. In his view the main characteristic of the historical trauma is the stress and the

tension it produces and that it also dissolves the current social structures. For example the trauma of

the civil war dissolves everything and that is why after its military termination of the civil war

nobody wants to discuss about it and silence is dominant. Of course, as he adds, trauma can be

healed, mainly through time, because trauma is immediately interrelated with its elaboration. There

comes a time that people finally start to talk about it trying to live together in their communities, as

they can’t do otherwise. The memory of the 1940’s and narratives around it by the Left represented

a personal but also a political stake. Individuals, we know, to a great extent, remember and

reconstitute their past as members of a social group in accordance with their position in it. Their

memory is to a significant degree historically determined to the extent that its evocation is

profoundly linked to the present, and so is the interpretative context in which it is included. The

individual, the private, is connected and is in constant negotiation with the public, just as it was

depicted in the historiography of the period and in the instituting of the memory about the decade.3

As mentioned above, silence after the civil war dominated the public debate. Civil war was

omnipresent, although it was visible nowhere and no-one could speak about it to the extent that the

sides involved attempted to conceal or downgrade it to a civil conflict. From another viewpoint,

silence was serving the needs of a society which, having been tested severely, sought to be

disengaged from the recent events, to come to terms with its guilt and/or its fear to evoke a past

connected with death and destruction. Through silence, people could process their own traumas,

give meaning to that which seemed incomprehensible, accept it, mourn about it. Moreover, it has

been found that traumas caused by human beings such as wars, have a greater negative

3 V. Karamanolakis, Memory and the Historiography of the 1940’s, (unpublished presentation).

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psychological impact than those caused by natural disasters; because of the greater difficulty in

processing them, because of more intense conflicting emotions, anger, desire to revenge,

unbearability of accepting them. It is easier to accept the weakness and vulnerability of human

nature when faced with the laws of the natural environment than to accept the fact that disaster and

death have come about by “a human hand”. If processing, acceptance, the possibility of mourning

are connected with the ascription of meaning, then the more ‘incomprehensible’ something is at the

beginning, the more unprocessed it will be. So, silence could have existed, in any case. However, its

forced imposition is something completely different to that which emanates from the context of

individual and collective internal processes.4

1.4 Historiographical outline

The decade of 1940 was crucial for the history of Greece. Social memory often characterizes the

events that took place during this period as traumatic, ‘difficult’, ‘problematic’, even ‘controversial’

past. By participating in the WW2 Greek society experienced very heroic moments, which turned to

a ‘tragedy’, as they resulted to a painful civil war. The consequences of this war were decisive for

the post-war history of the country, and are strongly related with a seven-year military dictatorship

which occurred later (1967-1974).

Greece, despite its authoritarian government, sided with the Allies. The Greek Army repelled

successfully the invasion of fascist Italy, but could not resist the onslaught of Nazi German troops.

Greece, during the period 1941-1944, came to be under a triple occupation (Germany, Italy, and

Bulgaria). Soon enough, a particularly strong resistance developed against the invaders from a wide

range of political and social forces. The most populous and organized initiative was the EAM

(National Liberation Front) in which the leading force was KKE (Greek Communist Party), having

4 V. Karamanolakis, Memory and the Historiography of the 1940’s, (unpublished presentation).

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created the armed ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army) and aiming at national independence

and popular sovereignty after the war.

Already with the liberation of the country (October 1944) the bipolar pattern which would

dominate Greek political life formatted: in December of 1944 the forces of EAM-ELAS fought

fiercely in the neighborhoods of Athens with the security forces of the government, which had the

full support of British troops. Although a truce signed between the two opponents (Varkiza

Agreement, February 1945) and ELAS handed over its arms, several fascistic groups of extreme

right, with the help of government forces, constantly attacked members of EAM, as the

participation in it was criminalized and prosecuted. The intensity was such that in 1946 civil war

broke out between the Government National Army, which had the help of Britain and the U.S., and

the Democratic Army of Greece who received help from the socialist regimes. During the war the

conflict was inconclusive, but in 1949 ended with the defeat of the rebels and the prevalence of the

“nationalist” party.

In the years that followed anti-communism became an official government doctrine.5 However, in

the 1960’s, the Greek society was becoming more democratic to a degree that was considered a

threat to the forces of the extreme right: Greek Army with a military coup took the power in 1967,

citing the ‘communist’ danger, and ruled peremptorily for seven years. The student uprising of the

Polytechnic School of Athens (November 1973) and the Turkish invasion on Cyprus (July 1974)

removed any legitimacy from the dictators, who precipitated the return of the political power. The

following period, after the consolidation of democracy, attempted to heal the trauma of the civil

war; the Communist Party ceased to be outlawed and the resistance during the WW II was officially

recognized as ‘national’.

The dividing lines, however, still persist in social memory and debate. The official version of the

state, at least until 1974, is that the civil war was a conflict between the Greeks against ‘foreigners’,

5 For more information see 2.1.

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meaning that EAM already from the occupation period was trying to impose militarily and

politically and hand over the country to the communists. For the left, on the other hand, the

Occupation was the period when opponents were the vast majority of Greek people against the

conquerors with their Greek affiliates.

The social memory of the Greek civil war could not be incorporated into a single hegemonic

national narrative. Anti-communism, the persistent persecution of the left citizens, the ban of the

Communist Party, the political refugees who lived in the socialistic republics, transformed Civil

War into one of the most traumatic events of the Greek history. Furthermore, the imposition of the

seven-year military dictatorship restored (often dramatically) the divisive memories of the civil war,

while this very period took place during a “troubled” past, as it constituted a forced diversion of

democracy based on the rhetoric and politics of the civil war, where further civil prosecutions of

democrats took place, as well as deportations and exile (mostly of intellectuals and highly

politicized). It took nearly 40 years after the end of the civil war for the matter to return to the

debate, when in 1989 the then parliamentary parties decided to burn the files of prosecutors dealing

with left citizens.

2. Memories of the ‘difficult past’ and the dominant historical narrative

From 1946 to 1949 Greek society experienced a Civil War with tragic consequences. Civil War, the

period just before, but also the years that followed, have left a hitherto incurable wound on Greek

society. The 1940s constitute the most problematic period in Modern Greek history and its

aftermath has strong effects until today. Any attempt to approach and interpret this decade's history

and collective memory, depends to a large degree on the ideological and political views among

Greek society.

Despite its importance, or because of it, Civil War became a black hole in the memory of Greek

society, a collective trauma that could not be turned into historical memory. A few years after its

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end, Civil War had disappeared from the narratives of the two protagonists, as they chose the path

of oblivion. At the same time, not only the defeated and also the winners were silent on the Civil

War. While one would expect that the victorious battles would be transformed into mnemonic sites

and constituted the official memory of the Civil War that did not happen. The anniversary

celebrations for winning the Civil War quickly deteriorated and were not a national holiday, with

the exception of the years of the military dictatorship (1967-1974). The defeated did the same. After

the overwhelming military defeat and the network of prohibitions and restrictions instituted, the

Left could not talk about the Civil War. Censorship and self-censorship imposed silence on this

matter. Moreover, the Left has adopted the slogan of ‘forgetfulness’ of the Civil War as a necessary

precondition for the elimination of discrimination and political persecution, but also the foundation

of democracy.

The official reason of the Right was initiated in the same vein of ‘forgetting’ the events of the

1940s, despite any contradictions or periodic bouts for the period 1950-1967. The Right, having

control of political power, converted anticommunism as state ideology (e.g. the formal

establishment of the term ‘gangster war’ for the Civil War). However, anticommunism was not

mentioned much in the past and the violence of the Democratic Army, but in the political threat that

communism constituted for Greece during the Cold War, while references to the 1940 related more

to the December events (1944) than the period 1946 -1949. The official silence about the Civil War

comes from the fact it is a deeply divisional period. Any reference to Civil War retrieved traumatic

memories, created exclusions undermined the unity of the ‘nation’ (or ‘people’), which both the

parties of Right and Left wanted to avoid. The two warring sides had chosen the policy of

forgetfulness, in order to determine the structure of memory, a strategy which probably smoothed

the passions and allowed society to heal its wounds, but deepened the gap between the opponents.

However, contrary to the policy of forgetfulness, repressed memories are constantly looking for a

way out, especially through art. Winners and defeated crossed their pyre, and Civil War continued

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in the pages of postwar literature and poetry. Greek literature was the first among the arts to take

stand on the issue of the Civil War, through ideological or contemplative points of view, many years

before official historiography did. At a time when silence and bias prevailed under the post-civil

war state, literature was very important and had a social function. It was the place where people,

either writers or readers, could speak about their experiences and share their grief, where they could

read, think, or remember.

The entire postwar literature contains memories of the ’40s and simultaneously participates in

shaping the collective memory. Some poets, from the ’50s onwards, raised Civil War trauma and its

consequences. The artistic freedom poetry gave them could express what censorship of post-civil

war Greece prevented in other arts. ‘The poetry of defeat’ as it was called, from the mid-fifties,

examined the conscience of the Left in the light of the defeat.

Greek cinema for more than six decades incorporated and negotiated the civil conflict, using

mostly fiction and, especially in recent years, documentary film. The first film that evoked the civil

conflict, The Illegals (1958), banned in three days of censorship. However, there were some

references in Greek cinema, as the filmmakers made artistic use of the obligatory silence on the

issue. Civil War entered through the back door the cinema scenes, through allegorical comments. It

was during the military dictatorship (1967-74) that the theme returned with several mainstream

commercial films that had continuous assistance from the regime, which fueled largely their

ideological coordinates, with anti-communism as their dominant matter.

The lifting of censorship in 1974 contributed to the final integration of the theme in Greek

cinema. From the 1970’s onwards, the social impact of the Civil War and the memories will absorb

most in the production of a new generation of filmmakers, the majority of whom did not deny their

ideological affinities with the Left. In several cases (e.g., Theo Angelopoulos, Pantelis Voulgaris)

the films will bring back the traumatic events of the Civil War, while the positive reception of the

audience did not conceal the division as implicit continuation of the years of the Civil War. In the

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subsequent decades of 1980-90, several directors approached the issue with a demystifying mood.

The political prisoners, refugees, family tragedies, memories and dead-ends ran realistic

representations and allegorical references and reproduced the dominant narrative patterns of the

Left.

The controversy, however, on the collective memory of Civil War and its historical interpretations

remains constant and apparent in popular culture: Red Thread Knit (2011, Costas Haralampous)

seek excuses for the Civil War in the meantime between the Liberation, the Varkiza Agreement and

its start, when the right-wing violence was rampant across the former resistance. The Varkiza

Agreement was broken by the winners, and nationalist organizations and armed gangs began to

persecute and assault their opponents: unpunished violence and terrorism emerged – with the

support of the Greek State and tolerance of the British (the so-called White Terror period). The

oppressed had no choice but to flee back into the mountainous countryside, not out of a desire for

revolution but for their survival. The memory of this period is one of the most traumatic in

collective memory and in critical times it reappears (as at the youth uprising in December 2008 in

Athens, or on several protests during the current economic crisis under the slogan “End with

Varkiza”). On the other hand, the Deep Soul (2009) by Pantelis Voulgaris, on the last weeks of the

Civil War through the story of two brothers fighting in the two different camps, became a

blockbuster and started a very interesting debate. As the film underlines the key role of foreign

forces in the war, premising the role of the Greeks of both sides as victims (thus constituting a call

for national consensus), it created many controversies on the part of the Left, mainly about

oversimplification of historical facts, forgery and ideological use of the past. Instead, people from

more conservative political parties perceived it as a positive depiction of history: they interpreted it

as a convenient scheme which discriminates Greek political system while the film tries to integrate

Civil War's collective memory to a new unifying narrative. So, a film with strong conciliatory

content, perhaps against its intentions, achieved to confirm the division found in Greek society

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concerning the collective memory of Civil War, a division between Right and Left.

The official treatment of the Civil War followed the course of those in power in the country, who

prefer to shape its narrative and collective memory, sometimes even with oblivion. For instance, in

school textbooks, the Civil War is generally excluded. Only the dictatorship included the issue in

the textbooks, essentially with strong propaganda content. Later, despite its more dispassionate

appraisal, Civil War still is a period that is avoided to be taught. However, although the state seems

to avoid any reference to the Civil War, in recent years the debate on the subject is already a

remarkable phenomenon; largely due to internet and social media, which host a huge number of

positions on the Civil War. The range moves across the political spectrum, however the majority

belongs to the two extremes, the extreme right and extreme left. In these the debate is right for one

of the two sides of the war, according to their political affiliation, while the arguments repeat their

political or ideological positions without placing real new knowledge or research. To this debate the

newspapers of the political spectrum also contribute with articles and special features.

Furthermore, the civil war literature is extensive; much of it was related to the political juncture;

the anti-communist postwar state, the Cold War, the dictatorship and the socialist government all

influenced the literature and contributed to the interpretation of the period through politicized and

biased approaches. In any case, the demand for the historical rereading of the Civil War and the

multilevel incisions it provoked in Greek society is still intense. The opening of sealed archives and

the interest of the academic community (mainly with interdisciplinary approaches, conferences,

edited volumes, and many relevant theses) gradually restores the issue. Modern approaches study

the oblivion, the ‘divided memory’, i.e. the social memory that is linked to social identities.

However, the attempts of this request are not at all neutral. In the historical field, different

perspectives and approaches unfold, supported by opposite political and scientific positions. The

Civil War seems to continue by other means. This is more evident during the last decade, when the

emergence of a group of researchers, calling themselves as ‘revisionists’, ‘new wave’ or ‘new tend’

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and having a declared intention to challenge the dominant and entrenched interpretation of the Left

on the 1940’s and the Civil War, sparked a sharp controversy among the community of historians.

Leftist historians respond that this trend is nothing else but a comeback to the anti-communistic

Cold War interpretation, with a strong right-wing bias. This debate reveals deep ideological

differences and reflects equivalent political ones in Greek society, thus echoing the ongoing

‘memory wars’.

Especially since the political transition from dictatorship to democracy (called ‘Metapolitefsi’),

Greek politics strongly were formulated and perceived by the dichotomous distinction between

‘Left’ and ‘Right’ (several parties that belonged to the ‘Center’ and were very active during the

1944-1967 period, were of limited importance after 1974). Although defeated in the Civil War,

during Metapolitefsi Left dominated in the ideological field, exactly because of the trauma of the

Civil War and the great ideological bend of Greek society after the military dictatorship. Socialistic

PASOK claimed Left's heritage successfully and became the dominant political force after 1981.

While the Left parties questioned PASOK on this role, in fact the party was able to gather a large

part of the population identified themselves as ‘leftists’ and adopted the rhetoric of the left. At the

party level, the conflict between left and right represented -until recently- from the collision PASOK

and (right-wing) New Democracy. This figure, however, was upset by the current crisis in Greece

and the PASOK-New Democracy conflict lost its symbolic power. The shrinkage rates of PASOK

withdrew its sovereignty in the area of the left identity, leading to the Left now represented by old

and new parties that are constantly increasing their rates. The New Democracy was therefore in

need to reinvent the ideological opponent redefining its own ideological identity. In this recasting of

the Right, the rival is no longer PASOK but the Left, which is demonized and blamed as one the

main responsibles for the crisis. The ultra-nationalism of the New Democracy retrieves from the

rhetoric of the Civil War period the blame of ‘unpatriotic’ for the Left.

The examination of the political discourse that prevails in Greece especially after the summer of

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2011, shows how it relates to the rhetorical arsenal of the era of Resistance and the Civil War:

patriots, traitors, commies, gangsters, occupation government, government of collaborators (of the

invaders) etc. EAM and its practices are very often recalled, and also the phrase ‘we are in a civil

war’ is very usual. Maybe in the imagination of much of the Greek civilians, the crisis of the

country provides the opportunity for a rematch in history? The rise of the ultra right neo-Nazi

Golden Dawn further reinforces the schism between ‘patriots and traitors’ that predominates in

public debate. In any case, it reveals that Civil War is an organic phenomenon in Greek society, a

‘war without war’, both in terms of collective memory and history.

2.1 Historical discourses of the ‘difficult past’ and the sites of memory

This category includes the analysis of the expert interviews. The main categories are signed in bold

letters, while the sub-categories in italics.

2.1.1 The ASKI and their ‘public mission’

As it has already been described in the introductory section, and as one of the interviewed experts

claims (GRΕ2), ASKI have as their principal goal to gather, classify and make accessible their

material to the public, being an open archive. At the same time, ASKI maintain a scientific

character by promoting research via the publication of its annual journal Archeiotaxio, and the

organization of several events, such as conferences and seminars that, many times, have as their

central theme the traumatic/problematic past.

a. The ASKI and society

The ASKI function as a reminder to the society of its history (GRE3) as it aims “at guiding society

to a reflection on our past” (GRE3). The basic and most valuable contribution that ASKI make to

the society is the creation of “open archives”, described as “a subversion” (GRE4), which created

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the proper context for the researchers to study history in depth. So, in that way ASKI promote, “the

management of historical information, not only concerning the free access to the material but also,

as far as it concerns the respect and the substantial evolvement of it in a scientific level” (GRE1).

The ASKI provide the material seamlessly to the researchers and in general to the people that are

interested in the subjects that are represented at this “site of memory”. In this respect, ASKI

organize several events such as weekly seminars in collaboration with many University

Departments, giving the opportunity to people to participate and elaborate history through new

inquiries.

b. The ASKI and history

Having defined as ASKI’s main goal the gathering and classification of material in order to create

the suitable circumstances for people to study it, it becomes clear enough that ASKI are trying to

represent historical facts substantially. During all the years that ASKI function, approach history on

the basis of three parameters, as characteristically one of the experts has mentioned (GRE3). These

parameters are summarized as follows:

“the collection, preservation and maintenance of evidence of the past which, naturally,

mostly are related to the history of social movements, leftist social movements, […] the

logic of an intervention through research inquiries in the context of history […], and the

popularization of history”.

What it needs to be stressed, though, is that ASKI promote an alternative discourse to the

mainstream and dominant historical and political discourses.

c. The ASKI, politics and socio-political activism

By nature ASKI is the site where the connection between politics and history is materialized.

“The ASKI were created initially based on a resonance of projection and disclosure of

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archives that have to do with politics in Greece, mainly with the left movement, having

as their orientation to be open archives, accessible to the public” (GRE1).

One of the experts claims that this relation between history and activism becomes clear and

interesting when, for example, young people, young activists join the Left (mainly the Communist

Party of Greece) and “[...] they encapsulate different elements of its history, believing that this is the

good history of the left while the other is the bad history and belongs to the others” (GRE1). All the

experts agree to that: the role of ASKI is par excellence political, connecting the historical

knowledge with activism as an element of its identity.

2.1.2 The main body of visitors

All the experts agree that the main body of visitors of ASKI could be placed in two distinct

categories. On the one hand, ASKI attracts the interest of many school students who after their

teachers’ consultation they visit ASKI in order to prepare something about a school celebration, e.g.

about the fall of the dictatorship and the uprising of the Polytechnic School (each 17th of

November). University students of every level also visit the archive, graduate, post-graduate and

students working on their PhD thesis, whose research interest is the WW II, the German occupation,

the Civil War and of course the dictatorship and the previous decade, i.e. the 1960’s. Moreover,

independent researchers and professors of several disciplines, such as history, political science or

sociology, are among the visitors of the archive.

On the other hand, the other category of visitors includes people who visit ASKI to discover a

lost part of their familial history, their ‘traumatic past’: descendants of this kind of people,

especially younger ones, who have a parent, grant-parent or relative participated in these historical

events in any perspective, for example either as a simple soldier or a member of the communist

party or as a more important figure in the resistance and the party hierarchy. As one of the experts

characteristically mentions:

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“we operate just like a registry office: children of victims of the German occupation,

relatives of people who fought within the lines of the Democratic Army (of the Left) and

are still considered missing, people who want to discover their roots, their ancestors,

etc., others who had an organic relation with the Left, are coming to us very often in

case we can help them to find information or perhaps if we can find something within

the archive” (GRE3).

Furthermore, in this category we find people who are related, with one way or another, with the

history of the Left in Greece. People who were exiled during the 1960’s and mostly during the

dictatorship; people tortured and imprisoned; people who participated in the National Resistance

against the Germans and in the following Civil War. Additionally, as the records of the left have a

very recent history, people who themselves had written an article regarding similar themes and have

lost, visit ASKI in order to look for it.

2.1.3 The visitors’ interests

a. The knowledge of history

The visitors of the ASKI are mainly interested in three historical periods: First the decade 1940-

1950, i.e. the WW II, the German occupation and the resistance against the Germans and the

following Civil War. The majority of the people coming at the ASKI are basically focused on this

time. However, during the last years visitors are also study the period from 1950 to 1967 and of

course the third period is the military regime 1967-1974. One expert said that only very recently

some seem to be interested in the interwar era (GRE3).

b. The knowledge of the personal/ family past

As we mentioned previously, many visitors, older and younger ones, are going to the ASKI in order

to examine their own past. This is because at the ASKI there are many archives for example of the

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Democratic Army of the Left or lists of prisoners and exiled after the civil war or during the

military regime of 1967-1974. As an expert said:

“From the moment we keep the records about those of the Democratic Army who were

killed and someone is searching his missing or dead uncle, he comes to us, I say it as

simple as I can, just to cross this kind of information within the record, in case the

record includes his name and if this is the man who died” […] “others are coming to

search for an uncle, for example, who was a political refugee in Czechoslovakia and

now is dead, if he was a member of the Democratic Army, and if yes, in which units,

and in which cities he lived in Czechoslovakia. You understand? […] This is like a

register office; it’s like a social service” (GRE3).

According to the above, we can assume that the visitors of the archive are divided into these two

main categories, those seeking historical knowledge and those trying to bring to light their family’s

past. However, it is evident that the vast majority of both of them are interested in the difficult and

traumatic periods of the Greek history meaning from 1940’s to early 1970’s.

2.1.4 The traumatic past

The experts we interviewed basically agree that the main difficult and traumatic periods of Greece’s

history are four: The defeat by the Turkish army in Asia Minor in 1922, the following disaster of

Smyrna and other Greek cities and the waves of refugees who came in Greece having lost almost

everything and having no place to live. The second important period is the WW II and the German

occupation from 1941 to 1944; the civil war and its aftermath 1946-19949 is the third period and

finally the fourth is the dictatorship of 1967-1974. When they were asked if they feel that some of

these periods are considered as shameful they said that they prefer to call this past as difficult and

traumatic and not as shameful (GRE2).

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a. Memory and oblivion

Memory and oblivion are two crucial key concepts about such traumatic events. As an expert said:

“Memory does not exist without oblivion. As a consequence, oblivion is something

natural. […] But one question which bothers me, as an historian, is when this oblivion is

enforced. What could this mean, in the end, regarding the historical fact itself?”

(GRE1).

b. Trauma

Speaking of trauma is not an easy task. As with memory and oblivion, not many of the experts gave

us any kind of working definition about trauma and what it means to them. However, one of them

underlined that trauma as a concept comes from psychiatry and psychoanalysis and then is

introduced into the social sciences and of course in history (historical trauma). In his view, trauma’s

main feature is its tense and the fact that in great extent dissolves social structures (GRE1). This is

what happened in Greece during the and most importantly after the civil war. According to the same

expert (GRE1) this silence that dominated Greek society after the military end of the civil war is

due to the fact that the war is not yet over, because many people were still persecuted on the

grounds of their political ideas and affiliation. Furthermore, people need to work and elaborate on

their own experiences and feelings regarding this collective traumatic event. There were some rural

regions that the civil war destroyed entire families and even villages and this needs time in order to

be healed or at least in order to understand what exactly took place. Finally, he adds that even

though it’s not easy to speak about healing, through time and elaboration this kind of trauma could

be at least be tolerated by the people, if not completely healed.

This expert offered us a very interesting approach and a quite illuminative analysis about

memory, oblivion and trauma, these key concepts, which, of course, is not easy to define. In that

sense the experts we interviewed agreed on the fact the civil war is the most traumatic period within

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the collective memory of the society (GRE1, GRE4). The disaster in Asia Minor is also considered

a traumatic time (GRE1, GRE4), but the difference here, at least according to one of the experts

(GRE1) is that this traumatic moment could relatively easy be included among the national

historical narration and become ‘regular’. On the contrary, the civil war still faces serious

difficulties to follow a similar path and still produces serious ideological clashes, even today.

c. The traumatic past in the ASKI

It is evident that from the moment the archival material of the ASKI is that of the left, which was

defeated during the civil war, trauma is quite dominant within that material. We mentioned

previously that many people search their own past in the archives and the history of their family. All

these, lead us to the assumption that the traumatic past is present at the ASKI in many ways and is

related both with the material kept there and with the people visiting the place.

“The ASKI bring within them a traumatic memory, the memory of the left, where

people are involved, and they include in their political thinking all this [traumatic] past,

which is very intense. […] The ASKI have something that is very interesting. The

ASKI are deeper [than any other institution] within this ‘game’. Within the ASKI the

most difficult thing is to use the history of the Left itself. That means that in that case

trauma is a component of the Left itself. Through the ASKI’s archive someone could

now see the traumatic experiences that this political front faced during its evolution; the

conflicts; the disagreements”. (GRE1).

“The whole history of the Left is problematic. The whole history of the Left is a

problematic one, not only in Greece, but mainly in Greece, because its not only the

persecutions but the civil conflicts as well” (GRE3).

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As these experts have underlined, the traumatic past at the ASKI is a common place and the crucial

parameter here is, how should they use this kind if material without betray their main goal, i.e. bring

this material to the public domain, accessible to everybody and without ‘gossiping’ about people’s

lives.

2.1.5 Mainstream and alternative narratives of the past

The question of approaching the past is one of great importance. The truth about what is public

history is a truth variable: there is no “one and only truth” and every “truth” comes from and deals

with several circumstances (GRE3). Most of the experts believe that nowadays we all live in an era,

where there are of course dominant narratives, but these are not monolithic nor they have the

centrality they used to have in previous periods. Now, major historiographical schemes have their

controversial ones. So, there is a variety of narratives, but the question is what makes a narrative

alternative? Sometimes a historiographical narrative can be extremely old, even obsolete, but

appears as an alternative narrative in society and historical culture, as if it comes to break the status

quo (GRE1). In recent years we experience the “democratization” of history, the challenging of the

notion of a sovereign past. There are many alternative narratives, although it is clear that central

narratives still work. These narratives have been slow to appear in Greece, because Greek society

was for many years a fairly homogeneous society, with a dominant discourse about the past.

Alternative interpretations are accessible mainly because of the internet, which greatly provides

incredible information. That is, if a few years ago the problem was the lack of information, now the

big problem, especially among younger people, is the management of information. In that sense

there is no silencing of some views, as there are channels through which this information can reach

anyone (GRE1).

2.1.6 Young people and ASKI

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a. Young people and memory/history

Most of the experts acknowledge the increasing interest in history among young people. This is not

to say that there is a different way of recruiting history from the younger generation concerning the

meaning or the functionality of dominant narratives. Their conception of history could be described

as more fragmented, as through the internet the documents come isolated, with a logical order other

than the logic of historical importance. This makes a totally different perception of history, more

based on the picture, comparing with the traditional idea about how people should be of interest.

(GRE1). It has to be added that nowadays young people learn more on their recent national history

at school (especially on the crucial decade of the ’40s), and they are more familiar with aspects of

Greek history. This is related to a degree with the fact that:

“there is this whole wealth of historic tributes to the Greek press [...] especially in recent

years, there have been reports, specials and inserts in daily newspapers that are very,

very good science. Historical writings and historians walked into homes of people that

would not enter otherwise” (GRE4).

b. The role of the family

The experts recognize the role of the family as crucial, mainly on these most traumatic aspects of

individual, collective, historical memory. However, “now this role is compromised enough or

sufficiently limited in that there are many other dominant discourses about history, such as the one

of television, of mass media or of school etc” (GRE1). However, the role of the family remains

obviously very important and defines the historical consciousness of young people, especially when

it comes to confront the dominant narrative (GRE5).

c. The reasons young people visit ASKI

The majority (60-70%) of the people who visit ASKI are undergraduate and postgraduate students,

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PhD candidates, post-doctoral researchers and scholars. Some of them are foreigner students or

researchers (from the US and Britain at most). The main reason for visiting ASKI is that researchers

can find valuable primary sources and documentation on their research concerning recent Greek

history (GRE5). There are also pupils who visit ASKI motivated by their teachers on the occasion

of a national holiday, seeking for relevant materials for school works or school events. Another

category is young members of several parties, who go to ASKI in order to find materials for

festivals or exhibitions. Many students go to ASKI for practical exercises, in cooperation with

several universities from all over Greece.

d. The effect of ASKI on young people

As an institution, ASKI inspire young people on the grounds that they rethink themselves through

the archival material and try to understand what is happening today (GRE3). ASKI’s unique

material helps young people to know more about alternative interpretations of the national past and

neglected areas from the public history (GRE5). The greatest benefit for young people, according to

the experts, is not so much the basic knowledge they get, but mainly that they learn “what we might

call the sense of historicity. I mean that they learn that things in history are not obvious” (GRE1).

ASKI take into account the factor “youth” and when they organize special events they try to present

the historical facts in a manner that could be fully understood by young people who ignore them.

2.2 Young people’s experiences of memories about ‘problematic’ periods of national history

This section includes the focus groups’ analysis and we follow the same way of presenting: In bold

letters the main categories and in italics the sub-categories.

2.2.1 The traumatic past

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Three seem to be the most traumatic periods of the Greek history during the 20th century according

to the focus group participants: The WW II and the following German occupation (1941-1944), the

civil war (1946-1949), and the military junta (1967-1974). However, the majority of the participants

argued that the civil war was the most traumatic time of Greece’s history of the past century. We

have formed three main categories referring to these historical periods, which are divided to sub-

categories as follows.

a. The Second World War and the German occupation (1941-1944)

The WW II and the German occupation even though they are characterized as very important

historical periods and events they are not considered as traumatic. No one of the participants used

the word traumatic to describe it. They used words like disastrous or important, but not traumatic or

tragic. Another interesting outcome is that some of the respondents described the WW II as a

‘regular’ war, contrary to the civil war. Furthermore, according to this view the WW II was most

important because of the number of the dead and also because during the civil war there was no

such danger to be killed as in the civil war:

“I consider it [the WW II] more important, because the number of the dead could not be

compared to that of the civil war, right? I mean, that this is something natural; it’s

another thing to be at a regular war and another thing to have an internal civil war,

where some people could be exiled; it’s not the same to be exiled and don’t know if

someone will come to your house and kill you…” (GRFG3R5)6.

Some of the young people interviewed have heard stories about the WW II and the following

German rule mainly from their grandfathers. These kinds of narrations are reproduced by them and

sometimes the past is still influencing the present: “They jumped out of the track and they managed

6The system of referencing to the focus group starts with the country code (GR), followed by FG for focus group along

with the number that is given to the particular focus group, the R for a particular respondent in the discussion andfinally the number that is allocated to the particular respondent.

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to escape, but the Germans shoot them and got my uncle on his foot; and he still has some problems

till today with surgeries and stuff like that” (GRFG3R5). Others have heard stories about people

loosing their property and about some Greeks, who collaborated with the Germans and made

fortunes this way or because they speculated against their fellow citizens and this fortune they

made, helped them gain an important social status, which in some cases is preserved until nowadays

(GRFG5R3). This is another connection of the past and the present and it is also very interesting

when they refer to that, because Greece was the only country that did not punish the collaborators of

the Germans after the end of the war. Finally, stories about famine are another kind of narration,

especially for those who lost some relatives as the grandmother of one participant, who lost two of

her brothers (GRFG5R4). It is quite interesting that she mentioned twice that her grandmother

describes her this period with the very exact words, even though many years have passed and this is

something that via this repetition of the grandmother’s traumatic death experience points out the

intense on that issue.

The WW II and the German occupation are viewed by the majority of the participants as global

events of great significance and as a consequence they influenced Greece to a great degree. But

because of their world character they are seen as more disastrous than the civil war and at the same

time as less traumatic, due to the fact that they were events, surpassing Greece, while the civil war,

as we are going to see in the next category, is confronted as an internal affair and an anomaly, which

perhaps should be avoided.

b. The Civil War

The civil war, as it was mentioned previously, is considered as a very traumatic moment in the

Greek history. One main outcome of the focus groups discussions is the division between the right

and the left, which were the conflicting political parties, which is dominant in the participants’

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views. They actually re-produce this mainstream Manichean scheme in the public discourse as they

say that what was all about was:

“the fight between the right and the left in order to find out where Greece would go; if

we would follow Europe and the U.S. or the communists. […] But basically I think that

what happened to Greece was that it was in the middle of the European agitation on the

one hand and the Soviet Union’s agitation on the other” (GRFG5R3).

What is also very important is that according to some participants, “the civil war was not a proper, a

regular war, because basically they didn’t fight over a cause, just on what kind of political ideology

will dominate” (GRFG5R2).

c. The rationale of the civil war’s tragic nature

But why the civil war is considered so traumatic? Because “as the grandparents say a brother would

kill a brother at that time” (GRFG3R2) and because “after all these they have been through during

the WWII, all of the sudden they were killing each other” (GRFG3R2). “In the civil war we have a

society that cracks down in two pieces” (GRFG1R3) and “while during that period, what Greece

needed was reconstruction, like other European countries and the U.S., the complete opposite

happened” (GRFG3R3). Many of them have heard stories from the familial environment, which all

conclude to the same result: this was a period that families were divided, people were disinherited,

and brothers were killing each other and so on and so forth. The civil war was also a traumatic

historical period because as was said above people were fighting and killing each other for just a

political ideology. This seems to be the main idea that these participants have about the civil war

that they were not fighting about a better world or a more just society but for political ideologies.

But the crucial point is that as one respondent put it: “in general there are no good experiences from

that period; No one will hear any positive experiences from that time anyway” (GRFG5R2). So,

what comes out of that is that the Civil War has two basic features: division and silence.

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d. The consequences of the traumatic past of the civil war

The civil war was considered as traumatic because it influenced not only the families, but the

country as a whole. Thousands of people dead, thousands of people injured, and thousands of

people exiled in Greece and abroad. For example, one respondent said referring to his father’s

grandfather who was self-exiled in a communist country:

“My father’s grandfather, even though they mailed and talked to each other, he was

afraid to come to Greece because he thought that the situation was the same; and they

were saying to him that they would come and get him, and they were sending photos, he

was not believing that things were now different, in 1987” (GRFG3R2).

Some also argue that this traumatic event has influenced the Greek society and families even

nowadays: “This whole motif of hostility among brothers is resumed, basically due to ideology.

Even today the division [exists], the two sides that are struggling about ideologies” (GRFG5R2).

Sometimes the parents influence their children and this is another point why some think that the

civil war’s consequences are present even in contemporary society.

As it is obvious from the selected aforementioned excerpts the civil war is taken as the most

traumatic historical period of the Modern Greek history. However, young people are not always

well qualified to discuss and analyze the tragic nature of the war, because as we are going to

examine afterwards they are not fully aware of the historical facts. These are ideas and views

mainly coming from their families and their environment and secondly from historical sources and

this only for those studying history in the university, even though this should not be taken as a rule.

The tragic consequences of the Civil War are transferred from generation to generation within

families and each family’s narration is obviously related to oral tradition and history and this

influences each ones political stance and affiliation. Of course, silence over the Civil War is another

important parameter, which is going to be discussed in another following category.

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e. The military junta and the uprising of the Polytechnic School

The enforcement of the military regime in 1967 and its seven year rule is also seen by the majority

of the young people as very important and dramatic for Greece’s history. In this case too, as for the

WW II, we did not hear them characterizing this period as traumatic, but as dramatic, if this is of

some importance:

“The colonels’ junta was a dramatic point in Greece’s history, because it was ended with

the fall of Cyprus, right? the occupation of a part of Cyprus by the Turks […] More

generally, in that time people had no freedom to express their opinion…” (GRFG3R3).

Young people seem to have more stories about this period, because these events are more recent

and people who were living at that time are still alive and of course, in many cases their own

parents were living during that period. Apart from the general idea, that this dictatorship was a very

cruel regime and had very negative consequences in terms of freedom, democracy, popular

sovereignty, etc. some of them have heard different kinds of stories about this time. They have

heard for example that people could sleep at night without fear, because criminality rates were very

low compared to contemporary society and that if you were following the rules of the regime

nothing could happen to you and you could live a peaceful life (GRFG4R5). We need to stress, that

regarding these three traumatic periods, only about the dictatorship we heard that maybe it had

some positive effects too.

The uprising of the Polytechnic School of Athens in November of 1973 is not taken as a traumatic

or dramatic event, but is taken as “a very important piece of our Modern History” (GRFG2R4). It

basically represents the hope of a better future and for young people it means the fall of the military

regime and the restoration of democracy (GRFG5)7, even though this is not historically accurate,

7The system of referencing to the focus group begins with the country code (GR), is followed with FG for focus group

along with the number that is given to the particular focus group.

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because the junta ended in July 1974 after the Turkish invasion to Cyprus. However, they are more

familiar with the events of that period, perhaps because they learn more things about it in their

school and also because they have heard more stories from their family. In addition, after the

termination of the civil war silence dominated the public domain, while after the fall of the

dictatorship discussions about this time were both many in number and high in quality.

f. The generation of the Polytechnic School: the clash with the present and the demystification

After the break out of the economic crisis, many discussions took place regarding what led Greece

to this situation. One of the main targets of criticism was the so called generation of the Polytechnic

School, i.e. those people who were students at the time of the dictatorship and took place in the

uprising or in other counter-junta activities. Many of them after the restoration of the democratic

regime in 1974 were very active in the political sphere, they were organized in political parties,

mainly of the left and some of them became MP’s and even ministers when the socialists of

PA.SO.K came to power.

That is why young people re-produce this kind of public discourse during the focus groups. They

mainly agree that this still influences us today (GRFG2), but in a sense the Polytechnic School and

what it symbolizes betrayed its ideals (GRFG2). They are very critical about those in power, who

governed Greece for about the last thirty years (GRFG5) and some of them wonder:

“Now, how they managed [this], now that time has passed and the world is upside down,

I mean that at that time when this generation first appeared as the generation that could

made it and throw the ancien regime, that could bring a new kind of innovation, it

basically turned to power, [it became] the dominant class, and it happened the exact

opposite?” (GRFG3R3).

It is absolutely certain that commenting and analyzing this kind of discussion which involves the

past and the current financial and political crisis is not easy to take place here. However, we could

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underline the following. Young people seem to differentiate between the events during the

dictatorship and the uprising of the Polytechnic School and the people who participated in the

events and then ruled for many years through the mainstream political formations. They still

preserve a positive and idealist image of what happened maybe because they project themselves as

young people to this past and they admire them of their achievements, but they are highly critical

concerning what this generation did during the time it had the power and its failure which led to the

current socio-political and economic crisis. However, it is clear enough that this kind of criticism is

based on the current situation and that young people look at the past through the glasses of the

contemporary ‘traumatic’ period in order to overthrow the generation of the Polytechnic School.

2.2.2 Memory and alternative narratives

The alternative discourses that are produced from the internet, the films, the books and the music

play a key role on informing young people about history issues and they contribute to the (re)-

production of their representations about history, in contradiction to the official public discourse as

it is expressed in the context of school and specifically through school books. The silences that

govern the public discourse become visible from the respondents and cause intense criticism from

their side:

“I started to read books about history, because some things that I've learned didn’t have

[...] they were irrelevant with what actually had happened and as he said correctly (he

refers to a respondent in the focus group) some people want to promote as more

objective and correct their side of story, so to speak, instead of disclosing the objectivity

of history”. (GRFG3R3).

The majority of young people that participated in the focus groups express their dissatisfaction

about the deficits of public discourse that arise, when someone is thoroughly studies significant

moments of the Greek history. Most of them question, mainly, the school discourses, regarding their

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reliability and their validity: “[...] and all these narrations and the things that they teach us now, may

not be true, at least some of them. Or maybe most of what we hear” (GRFG4R5).

As it was expected, almost all the participants use the internet widely in order to search about

issues of history or politics, for which they have a stronger interest due to family narrations or as a

result of their ‘encounter’ with such issues in the context of formal education system. The social

media play an important role on informing young people in general:

“[...] I was looking into a lot of stuff and the others were doing the same concerning

their subjects of interest. Nowadays Facebook plays an important role in that respect

and, actually, nowadays young people get informed about periods of social

consciousness” (GRFG1R5).

Some other respondents say that they get information from films, documentaries or derive

significant stimulus from the media that invoke them to be further engaged with relevant issues:

“we don’t learn anything from school. My generation at least, because I graduated

school last year, doesn’t know a thing; honestly we haven’t even started to think of

searching. I started searching about the Civil War after watching Deep Soul, as in school

they don’t provide us with enough stimulus” (GRFG3R1).

Additionally music sustains a passage to a wider engagement with crucial historical events: “So

that's how I started with the civil war thing. A little bit of the film The Stone Years, Theodorakis’

music, a little a bit of this, a little bit of that […] (GRFG1R5).

2.2.3 Collective (oral) memory and official (written) history

“At school we discussed about some things […] in the previous semester I wrote an

essay about oral history, about that period (he refers to Polytechnic uprising), [...] I think

that the fact that my father had told me all about it […] it prompted me being one of

those that supported the whole venture, as opposed to the others who were saying that

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nobody had killed etc. Eventually, I could say that it helped me create an identity more

‘revolutionary’ in quotation marks, so to speak” (GRFG1R3).

From the previous excerpt it becomes apparent the antithesis between the oral family narratives and

the official written history as it is taught in school. The discourses that emerge in the context of

family lead to the creation of an identity which includes the necessary lenses that a person will use

to evaluate and criticize the past history events.

The oral family narratives are characterized by intense emotionality and give great emphasis to

the components of trauma which, although untold, they become visible in a latent form:

“That is, we always pay more emphasis to the victims of a war, the human losses, the

cultural damages all these matter more than those who won the war. Hence, the

emotionality is the one characteristic that empowers the historical knowledge, either to

the one or to the other direction and perhaps this is the reason why the people cannot

transmit history objectively to the next generations […]; there is the personal factor and

probably the emotional and personal involvement in the family memory that is

transmitted outside the school boundaries, and so each person communicate models of

child knowledge and interpretation with the others”. (GRFG5R4)

The silences do not appear only in the official public discourse in the form of prescriptive

forgetting, but also in the oral narratives. In the pages of the school history books, the facts that are

ideologically charged and are refer to shameful or problematic periods of history are concealed and

those that are referred to triumphs and great achievements are carried forward; the same happens in

the family narratives when such issues are not mentioned and the family members don't discuss

about the explicitly: “we don't discuss at home […] about political issues […] (GRFG4R4).

In the end, can history be objective? The official recording of history promotes the winners and

silences the losers? The family narratives burst of emotion and one-sidedness? An interesting

viewpoint is expressed by one respondent about these questions:

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“[...] because the history is written more objectively with no personal touches, the

narratives incorporate subjectivity. Naturally, history entails a subjectivity because I

believe that it is written by the dominant social norms, that want to keep on [being

dominant], basically to empower their own identity and to displace everything that is not

in accordance with heir own beliefs, that comes in conflict with their own identity and

that's why, many times, history is unfair towards the losers […] (GRFG3R4)

a. From the family’s oral narrative to the emotional identification with the narrator

In the discussion groups a questioning emerged concerning the transmission of memory within the

family. In this context, the role of feelings and emotions that accompany the mnemonic narratives

was stressed. Here, emotions, and particularly those among family members, play an important

mnemonic role in the intergenerational transmission of memory. Narratives from family members

are invested with strong feelings:

“Yes, certainly, certainly it plays a role, because he is a close family member …

especially when he says these things when you are at a very young age, you might not

understand so well, but the older you get and you recall them and you talk about them,

they come in mind and you think about them more and more maturely and later on you

have a strong, say, when you recall them, you say to yourself, what happened then and

what he had told you about it” (GRFG3R3).

These feelings help memories to be transmitted intergenerationally through the emotional

identification with the narrator producing, thus, family and collective memory. However, there is

doubt as to the authenticity of family and collective memories and mnemonic narratives, since these

may contain elements of “meta-memory” (GRFG1R3) that is, of “images of history that are

diffused in people’s consciousness” (GRFG1R3). These images often derive from the media

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(cinema for example) or from art or from other narratives alien to family members’ narratives. They

have been registered as personal memories though they are in fact collective memories:

“[…] I think that often, many things that you will hear or they will say to you, or you

will discover yourself, that they are not actually private memories. They have been

registered as such, but they may not have been experienced at all. They are images of

history passing in the minds of people. That is, they tell you “we were there”, and “this

or that happened”. “How do you know about that”? “It happened there”. But if you

examine it, you will see that it is not so, that she could not have been there at that

particular day [...] but they believe it, which means that it is part of a framework of

collectivity” (GRFG1R5).

In this sense, family memory, being invested with and transmitted through strong personal feelings,

is not a pure family construct. Its content appears to include personal and family memories as well

as elements of a wider collective memory.

b. The Conscious Forgetting of the Defeated

The traumatic events of the civil war as well as of the military dictatorship are often absent from the

discourses of those who lived them. Grief for personal losses and fear of political persecution are

two major reasons for this kind of forgetfulness. They avoid to recall the civil war traumatic

memory and to transmit it to the younger ones.

“… my grandmother [told me] some things, that she had lost seven brothers and she

avoids to mention it because this hurts her. And she starts and sometime later she stops,

she avoids it and we turn to other subjects” (GRFG5R4).

Others keep silent for the military dictatorship period:

“From my parents I have learned few things; we haven’t mentioned it extensively

because [at that time] they were very young and they were locked in the house because

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they were afraid. I haven't any experiences to describe, to tell you something more about

that period”. (GRFG5R4)

This kind of forgetting can be seen as a ‘humiliated silence’ and characterizes those defeated in the

civil war that is the left, who had also been victimized by the military dictatorship. It includes, apart

from grief and fear, also shame or guilt for crimes and atrocities committed or suffered.

2.2.4 Social Oblivion: The traumatic events’ absence from public discourse

Some of the focus groups’ members think that there is a certain silence in public discourse about the

civil war because the civil war trauma is still present as “the wounds have not yet healed”

(GRFG3R4). Civil war itself is considered a “close event” (GRFG3R4) and for that matter is

compared to the more distant 1922 Asia Minor catastrophe. They also record the existence of a

systematic silence by the family members that lived in the civil war or in the military dictatorship

periods:

“because there may be family members that have been killed in that period, there may

be disagreements [about the period] among the members of the family, without anyone

ever explaining why they disagree … some things are discussed and some are not, some

things are mentioned and some are not” (GRFG1R5)

a. The absence of the Civil War from the educational system’s official discourse

This silence is manifest in the absence of the Greek civil war from the Greek History courses taught

in secondary education. The teachers are seldom teaching the particular period since it is usually not

included in the school syllabus. It is just been skipped altogether or in other cases:

“The period from the end of WWII until today is covered in a twenty pages chapter for

which there is never time to teach it because the school year ends [by the time they

reach to this chapter of the school history book]” (GRFG3R1).

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One of the focus group members recalls that a history teacher in a town school attempted to go

deeper on the issue and encountered the students’ parental denial: “there was this teacher who, for

the first time, went a bit deeper in this issue and some of the kids’ parents came and demanded not

to deal with this issue” (GRFG1R2). However, the civil war period is taught in the university

history departments where students encounter this period as a subject of study.

b. The Military Dictatorship and the Athens Polytechnic School Uprising: An example of selective

oblivion

Although the 1973 Athens Polytechnic School uprising is taught and commemorated in the

educational system, some aspects of the dictatorial period itself are not and they stay in the dark,

without that meaning that discussions are not taking place, constructing this way a kind of selective

oblivion about this time: “in fact, we never learned anything about the dictatorship. We learned

about the Polytechnic, that was suppressed by a ‘shadow’ junta for which no one knew what it was”

(GRFG1R3). The Polytechnic uprising is celebrated and commemorated in the Greek educational

system while the teachers emphasize the ‘youth’ element of the historical event. Moreover, and

despite school celebrations of the ‘Polytechnic Uprising’, the students’ knowledge about it is felt, by

some, to be superficial and incomplete. Only impressions and fragmented information seem to have

been retained in their memory:

“we were quarrelling with some other students who were saying that no one was killed

[in the uprising] and there was this disagreement [about the killed in the uprising]

without anyone knowing why they were killed, who killed them” (GRFG1R3).

The educational system seems to produce the forgetfulness of the very memory that teaches,

celebrates and commemorates: “no, we didn't learn anything [about the uprising] in the school”

(GRFG1R3).

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Young people are dissatisfied with the public discourse ellipse about important moments in

history. The educational system as a whole is criticized for the devaluation of history in its

curriculum: “history is considered a secondary course and it is not really taught…” (GRFG4R3).

There is also a feeling of distrust towards the school books:

“the book mentions specific things, the ones that they, I don’t know who ‘they’ are, want

us to learn, it’s like directing us, it’s like someone else is pulling the strings and that the

writer of the book it has written it through their own, not objective, view and the way

they see things” and “… the dark pages of the civil war are concealed and they are not

mentioned” (GRFG4R2).

Here, forgetting is conscious and selective. The history school books have important omissions

and history is a second grade course. The emphasis and the focus are on the ‘glorious pages’ of

national history while anything dark or ideologically/nationally disturbing for the present remains

concealed. This can be described as a “prescriptive forgetting” which is precipitated by the state and

is based on the belief that it is in the interests of all parties in the context of a previous dispute. This

is forgetting that emerges as a result of a wider unspoken consensus that is considered vital for the

collective survival and moving forward.

2.2.5 The impossibility of the objective recording of historical events

The participants in the discussion groups developed a ‘discourse of suspicion’ toward claims of

historical objectivity. Both the dominant and the alternative historical narratives were challenged

regarding their validity and they were attributed to several factors that were seen as influencing the

crystallization of the different historical and mnemonic discourses. In this context, historical

knowledge and memory, become stakes within the conflictual field of truth production. The

question of the objectivity in historical discourses and narratives emerged in most discussion groups

and revealed a widespread skepticism towards the truthfulness and the objectivity of both the

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dominant and the alternative historical discourses and narratives. The focus groups participants

located several sources of bias, distortion and partiality in historical discourses and narratives e.g.

subjectivity in history “for every person there is a different truth” (GRFG1R4) and the conflictual

nature of historical events and the winner’s bias: “in fact, the winners write the history”

(GRFG5R3). Additionally, they pointed out some ideological reasons:

“I believe that an objective recording of this event [the civil war] would be almost

impossible because each side accuses the other for excesses, atrocities, violence. The

same is being done by all sides, both the right and the left accuse each other…”

(GRFG3R5).

Of course, the proximity of the historical events to the present - lack of necessary time distance was

also important to them: “...some things, because they are recent, we cannot know them for sure...

we will approximately learn what happened much later…” (GRFG3R3). Finally, partiality due to

ethnocentrism and patriotism is another reason of why objectivity is almost impossible in historical

knowledge:

“The first mistake they do is that they present only one side of the issue and the second

one is that they present only what happened in Greece in a particular period, that is, we

don’t know what happened in the rest of the world and how different conjunctures were

affected and what the causes were.” (GRFG5R2).

This is considered to be a widespread tendency and practice.

2.2.6 Τhe overcoming of the division is the national entity “Greece”

The Civil War, as a traumatic event, constitutes an integral part of social and collective memory in

Greece. The same happens with the political division that permeates Greek society. Young people

recognize that this division between right and left affects on the awareness of Greek history: “But

beyond left and right, it still exists Greece and what interests us most is the history of Greece,

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neither left nor right” (GRFG3R3). Still, others admit that any approach to Greek history has

already made a political choice, as if we are to deal with Greece’s recent past “we should hide the

nationalist past more than the left one, we have to highlight the nationalist past with a trend of

national consensus” (GRFG1R3).

2.2.7 Τhe influence of the past on the present and vice versa

Young people believe that the past influences the present, but they hesitate about how well we can

learn the past. The main filter is the political division between left and right: “opinions vary”, they

say, i.e. there is always a political (or ideological) reading of history. This “dualism is political, not

historical” (GRFG3R2). The pattern of hostility between brothers resumes, largely because of the

ideology concerning specific past traumatic events, as the Civil War and the military junta:

“And nowadays, [we can see] the split, the two sides that are fighting because of

ideology. People virtually always and not only in our country but also on a much

broader level it is more likely to kill each other because of ideology than for some other

reason” (GRFG5R2).

a. The new cultural trauma

The political system in Greece after the dictatorship was based on two parties alternating in power.

This bipartisanship formed strong political views and practices in Greek society, largely derived

from the collective memory of the Civil War and the military junta. The strong bond between the

past and modern society still can be found in the left and right political identities (GRFG1). The

“Polytechnic generation”, the students who resisted the junta in November 1973 fighting for

democracy and popular sovereignty, holds a unique position and it is generally recognized that its

members governed Greece during the past few decades (GRFG3R3). However, young people begin

to assume this generation with a sort of demystification and ambivalence. They think it was this

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generation’s governments that corrupted the political system, and the consequences are manifest

today. The main problem of the policy of the (until recently) dominant parties in Greece, PA.SO.K

and New Democracy, is located in clientelism: their voters voted them expecting benefits for their

own good (GRFG5). As a result, people have lost their confidence in these parties and some recall

the leader of the dictatorship, George Papadopoulos (GRFG5), thus sighing for a more “idyllic”

past where Greece’s political stuff hadn’t been degenerated from power and money (GRFG1). What

seems to be at stake here is democracy itself. The new trauma comes from the malfunction of

democracy: “That is, we talk about democracy, but we do not really have democracy now! Even if

you ask any conservative, he will say the same, we have no democracy today!” (GRFG2R5). Some

express their fear that the recent crisis could lead Greece back to the authoritarianism of the military

regime, whereas others refuse the two-party political system:

“As an eighteen year old girl I vote reactionary, because I see that there is no

bipartisanship anymore, [it] has become one of, even if there are names like left and

right, but there are just names, in effect is exactly the same, exactly the same”

(GRFG3R4).

Trauma is a collective phenomenon, a condition experienced by a group, community, or society

as a result of disruptive events culturally interpreted as traumatizing. The conditions for cultural

trauma are ripe when there appears some kind of disorganization, displacement, or incoherence in

culture - in other words when the normative and cognitive context of human life and social actions

loses its homogeneity, coherence, and stability, and becomes diversified or even polarized into

opposites cultural complexes, as it happens in Greece with those pro-memorandum and those

against it. There is duality, split, ambivalence, clash within a culture, emerging suddenly, rapidly

and unexpectedly, and embracing the core areas of cultural components, such as basic values,

central beliefs, and common norms. This is the reason that we call the current situation ‘the new

cultural trauma’.

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b. The history of Greece is contrived

Maybe the new trauma is related to the recognition of Greek history as a field of intervention by

foreign forces, thus recalling memories and corresponding dominant interpretations of the Civil War

and the dictatorship. Foreign forces, therefore, appear to act against the country in consistency with

their Greek colleagues and the nepotism in Greek politics:

“I believe that this whole scene was a well premeditated scene by foreign forces, which

first imposed the junta and then they wanted to dismiss junta. That’s why [...] from ’74

to 2012 we are governed continuously by two people from two families. This is not to

happen in a democratic state” (GRFG2R3).

This realization seems to be more noticeable with the advent of the crisis in Greece. The present and

the future of the country look predetermined by decision makers outside Greece. The required

consent is missing, the course of the nation is suicidal, recent history returns in a tragic mode (e.g.,

politicians being called traitors or collaborators as in the period of the Resistance and Civil War)

and the country is considered in possession by foreign forces (GRFG1).

2.2.8 The emergence of neo-Nazism in Greece: ‘Golden Dawn’

In the current period of crisis, when traumatic periods of Greek history recur to the public debate

and Greek society seeks solutions to its problems, the far right, fascist, neo-Nazi party Golden

Dawn (GD) raised strongly. Although an old party, its dynamic presence in the Greek political

scene has created a sense of a new political phenomenon. Young people interpret this dynamics

through different ways. One view is that its empowerment originated as a reaction to the crisis, as

GD used an accessible political discourse: “They said what Greek people wanted to hear at that

time, the voters who voted they told the keyword “immigrants” since they are too many and most

are illegal” (GRFG3R3). Also, the united response of all other parties against GD, from far right to

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far left, creates ambivalence towards it, as its (ostensible) anti-systemic nature may mean the

reform of a “corrupted” (GRFG5) political system:

“Why everyone rejects them? Is it because they want to continue doing what they do say

having the Parliament for their own? Is it because some individuals come out and have

some specific beliefs? That makes you think, first, that GD is an extreme party, they led

it to the Parliament for specific reasons, and on the other you wonder why they all fight

it so much” (GRFG3R5).

Furthermore, it is emphasized that GD exploits shortcomings in policing and public safety, the gaps

of state care and serves as a counterweight to the state. Its violence is not considered particularly

unlawful, because its acts are part of similar phenomena observed in Greek society.

3. Concluding remarks

It is more than obvious from the aforementioned descriptive analysis that the issues of trauma,

memory and oblivion within the Greek history are very important and still present in many ways. It

is also evident that this analysis is only a small part of what we discussed during these focus groups

and interviews and a smaller part of what someone could discuss on such themes in contemporary

Greek society. However, we will now try to make a synopsis of the above material and come to

some concluding remarks.

The first and most clear outcome is that the Civil War (1946-1949) is the most traumatic

historical period of the Greek history, along with the period of the German occupation (1941-1944)

which in that sense is two times traumatic, because it leads to the Civil War. On the other hand the

military junta of 1967-1974 is less traumatic or to be more exact following our respondents’ replies

it is dramatic, since no one characterized this time as traumatic. The Civil War divides society into

two main parties and influences social structures dividing entire villages and even families. During

the dictatorship there is a sense that people are united against a common enemy and somehow there

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is an overcome of the Civil War mainly through the celebrations about the uprising of the

Polytechnic School (November 1973). As far as the people who took part in this struggle against the

military regime are concerned, young people today maintain an ambivalent stance and opinion.

Even though they admire them, maybe because they see themselves in them, and they consider their

fight as positive and idealistic, they are also very critical against them from the moment many of

them turned to people of power and ruled Greece for more that thirty years as MP’s and Ministers.

That means that the generation of the Polytechnic School as is called is demystified from the

moment it comes to power and is accused of what now is taking place in Greece, with the current

social, political and financial crisis. In that sense the present is influencing the way young people

see the past and some of them take the present as an obstacle in their effort to know and understand

their past in a way is very difficult to learn your past in all detail (GRFG3R2).

Another crucial remark is about oblivion and forgetting. It is true that in the public domain the

main trend was to forget and avoid discuss issues related to the Civil War. This is quite evident in

schools where silence over this period is dominant and young people as they massively underlined

do not learn many things about that traumatic time. They are mainly taught about Greece’s glorious

past, e.g. Ancient Greece, Alexander the Great and the Revolution of 1821 against the Turks, but

little if nothing concerning the Civil War. In that sense they do not learn about difficult and

traumatic historical moments of the Greek history, i.e. ideologically charged, which are actually

concealed and hidden. Not to mention that according to them history is taken as a class of low

importance. What we ascertain is that this kind of forgetting is selective and conscious and is an

outcome of a political and ideological stance. It could also be characterized as prescriptive

forgetting (Connerton, 2008). Prescriptive forgetting, like erasure, it is precipitated by an act of

state. This is a kind of forgetting which results from the ineffable consent of the people in order to

move on and survive as a nation.

But why those defeated tend to be silent about this period? There are many reasons about that,

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but mainly they want to forget events that are traumatic and caused pain to them. Additionally, those

belonging to the left were afraid to reveal their identity many years after the Civil War’s end.

Finally, there is also the shame of what both sides did during this civil struggle.

However, apart from this official and mainstream discourse there are also alternative narrations

which are basically found in social media and the internet, in movies and in books. Furthermore,

family narrations also contribute into that direction. All these, can of course form a kind of

collective memory through the production of knowledge, but young people are very discontented

with this lack of public discourse regarding the traumatic moments of our history. The oral

testimony within the family is of profound importance, because it contributes to formation of young

people’s identity. The wounds, which on several occasions were real (injuries in the prisons,

tortures, etc.), activate the excitement and emotion. The identification with narrow faces of family

environment enhances the tragic impact. But there is a difference of opinion, and often the question

arises: how objective is the oral storytelling? The same question arises with regard to the written

history, since as supporting the young of our focus groups “history is written by the victors”.

Ultimately, young people make an issue of concern and historians. Oral sources emphasize the

dimension of subjectivity and plurality that lies at the heart of every human action. If the source is

basically oral marked by subjectivity in the player, it remains relevant to the extent that it provides

us a symbolic representation of events as experienced from the inside. Of course, this subjectivity

poses the eternal question of the validity of oral sources. Indeed, what value the historian must give

at a life story? Isn’t this full of falsehoods, exaggerations, inventions and omissions to project a

vision or overly embellished blackened past incommensurate with reality? These criticisms seem

perfectly legitimate yet they forget that the testimony is never a perfect reproduction of the past, but

always involves a reconstruction of the symbolic remembrance.

The ambivalence is particularly intense regarding the Civil War: we do not know and can not

know, say the young people, because each side has its own presentation of events. But, as we know,

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ambivalence is a constitutive dimension of trauma. Moreover, such an attitude can be interpreted as

a strategy to avoid forgetfulness on the part of young people (let’s not scratch wounds), at least from

the Left side.

The last remark is related with the connection between past and present. First of all, as we

mentioned above young people are criticizing the generation of the Polytechnic School through the

present and the current events of the crisis. Obviously, they are not thinking clear and are influenced

by the contemporary social conditions, which are used as disfiguring glasses in order to interpret the

past. The past is also influencing the present through the rise of ultra-extremism in Greece and more

precisely of the neo-Nazi group ‘Golden Dawn’. It is not the place here to analyze its emergence,

but via their social and political presence the ‘hidden’ trauma of the Civil War is back again or

maybe as a new trauma. These people are systematically opposed to the Left and they organize

commemoration festivals not only about ancient Greek victories, but also about the victory of the

Civil War, or to be more exact about remembering the Left’s defeat. Their public discourse is

absolutely dividing (e.g. We against all others) and they seem to seek this kind of clash and

division. What is interesting, though, is that young people are quite attractive by them and the form

of their organization, they seem to neglect the fact that they are pro-Nazi and this is also related to

the fact that young people do not seem to know what Nazism was, because this is another missing

part of the school system, which is either not taught or not given the proper attention. As a

consequence, past and present are interrelated and past influences the present and vice versa.

Memory seems to be a substantial element in the quest of both the individual and the collective

identity within the anxiety, the confusion and the needs of the present, because at the end history is

totally related with the present and is influenced by it in the way it collects, classifies and put

together the events of the past. The present exercise a continuous social pressure against history and

that is why historians have put the question if social memory will serve the emancipation and the

freedom of the people or their subjugation.

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4. References

Connerton, P. (2008) “Seven Types of Forgetting”, Memory Studies, 1 (1):59-71.

Halbwachs, M. (1925/1994) Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel

Halbwachs, M. (1950/1968) La mémoire collective. Paris: PUF.

Jodelet, D. (1992) “Mémoire de masse: le coté morale et affectif de l’histoire”. Bulletin de

Psychologie, 405 (XLV):229-256.

Karamanolakis, V. Memory and the Historiography of the 1940’s, (unpublished presentation).

Laurens, S. (2002) La mémoire collective, identités et représentations sociales. Rennes: Presses

Universitaires de Rennes.

Le Goff, J. et Nora, P. (2011) Faire de l‘'histoire. Paris: Folio.

Le Goff, J. (1988) Histoire et mémoire. Paris: Gallimard.

Mantoglou, A. (2010) Social memory, Social oblivion. Athens: Pedio.

Moscovici, S. and Hewstone, M. (1984) “De la science au sens commun”, in S. Moscovici (ed.)

Psychologie sociale, pp. 539-566, Paris: PUF.

Ricoeur, P. (2000) La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Point

myplace (memory, youth, political legacy and civic engagement

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