Letter from Athens: Passing of a Former King Elicits Cool Reaction

ATHENS — There will be no state funeral for the former and final king of Greece, Constantine II, who died at a private Athens hospital on Tuesday at the age of 82. The death of Constantine, a much cherished second cousin of King Charles, drew mostly muted reactions in the Greek capital, testament to a life that was both marked and marred by some of the biggest upheavals in the history of modern Greece. He was an Olympic gold medalist in sailing who acceded to the throne in 1964, when he was only 23, but soon found himself in a political maelstrom that pushed him into exile, mainly in Britain, for decades.That the turmoil of 1960s and 1970s Greece was at least partly of the monarch’s own making was reflected in an official statement from the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who called Constantine’s passing “the formal epilogue to a chapter that was closed and done with the 1974 referendum.” He added that “the wounds were healed by the choices, the free conscience and the maturity” of the Greeks. More obliquely, he said, “it’s up to history to judge.”That referendum was a plebiscite after the collapse of a military junta in Greece that sealed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic. Yet it was Contantine’s undeniable if indirect role in the emergence of that junta that caused his early popularity to plummet and sowed the seeds of years of political chaos in what was then and is more than ever one of the most important members of the NATO alliance.The downfall of the elected Center Union administration of a former Greek prime minister, George Papandreou — in which Constantine played a part — triggered a period of instability that proved fertile ground for a military coup in 1967. Democracy was restored only in 1974. As the Associated Press’s Demetris Nellas neatly summed up, “reduced in the following decades to only fleeting visits to Greece that raised a political and media storm each time, he was able to settle again in his home country in his waning years when opposing his presence no longer held currency as a badge of vigilant republicanism.”Nostalgia for the Greek monarchy today is virtually nonexistent. As Britain’s Guardian newspaper dryly noted in Constantine’s obituary, “of the seven Greek monarchs of the 19th and 20th centuries, three were deposed, one assassinated, two abdicated and one died of septicaemia after being bitten by a barbary ape in the royal gardens.” Upon learning of Constantine’s death, a Greek colleague told this correspondent, “He had a full life cheating the Greek nation. God bless his soul.” Constantine will be buried as a private citizen on Monday outside Athens at Tatoi, the former summer residence of Greece’s royals and where his parents and ancestors are buried. The Greek culture minister, Lina Mendoni, will attend the funeral, but it was not clear whether Mr. Mitsotakis planned to be in attendance. ***The Greek newspaper Ta Nea reported on the death at the age of 103 of a Greek man, Giannis Karageorgiou, who made his mark attempting to battle the Nazis in the dark years of German occupation. In April 1942, Karageorgiou, along with his brother and 18 others, tried to escape from the island of Lesbos with the aim of fighting the Axis in an undisclosed location in the Middle East. Before they could make a break, Nazi troops arrested them.Karageorgiou was moved to a prison camp at Thessaloniki, where, in spring 1944, the SS ordered the summary execution of most if not all the inmates. He had recounted prior to his death how the Germans forced him to participate in the burial of the executed: “They threw about 700 people into the two pits … and we buried them,” he explained, adding (in Greek) other details of the atrocity that are not necessarily fit to print. Recalling that distant wartime incident may sadly be timely, and not only because of the European war raging not so very far from Greece’s generally placid Mediterranean shores. That is because another Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, reports that a mural at Thessaloniki that marks the deportation of members of the city’s once thriving Jewish community to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in March 1943 has been defaced. Not for the first time, the mural was vandalized with depictions of what appeared to be swastikas.Israel’s new envoy to Greece, Noam Katz, said in a statement, “I am appalled by the defacing with fascist symbols of the mural dedicated to the deportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki in the Holocaust at the city’s new train station and I condemn it.” Mr. Katz added that “it is yet another anti-Semitic incident in the city in recent weeks. There can be no tolerance for such phenomena perpetrated by extremists in a city and country, which paid such a heavy price during the Holocaust.”The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece expressed dismay that, at least as of Wednesday, the culprits remain at large. The board released a statement saying that “once again we call upon the authorities to take all necessary measures in order to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” adding: “Statements of condemnation are not enough.”

Letter from Athens: Passing of a Former King Elicits Cool Reaction

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