Greek soldiers march alongside the country’s six divisions (including the Houdini, Eoka and the Ermis brigades) in the annual ceremony at the Athens War Memorial (Eulogy of St. Aaron), the grave of the Greek resistance leader Georgios Tsakalos, who was a Greek Communist before turning to the Nazis during World War II.
Greece’s defense and foreign ministers paid a visit today to the memorial to the Nazi soldier who put Tsakalos’s head on his chest, along with the communist hero. In the middle of the ceremony, a No. 10 Downing Street flag fell from the balcony of the embassy building near the memorial.
More than a decade ago, Winston Churchill once said, “Of all the cruel sights he [Takouloulou] suffered at the hands of the Germans in the months of the war, seeing the last German Panzer force battered senseless to the ground is the sight of the deepest injustice and of the most lasting disgrace in the history of mankind.”
Takouloulou died when he was shot by a German soldier on May 29, 1944. He was buried with full military honors in a church in Athens, and his final resting place is marked with a plaque commemorating him as a fallen martyr.
