“the fight starts again, new fights,
Leaders and hope, the first dead…”
Again, we celebrate in our school the anniversary of the polytechnic school events as usual. The 17th of November is an anniversary celebrated by the youth of the nation, youth full of hope and dreams for the future.
This day, people, both young and old, we honor those youths that resisted the military junta and stood against it at 1973.
The military junta of the colonels started at 1967. Several officers of the Greek army, thinking that the political situation in Greece was full of corruption, decided to take control of the country themselves.
Since that time started a fierce manhunt of politicians, the exile of political dissentients to the desert islands, the tortures and beatings of simple citizens. All the democratic rights of the citizens were revoked. Elections stopped, labor and student unions were disbanded, there was no freedom of speech, a general curfew was imposed and no meeting more than three people was allowed.
Soon a resistance was formed. At 17th of November, after the military junta denied the request of the universities students to hold university elections, the students took over control of the polytechnic school of Athens and started a revolution against the military junta.
“… and so, they started fighting with the snakes,
They killed them and they were killed themselves.
But they managed to wake feelings at the people that they had long forgotten.
They baptized in the fires of the revolution words that had lost their meaning:
Freedom, Democracy, Equality, Friendship…”
Since then 46 years have passed. The fires that were lit that night in Athens in our souls, lit new roads for us to walk, a climb that is difficult to walk but so very beautiful. Roads open to the future.
Those roads of the resistance and peace we tried to present through this event that was attended to our school by the parents, the students and teachers of our community.
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