Glezos is best remembered for his heroic act, together with Lakis Santas in 1941, of climbing Athens’ Acropolis Hill at night and taking down the Nazi swastika flag flying there early the next morning, dealing a powerful symbolic blow to the powerful occupying forces.
Santas, a 19-year-old law student at
Athens University, and Glezos, his 18-year-old friend,
determined to remove the Nazi flag which, as they put it, "offended all
human ideals". They discovered, from a library book, that the north side
of the Acropolis contained a natural cave leading from the base to the
top which had been used as a secret passage in ancient times and seemed
to offer a chance of evading detection.
On the night of May 30, armed with only a torch and a pocket knife and inspired by Leonidas's heroic stand at Thermopylae, they crept through the undergrowth and entered the cave.
When they eventually emerged at the top of the Acropolis they found, to their dismay, that the flagpole was 50ft high, with the swastika firmly tethered to the top. It took three hours before they succeeded in scaling the pole and cutting the ropes to bring the banner down. According to their later account, they tore off five pieces for themselves and for friends, then threw the rest of the flag down a well in the cave before making their escape. At the base of the Acropolis they were stopped by a Greek police officer, who let them go.
In the morning Athenians woke up to find that the hated swastika was gone, replaced for a few precious hours by the Greek flag. The Gestapo immediately announced that the perpetrators would be executed if caught and launched a manhunt. The boys' mothers burned the pieces of the flag and a diary of their exploits.
Their act would have remained unknown to the wider Greek populace had not the tightly-censored Athenian press given the event extensive front-page coverage under strongly-worded editorials "condemning" the perpetrators. The story of the removal of the flag continued to inspire the Greek Resistance throughout the war, but the truth of how the flags were switched remained a mystery.
On the night of May 30, armed with only a torch and a pocket knife and inspired by Leonidas's heroic stand at Thermopylae, they crept through the undergrowth and entered the cave.
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| Manolis Glezos (L) and Apostolos "Lakis" Santas (R) |
When they eventually emerged at the top of the Acropolis they found, to their dismay, that the flagpole was 50ft high, with the swastika firmly tethered to the top. It took three hours before they succeeded in scaling the pole and cutting the ropes to bring the banner down. According to their later account, they tore off five pieces for themselves and for friends, then threw the rest of the flag down a well in the cave before making their escape. At the base of the Acropolis they were stopped by a Greek police officer, who let them go.
In the morning Athenians woke up to find that the hated swastika was gone, replaced for a few precious hours by the Greek flag. The Gestapo immediately announced that the perpetrators would be executed if caught and launched a manhunt. The boys' mothers burned the pieces of the flag and a diary of their exploits.
Their act would have remained unknown to the wider Greek populace had not the tightly-censored Athenian press given the event extensive front-page coverage under strongly-worded editorials "condemning" the perpetrators. The story of the removal of the flag continued to inspire the Greek Resistance throughout the war, but the truth of how the flags were switched remained a mystery.
This incredibly courageous move later proved to be just the beginning of the great Greek resistance to the Nazi terror.
It was a gallant act, an act of proud defiance, which ultimately raised the spirits of all the Greek people and made them believe that they could indeed resist the Nazis despite their military might.
It was a clear demonstration of the indomitable power of the human spirit against the power of guns.
The details became known only after the war ended in 1945, when the police officer who had stopped the boys told of his encounter, bringing Santas and Glezos a brief celebrity. It did not last. As communists, they soon found themselves caught up in the civil war between communists and nationalists which raged in the power vacuum created by the end of the German occupation. During the conflict both men were tried and given death sentences that were eventually commuted following a public outcry.
Born in the village of Apiranthos (Aperathu), Naxos, Glezos moved to Athens in 1935 together with his family, where a few years later he participated in the creation of an anti-fascist youth group opposed to the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese and the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas.
Glezos asked to join the Greek Army along the Albanian front to fight against Italy at the onset of World War II, but he was rejected because he was underage. During the Axis occupation of Greece, he worked for the Hellenic Red Cross and the municipality of Athens, while still being actively involved in the Resistance.
The end of World War II was not the end of Glezos’ tribulations, however. On March 3, 1948, in the midst of the Greek Civil War, he was put on trial for his political convictions and sentenced to death multiple times by the national government.
His death sentence was reduced to a life sentence in 1950. Despite still being imprisoned, Glezos was elected as a member of the Hellenic Parliament in 1951, under the flag of the United Democratic Left, also known as EDA.
Over the course of four decades, Glezos had been imprisoned numerous times by the Germans, the Italians and then by Greek rightwing and military governments, and was even tortured and put in solitary confinement.
“They say to survive in prison you should love yourself, eat and read. Well, I never loved myself, I didn’t care about food — but I constantly read,” he told the Financial Times in 2016.
After the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974, Glezos participated in the revival of EDA. He was elected a member of the Greek Parliament on a Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) ticket in the elections of October, 1981 and June, 1985.
In 1984 he was elected Member of the European Parliament, again on a PASOK ticket.
Glezos was elected as an MP for the Coalition of Radical Left (SYRIZA) party in Greece’s June, 2012 parliamentary elections.
He also served as a SYRIZA candidate for the European Parliament in the elections of May 25, 2014. He was elected to that body with over 430,000 votes, receiving more than any other candidate in Greece.
At age 91, the Resistance hero also became the oldest individual ever elected to the European Parliament in the 2014 elections.
Sources: Greek Reporter, The Telegraph
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