Residents, friends, and members of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) honoured on Sunday, May 10, the five Zitsa residents executed by the Nazis, at the National Resistance Square in Zitsa.
Executed communists honoured in Greece
A monument was unveiled, erected next to the National Resistance monument, dedicated to Vasilis Stamoulis, Giorgos Galgos, Giorgos Rozanis, Giannis Rozanis and Nikos Papadiamantis. The first four were executed along with 200 communists at the Kaisariani Shooting Range on May 1, 1944, while Nikos Papadiamantis was executed at the Pavlos Melas camp on March 4, 1943.
The event space had been transformed into an open exhibition of historical memory. On the boards were the biographies of the executed and the names of the 14 Epirusians who were executed in Kaisariani on May 1, 1944.
Leonidas Leontaris, creator of the monument and member of the Ioannina branch of the KKE greeted the participants. He noted that it attempts to convey the emotions that arose in the hearts of the people when they saw the photographs of the execution of the 200 in Kaisariani. The figures of the monument, one next to the other, stand proudly, “singing and shouting for Greece and their Party, the KKE”, while their raised fists “break the boundaries of place and time”, showing the path of unyielding struggle.
Spyros Kostis, secretary of the KKE's Ioannina branch, referred to the attempt by fascists to disrupt the event, by tearing down posters in the previous days and attacking a member of the KKE on the eve of the event. The massive presence of the people of the area gave the best answer to those who want to cover up the historical truth, with the square filled with the slogan "Neither in foreign islands nor in prisons, the communists never bowed down to them."
In the keynote speech, Fanis Parris, a member of the Central Committee of the KKE, focused on Zitsa as a place where the history of the class movement seems concentrated: From the first communist nuclei, the struggles of poor farmers, the persecutions and the Resistance, to membership in the DSE, political refugee status and return.
A special moment was when Georgia Valera, the daughter of a fighter of the National Resistance and the DSE, sang with Epirus levity the lyrics “Rebels came out to the mountains, they came out to fight for freedom,” adding with emotion that “we are here and we continue.”