Mikis Theodorakis, Mauthausen, Israel, Palestine: What Freedom Means to Us, Hellenes…

ΕΑΝ ΠΡΟΤΙΜΑΤΕ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΠΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΤΗ ΣΗΜΑΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΚΑΤΩ ΜΕΡΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΟΘΟΝΗΣ

From the Nazi occupation to the fall of the Junta, and from Jewish suffering to Palestinian aspirations: a personal reflection on why, for Hellenes, freedom comes first.

By Nick Stamatakis

In 1974, I was a 13-year-old teenager overflowing with enthusiasm for freedom.

The military dictatorship had just fallen, in the aftermath of the tragedy of Cyprus, and the whole of Greece—especially its youth—was electrified by the anti-junta struggle. Freedom, democracy and resistance to fascism were not abstract ideas to us.

We had all grown up faster than our age. I was already a well-read, restless young man, a top student who would not hesitate to participate in political and social movements. I was also well on my way toward socialist ideas—an adventure that lasted until I was about twenty.

Politics, history and freedom were in the air we breathed, and nowhere were they expressed more powerfully than in the music of Mikis Theodorakis.

That fall of 1974, I left home by myself twice after 10 p.m. and went to Mikis concerts in soccer stadiums a few miles away. You have to understand Greece: then, as now, nightlife barely begins before 11 p.m.!

It was a very safe neighborhood, but I am still lucky my father did not kill me when he discovered what I had done. My mom protected me…

Those concerts remain among my strongest memories of that extraordinary period.

Theodorakis reached so deeply into us for another reason. Among his greatest works was Mauthausen, composed to the poetry of Iakovos Kambanellis, himself a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp. Songs such as “Antonis” became part of the musical landscape of a Greece rediscovering democracy after 1974.

For me, this was not distant history.

Only thirty years earlier, on August 17, 1944, my own neighborhood had suffered a Nazi Bloko—a massive blockade and roundup. More than 200 men and boys (as young as 13 – my age at that time) were executed on the spot. Around 8-10,000 were marched to a military camp miles away, and many were eventually sent to Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

IMAGE ABOVE: A famous artistic rendition of the “Bloko” in Kokkinia…

Only a small number returned.

I still remember some of those few survivors walking through our neighborhood—men who had physically returned home but seemed, in some profound way, still imprisoned inside their nightmares.

In 1974, only thirty years separated us from those events. The Nazi occupation, the executions and the concentration camps were not remote history. The survivors were still walking among us. Our neighborhood, Kokkinia, had shown the strongest anti-Nazi resistance in Greece, and paid a heavy price.

(To read a rather literary report I wrote a few years ago, please link here).

And now Greece was emerging from another dictatorship, while an entire generation sang Theodorakis: music celebrating resistance to Nazism, mourning the victims of the Holocaust and proclaiming the right to resist tyranny. Mauthausen also acquired extraordinary significance in Israel, where its songs came to occupy an almost anthem-like place in public memory.

Then, several years later, the same Mikis Theodorakis turned toward the Palestinian struggle for freedom and national recognition.

At Yasser Arafat’s request, he composed a Palestinian national hymn/anthem and presented it to the Palestinian leadership in Beirut in 1982. Theodorakis later recalled Arafat telling him:

“You sang the Jews, and you were right, because they too are a tormented people. Like us. Please write a song for us too.” And he did actually compose the Palestinian National Anthem (it was never approved as an anthem officially – but it is an amazing song):

For me, that is the essential Mikis Theodorakis: the man who gave musical voice to the memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust also gave musical voice to the Palestinian longing for freedom.

There was no contradiction.

Freedom for Jews does not require denying freedom to Palestinians; freedom for Palestinians does not require hatred of Jews. The principle cannot change based on the victim’s identity.

Years later, during the “Oslo Accords” in 1993, Theodorakis attended the negotiations and signing ceremony: his Mauthausen was performed in honor of Israel, and his Palestinian anthem/hymn in honor of the Palestinians. Few images better express the idea.

And it expresses something deeply Hellenic, too.

The men of my neighborhood resisted the Nazis. Some gave their lives; others returned from the camps carrying wounds for the rest of their lives. Thirty years later, my generation celebrated the fall of another dictatorship through Theodorakis’s music.

That history taught us something simple:

Freedom cannot be selective.

We Hellenes do not have to choose between Jews and Palestinians. We defend the dignity and freedom of both, because the freedom we claim for ourselves cannot morally be denied to another people.

Our history has often demanded a very high price for freedom. Perhaps that is why we understand its value so instinctively.

For us Hellenes, freedom is not merely one good among others.

Freedom comes first.

Ελευθερία πάνω απ’ όλα.

August 25, 2026, www.helleniscope.com, n.stamatakis@aol.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.

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