Sometimes the world seems to grow smaller, and time folds in on itself. Less than two weeks ago, a dozen photographs taken more than 80 years ago appeared on eBay for public auction. These are photos that no one knew existed until last week. What seemed like an innocuous e-commerce listing plunged Greece into convulsions of painful collective memory. For me as a Greek-Australian, the story had instant fascination. I write about it here because it speaks to all of us in the context of a gathering authoritarianism. While we cannot compare our situation in Australia with the horrors of fascist Europe in the 20th century, the seriousness of our current moment requires us to be resolved yet disciplined in how we organise and confront the authoritarian offensive.
The images depict Greek men being loaded onto trucks, walking in lines, or standing against walls. We know they were being marched to their execution at the hands of Nazis. These men were among the 200 communists executed by the Nazis as a reprisal killing on May 1, 1944. Acting on Nazi directives, they were singled out because they were communists. They were handed over by Greek collaborators, some having been imprisoned since as early as 1936.
In one photograph, the men march with their heads held high. Another shows them lined up against a wall - one with his fist raised in the air, another with his chest thrust forward and his eyes lifted skyward. They had been brought to the shooting range in the working-class Athenian suburb of Kaisariani. There they were executed and buried, but for many Greeks, they never truly died.
Before these photographs surfaced, we had only the testimonies of small children who peered over walls or from street corners to steal a glimpse. As so often happens, children became quiet witnesses to atrocity. They recounted that the men seemed strangely unafraid and defiant. They sang guerrilla songs and the national anthem as they were led to their deaths. The children heard them chant slogans and look their executioners in the eye as they were lined up, twenty at a time, to be slaughtered. The children had told us these things, and we wanted to believe them. But perhaps, on some level, we doubted. For some communists and leftists, maybe we feared they had not been quite so heroic at the end. For others, the story confirmed the cowardice and complicity of the establishment during the Nazi occupation.
Now, these grainy, 80-year-old photographs reveal something of what the children saw. We see courage and determination in the face of fascist guns. The communists, the Jews, the homosexuals, and the ethnic minorities (called "gypsies" at the time) were the first targets. The same pattern unfolding now with the demonisation of political and ethnic groups.
A generation of communists and leftists came to Australia in the post-war period, following the catastrophe of European fascism. Those young migrant men and women arrived with nothing in their suitcases. What they carried instead was a faith in the power of humanity to overcome the most malevolent forces. They too possessed something of the look we see in those photographs from 80 years ago. Migrants from across Europe joined or supported the Communist Party of Australia, seeing in it an organisation that recognised their humanity and fought for their common interests as workers, and against war. Many others were active in peace and international solidarity movements, striving to prevent war and imperialist domination across all continents.
Today, we live in the world of Trump and Hanson, and assorted warmongers and racists. Powerful blocs of capital are aligning behind militarism and increasingly emboldened authoritarian regimes. If there is something we can learn from these photographs, it is about the dignity found in solidarity and the need to remain organised and unbowed in the face of evil and power. Because if you look into the eyes of the people in those photographs, you will see the gift they have left behind. In their eyes, there is no hatred, and there is no fear. They refused to be dead men walking. They saw further. They set a higher standard than that.
There is a message I take from this - if they could manage that in the heart of darkness, today we too have a duty to be resolved and disciplined in our struggle for justice and equality, without surrendering to hatred or fear.
- Adam Rorris
President, SEARCH Foundation
