The Greek Memory Culture

According to historian Constantin Goschler, an “anti-fascist remembrance” or collective “patriotic remembrance” was never developed in postwar Greece as it was in Eastern or Western Europe. Consequently, there is a “divided memory” of the 1940s in public history and memory. This “divided memory” was based on the conflict between Left and Right. According to historian Hagen Fleischer, only in 1974, with the collapse of the military dictatorship (1967–1974) and the subsequent restoration of democracy and legalization of the Communist Party, was emphasis put on the heroic aspects of the resistance. The military dictatorship was accompanied by a radical politicization, especially of the youth. Both the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary Left became predominant. A defining moment came shortly after the 1981 elections when the socialists (PASOK) supported the legal recognition of the resistance (Law 1285/ 1982), turning it into the “National Resistance,” a term never used before. This finally allowed the Communist fighters to openly recognize their participation in the resistance during the World War. This reconciliation of the divided memories also helped to overcome the consequences of the civil war.

 

The German Memory Culture

In the 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany systematically downplayed all crimes committed during the Second World War. Massacres, reprisals and the brutal violence on the part of the German occupying forces were always twisted or relativized in favor of a bilateral renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Greece and Germany, and both sides cultivated forgetfulness and collective amnesia. About the crimes of the German Occupation in Greece there is public ignorance, even today. Oradour in France or Lidice in Czechoslovakia are places of horror and memory. Kalavryta, Distomo and Klissura are, on the other hand, nonexistent in the map of European collective memory. One can read about Oradour in nearly all German textbooks, but for Distomo one can hardly find a single line in a school textbook.