The Deafening Silence of the Unburied Dead: The Greek Civil War and Historical Trauma

Abstract

While World War II was still raging in Europe and the Pacific, the onset of the Greek Civil War in December 1944 marked the beginning of the Cold War. For the people of Greece, the civil war would continue the devastation that the Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupations had initiated. The civil war's catastrophic cleavages in Greek society are still part of contemporary social and political life. For my family, the civil war's barbarity is manifest in the brutal execution of my great-uncle Yiorgos (George) Kasidakos, a partisan of ELAS who was imprisoned in Gytheio following the Treaty of Varkiza. On March 21^st, 1947, George and 31 other political prisoners were brutally executed by a monarcho-fascist gang comprised of members of EAOK, X, and local paramilitaries under the leadership of Kostas Bathrelos. Following the formal ending of hostilities, my family experienced repression, harassment, and for some, exile. Most of the family would emigrate in the 1950s and 1960s to Canada and the United States. Theio Yiorgo and the war continued to haunt my grandparents for their entire lives. The unburied dead of that atrocity left no closure for our family, making for an ongoing struggle in our memory, lived existence, and interactions with both people and landscapes. This thesis investigates the historical events surrounding the execution of Yiorgos Kasidakos; historical trauma in both theory and practice; necropolitics, death, and memory in Greece; and lastly, how the unburied body of Theio Yiorgo shapes my political consciousness.