May 5, 2010 was declared a day of general strike and march to the Parliament by GSEE, ADEDY and PAME.

A few days earlier the Papandreou government had announced severe economic austerity measures as part of its response to the economic crisis that erupted in early 2010.

The burglary of a branch of the Bank Marfin-Egnatia in Athens, often referred to as the Marfin tragedy, took place on 5 May 2010 during demonstrations against the economic measures for the signing of the loan agreement.

A group of unidentified people threw monotov cocktails at the bank while some 25-30 employees were inside. Most managed to escape, five people were rescued by the fire department and three people died of asphyxiation due to toxic fumes and thick smoke.

The identity of the perpetrators of the attack has not been confirmed so far. In 2013, bank executives were convicted of the negligent homicide of three employees, the bodily injuries of 21 other employees, and multiple failures in fire safety measures and staff training.

Sixteen years have passed since that dark day when paranoids set Marfin on fire and burned the employees alive. The dead were wept over by their relatives, the state did its duty with a marble slab, the insane have been vandalizing it at every opportunity ever since – they are the same ones who demand statues, national holidays and scaffolding, but for other dead people.

Perhaps we have no other such blatant example of pure insensitivity to the dead: anyone who dies in an accident, in a perverse accident, automatically becomes a hero, a collective mourner; anyone killed by a Molotov cocktail becomes a topic of discussion among family and friends. There are no tears left over, no memory, no mother-symbol to get swept up by the channels, social media, European forums.

The dead from Molotov cocktails have no representatives, no supporters, no symbols. Molotov cocktails are long gone, as long as you know where to stand when they fall, said – and worse, meant it – the former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, thus giving absolution to the murderers of 35-year-old Paraskevi Zoulia, 36-year-old Epaminondas Tsakalis and 32-year-old pregnant Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, who died tragically by suffocation at the bank’s branch on Stadiou Street.

Sixteen years later, that crime remains unsolved to remind an increasing number of people that the country’s history endures and tolerates some pages written in blood, which fades quickly and leaves no imprint – as if nothing ever happened…