On the sidewalk of 23 Stadium, a few yards from the noise of the city, there is a phrase carved into the marble.
It is not just a memory. It is an accusation. “Victims of the blind hatred that divisiveness breeds“. And every May 5, that phrase gets heavier.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010. The attack on Marfin was not an “accident.” It was the culmination of an era that was boiling. On that day, a nationwide general strike had been declared by the GSEE and ADEDY, in response to the new economic measures and the impending passage of the First Memorandum in Parliament, which was scheduled for the following day.
The country was sinking into the insecurity of the first Memorandum. The streets were filled with anger. In the squares, up and down, disparate forces were coming together.Anarchists, extreme leftists, neo-Nazis. Different ideologies, common denominator: outright rejection, easy violence, the need for an enemy.
That afternoon, the branch of Marfin Egnatia Bank became a trap for death. Inside, people just going about their business. Outside, a city on fire. The monotopes ripped the air. The fire wrapped the building. The smoke rose up chokingly. Epaminondas Tsakalis, Paraskevi Zoulia and Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, who was pregnant in her fourth month, did not have time to be rescued. They had nothing to do with the slogans. They were not part of any conflict. They were just people.
And yet, after the silence of the serials, the cleansing did not come. The physical perpetrators were lost in the crowd. Hate was not punished as it deserved. Instead, for years, society looked away. As if it didn’t want to look in the mirror.
The memorial was erected 10 years later, on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, at the initiative of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a gesture of national reconciliation and paying honour to the victims. And vandalized again and again. Marble broken, words scribbled, symbols erased. Not by accident. By “known unknowns” with specific ideological roots. By those who even today cannot bear the truth that exposes them.
Because the truth is simple and harsh. Division is not an abstract concept. It has faces, it has words, it has responsibilities. And some have consciously invested in it. They cultivated it, fanned it, turned it into a political tool. To get closer to power.
Today, some of them are attempting to rewrite history. With books, with narratives, with selective memory. Alexis Tsipras may be writing his Ithaca. But the shadows of Stadiou cannot be erased with words. They cannot be washed away with pages.
Because in the end, the plaque does not forget And every time one touches it, one feels the same question burning: how much blood does it still take to understand what discussion gives birth to?
