In 1912 a baby boy is born in Asia Minor,
Dimitrios Balasoglou
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After the Asia Minor catastrophe, his family arrives in Greece and after a short period of toiling,
He ends up in 1923 in a village of Edessa.
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They change their surname to “Valasiadis” for integration purposes
and they start fighting,
with nature,
the state,
their poverty
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although a wealthy family of Asia Minor, in Greece they had no handkerchief to cry and so the little boy Dimitris, does whatever work they can afford in his only 10 years...
from chandler to dishwasher
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He felt the injustice from a young age and so he joined the KKE, the only party that advocated social and economic change.
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but at a time when communism was a criminal offence for the state,
It didn't take long for him to be targeted and eventually expelled from all high schools in the country.
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it cost him because he had a passion for study and knowledge...
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but he never left her,
He read and wrote all his life.
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Metaxas ends up in Athens and is associated with friendship with the intellectuals of the time
Sicilian,
Malakasi,
Varnalis
(Reminds me of Velouchiotis, whose first contact with Athens went like this)
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there his friends see his culture, but also his poverty
and Malakasis helps him to join the Athenian Club as a librarian
This is how he makes a living
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his contacts,
the library
and securing a livelihood
help him write...
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just before the war breaks out, although he hasn't finished high school, he is already a full-fledged writer.
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But the war turns everything upside down, and so our hero, though literate,
though educated,
he didn't run to get a chair from the ones the Germans were handing out.
on the contrary,
He joins the EAM almost immediately and even becomes secretary of the intellectuals' organisation.
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but that's not a good thing.
Why?;
but because the war is over,
the Germans left
and the collaborators who took over the country during the civil war began to rabidly beat anyone they knew who was not a collaborator.
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Thus very quickly Dimitris Valasiadis ends up in exile.
Ikaria,
Macronissos,
St. Stratis
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the greatest minds of Greece ended up in exile
Manos Katrakis,
Nikos Koundouros,
Thanasis Vengos,
Lakis Sandas,
Dimitris Fotiadis,
Mikis Theodorakis
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In exile he will write:
“A child counts the stars”
“Cherries will bloom again this year”
and the
“Dark days”
That last one will get him into court
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this particular story was accused of being anti-national because
presents a family of bourgeois bigwigs
who have a 13-year-old maid and one night after drinking and gambling, the owner of the house and his friends,
drunk as a skunk,
attack the girl with the intention of raping her.
the girl runs and comes out on the balcony screaming and shouting.
workers from the opposite hut hear her and with a ladder they come up and save her....
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After the indictment had been read out, the President asked if he accepted the charge
and he replied:
«Yes, I am guilty.
But not for what I wrote, but for what I didn't write and exactly why I didn't write it.
I am accused of writing about ordinary people,
for working people, for the poor.
But who was I supposed to write about?;
I met them,
I loved them,
with whom I shared both my joys and my bitterness.
Next to them I tasted the bitterness of exploitation and social injustice
and they were the only ones who stood by me.
That's why I feel guilty for not writing what I should have written about them.’.
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Finally, Dimitris Valasiadis is called upon to apologize and he looks back on his life and describes, along with his own drama, the drama of an entire people.
When he comes to describe the drama of his child when he was on Macronissos, the president says:
«I wonder ... how you did not sign a statement to save you and your child from the ordeal...
«if you really feel affection for your child and your wife, you should have made a declaration of disavowal of the KKE‘.
And then Valassiades replies:
«It took millions of years for the four legs to become two.
I'm not going to do four again.».
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Finally the court bans the circulation of his books
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Later, while he is abroad, the junta removes his Greek citizenship.
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so he remains in Bucharest until democracy returns to the country
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in 1975, when the junta fell, the government of Karamanlis passed a law saying that
the Greek political exiles who were deprived of their citizenship,
you should,
to apply to come to Greece and then be put in front of a committee of judges where they would be officially granted citizenship
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Our hero considers all this humiliating.
says:
«I AM A GREEK I WANT MY NATIONALITY, I DON'T BEG FOR A HOMELAND»
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Finally, after pressure from public opinion and his own,
a formal request was made and the State immediately accepted it
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Dimitris Valasiadis returned to Thessaloniki where he received a great reception.
Many young comrades present
among them Manos Katrakis
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He died a year after a heart attack on a day like today, January 22, 1977 at the age of 65.
but Dimitris Valasiadis will always remain immortal through his work under the pseudonym of
MENELAOS LUDEMIS...!!!!!
one of the best Greeks this country has produced
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PS. the picture of his reception in Thessaloniki with Manos Katrakis next to him
