Remembering murdered CBS writer George Polk
Another bid of unmarked graves — this 1 containing 14 individuals from Greece's civilian warfare epoch — person been dug up successful a parkland successful a suburb adjacent the bluish Greek metropolis of Thessaloniki, section officials said Saturday.
As successful the erstwhile choky cluster of unmarked burial pits excavated earlier this twelvemonth successful Neapolis-Sykies, the bodies beryllium to prisoners who were held successful a adjacent Byzantine fortress. The prisoners, alleged communists and sympathizers, were executed betwixt 1946 and 1953, according to historians.
The Yedi Kule castle, besides known by its Greek sanction Eptapyrgio ("Seven Towers") was a situation wherever communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece's 1946-49 Civil War and instantly afterward.
The caller burial pits were uncovered connected the tract of a municipal parkland undergoing renovation, including the installation of caller benches. The graves were not acold beneath the surface, Haris Charismiadis, the supervising technologist of the parkland project, told The Associated Press.
Supervising technologist Haris Charismiadis stands adjacent to quality remains believed to beryllium to prisoners executed during oregon aft Greece's 1946-49 Civil War successful Thessaloniki, bluish Greece, Saturday, June 7, 2025.
Giannis Papanikos / AP
The renovation task is not presently a precedence for section politician Simos Daniilidis. "We insisted connected continuing the digging for the graves," helium said. Charismiadis, who said astir of the existent batch of bodies were recovered during the past week, is definite determination are much radical buried nearby, including, probably, nether the tarmac of streets adjacent to the park. An archaeologist is assisting successful the digging.
In opposition with the 33 bodies found earlier this year, which were lying broadside by side, the precocious recovered bodies are jumbled, arsenic if thrown randomly, and hastily, successful a heap. Torsos and heads are separated.
Previously, Charismiadis said teams had uncovered execution victims with "many bullets successful the heads, the skulls." Items recovered with the bodies — a woman's shoe, a handbag, a ringing — connection glimpses into the lives chopped short.
When Yedi Kule prisoners were executed, their families were often not notified and they didn't get to retrieve their bodies. Some recovered retired astir the destiny of their loved ones from newspapers — 1 household happened upon the quality portion connected the autobus they had taken to the situation to bring their comparative a caller alteration of clothes.
The grisly find included the find of footwear, including the remnants of a woman's shoe.
Sykies municipality
Relatives of the executed person clamored for DNA tests to beryllium done to ascertain the individuality of the recovered bodies. Testing has not begun yet.
Tens of thousands died successful the aboriginal Cold War-era battles betwixt Western-backed authorities forces and left-wing insurgents, a brutal struggle with assassination squads, kid abductions and wide displacements. CBS News journalist George Polk, who had depicted the right-wing Greek authorities arsenic corrupt, was among those killed during the war.
In a statement earlier this year, the metropolis said efforts to find different wide graves would proceed "so that each the skeletons of the radical who mislaid their lives successful this mode during the acheronian years of the Civil War and were not fixed the honors traditionally attributed to the dormant are found."
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