1970 in Greece Featured
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Gr_Athens_Areopag_1970, kasaan media, 2020
It was the time of the crude military regime, the so-called Obrist government in Athens, led by a narcissistic colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. With the help of the USA, a small clique had put itself in power.
With the Greeks, the system was called only the junta (Η Χούντα). Greece did not come to rest. Two decades had passed since the civil war, which had demanded a high toll of blood. Not to mention World War II, in which Greece suffered under Nazi occupation.
Communists had nothing to laugh. While the regime of the colonels in the 1970s; they were systematically persecuted and sent in camps. Intellectuals who rebelled against the dictatorship were murdered. The stories of the survivors speak of torture and hunger and thirst. It was only a German journalist, Fred Ihrt, who flew over Gyaros and brought pictures with him, who triggered the international protest.
The pressure on the right-wing junta bore fruit; many prisoners were freed in the following month. Mikis Theodorakis is one of those who fought against the dictatorship in Greece and rightfully became a hero of two generations.
Many Greeks left the country as guest workers for other European countries and went into exile.
Other Europeans formed travel groups who travelled through Greece in buses, with camping trailers (Rotel). Probably they did not understand the drama of the situation at that time. Otherwise, this trips to ancient sites in times cannot be explained today.
From this time, these photos are preserved, which show a seemingly untouched holiday country. Greece was not yet developed as a tourist destination, only islands, and this meant Crete and Corfu.
Most of the time, these vehicles travelled via the former Yugoslavia, to later make a kind of round trip to the most beautiful places in Greece.
The village life of the people in Greece was at that time animated by an unbelievable hardness. In the cities, the general motorization and gradual technological development began, which first affected Athens and then Thessaloniki.
