Athens commemorates the 71st anniversary of its Liberation from the Nazi Occupation with a series of events that will take place throughout the month of October in several cultural venues across the city.
The program of the festive events, which is organized under the auspices of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, is entitled “October 12 – Athens Free,” and it mainly consists of historical walking tours, concerts, documentaries, historians’ speeches, seminars for secondary school teachers, and tributes.
- The Municipal Gallery of Athens in Metaxourgeio will host “Athens 1940-1944. The city and its people. War Occupation, Resistance, Liberation,” an exhibition of archival and photographic material from October 6 to 31 (Free Entrance).
- On Sunday, October 11 at 11 am, the historical walking tour “Seeking the traces of Occupation in Athens” will take place under the guidance of the Greek historic Menelaos Charalambides.
- On Sunday, October 11 at 8 pm, the Music Ensembles of ERT and the Choir of the Municipality of Athens will present for the first time the work of Christos Leontis “Guarding Thermopylae” (Φυλάττειν Θερμοπύλας) in Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall.
- On Monday, October 19, the Arms History Directorate will hold the first presentation of the German Occupation’s files at the central hall of Greece’s Ministry of National Defense.
- From October 15 through October 21, the Greek Film Archive will host “Images of the Occupation and Liberation” event presenting films and documentaries (Free Entrance). Furthermore, on Saturday, October 17, the documentary “Wheat” will be screened for the first time.
The celebrations are organized jointly by Attica (Regional Unit of the Central Sector of Athens), the Sports, Culture and Youth Agency of the Municipality of Athens, the ERT, the General State Archives, the General Secretariat for the Coordination of Government Work and the Ministry of National Defense, with the participation of Benaki Museum, the Contemporary Social History Archives, the Athens War Museum, the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, and the Forum of Social and Oral History Association. All the events are organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
