ΕΝΑ ΜΝΗΜΕΙΟ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΑΝΤΙΣΤΑΣΗ ΣΤΗ ΔΕΚΑΕΤΙΑ ΤΟΥ 1950: ΤΟ ΜΝΗΜΕΙΟ ΠΕΣΟΝΤΩΝ ΚΟΚΚΙΝΙΑΣ ΤΟΥ ΓΙΩΡΓΟΥ ΖΟΓΓΟΛΟΠΟΥΛΟΥ

Abstract

Kokkinia’s War Memorial (Kokkinia is called Nikaia today), which is George Zongolopoulos’ work, was erected in Greece in 1956 and it is a special case among the monuments of the first 15-year postwar era, concerning those who fell during World War II. This is the first, to our knowledge urban area monument made at public expense in honor of the victims of a mass occupation blockade in 1944, not just the war victims of a city in general. The fact that it was erected in the actual square of the blockade and not in any other central location of the city is also anexception.

In the case of Greece, the official management of the war memory was determined by the civil war that followed. The consequence was the exclusion of the Resistance from both, the national narrative of World War II and its monumental eulogy. Moreover, the paradoxical status of the «disciplined» democracy of the post-Civil War era resulted in several contradictions as to the distinction between legitimate and non-legitimate public practice. One of those contradictions was that the connection of a public monument of the time with the fallen Resistance fighters of a blockade was made possible thanks to the official argument that it was a war memorial. The representation, proposed by the monument of Kokkinia, differs from the other war memorials, built during the same period, with respect to the iconography, the raw material, the inscription text, the pedestal height and the style. The sculptor’s abstraction of the allegorical form of Victory from the official context and its association with the then outlawed Resistance fighters, who fell in the blockade, is particularly influential for the signification of the representation, taking into account that Victory was a national symbol for the monumental eulogy of the heroic dead. Finally, the concurrent institutional management and reception of this monument are characterized by a great contradiction. The Left municipal leadership openly linked the monument to the Resistance. Accordingly, the only art critic thoroughly dealing with the monument was a communist. The centrist and right media, as well as the corresponding art critics, were perfectly hushed across both the ideological identity of the monument and largely the monument itself, confirming with their self-censorship attitude that the monument of Kokkinia has been perceived and recognized by the Greek society as a monument in the honor of the Resistance since the decade of the 50s.