Four famous targets of assassination in Salonica
George I (1913). On March 5, 1913, at the intersection of Vassilissis Olgas and Aghias Triadas streets, Alexandros Schinas, a misfit from Asvestohori, shot and killed King George I. The motive has never been revealed nor has Schinas’s testimony in depositions to authorities – a fire broke out on the steamship carrying them to Piraeus. It is reported that in a private conversation with the king’s widow, Queen Olga, he stated that he had acted alone, but most historians take the view that he acted on behalf of foreign interests in the Balkans that benefited from the king’s murder. «Immediately after the murder, the city was in uproar and rumors offered by Greeks blamed the scapegoats of the time, the Turks and Bulgarians. But more persistent rumors spoke of a German plan to liquidate the pro-English king in order to promote German interests in Greece,» Zafeiris writes. «One version, considered more likely than the rest, has it that the king was the victim of German diplomacy given that George’s policy ran counter to German plans for the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The German rulers themselves wanted the pro-German successor Constantine, who identified with German policy in Greece, at the head of the Greek state.» The death of Schinas, who fell or was pushed out of a window at the military headquarters where he was being held, lent force to rumors and speculation about the real cause of the murder. George Polk (1948). In spring 1948, the drama of the Greek Civil War had reached its peak. Blood was flowing in Grammos, Vitsi and other mountainous parts of northwestern Greece, and Thessaloniki became a gathering place for Greeks and foreigners who were interested in developments on the front and in political events. On May 7, George Polk, an American journalist from the CBS radio news network, arrived in the city with the intention of going into the mountains of Western Macedonia to meet Markos Vafeiadis, military chief of the communist rebels and prime minister of the so-called government of the mountains. The following day, Polk disappeared, and a week later his body was found floating in the Thermaic Gulf with a bullet in his skull. The news traveled the world instantly, causing a furor. Who killed Polk and why? After much research, the most commonly held view is that the man arrested and sentenced for Polk’s death, the journalist Grigoris Staktopoulos, was framed because of his association with the Greek Communist party (KKE). Adam Mouzenidis and Vangelis Vasvanas, KKE cadres who had fought in the civil war, were said to be the perpetrators. But Mouzenidis had been killed on Mount Krousia a month before Polk set foot in Thessaloniki, while Vasvanas was proved to have been in Grammos. As Zafeiris writes: «The most likely story is that Polk was murdered by the secret service, coordinated by Harvey Smith, military attache to the American Embassy in Athens, who traveled with him from Athens on the same plane and who set up a trap for him at the airport. Polk’s activities at that time ran counter to American policy in Greece; the US government did not want anyone making overtures of peace to the rebels and wanted the definitive expulsion of communists from Greece. Greece was destined to be a protectorate of American policy in the Balkans and a bastion of the ‘Western world’ against Russian and communist expansion. If Polk transmitted the peaceful message of the rebels to the American public, it would put paid to the American dream of finally annihilating the communists.» Grigoris Lambrakis (1963). The events surrounding the death of United Democratic Left (EDA) deputy Grigoris Lambrakis on May 22, 1963, are widely known [through Vassilis Vassilikos’s book «Z,» made into the film of the same name by Costa-Gavras]. Zafeiris emphasizes a little-known aspect of the affair. «If,» he writes, «Lambrakis was hit with a blunt instrument by Emmanouil Emmanoulidis, who seems to have been in the three-wheeler, or by another person; if it was organized by the parastate which was active in the enclosed worlds of the security and the army corps; if the murder was the work of State Behind, an American anti-communist organization with a history of persecuting and murdering communist leaders around the world and which was apparently also active in Greece, collaborating directly with the state and parastate, in its Greek version ‘Kokkini Provia’ – these are are still issues for historic research and secret archives.» Giorgis Tsarouchas (1968). EDA deputy Giorgis Tsarouchas died after brutal torture in the detention cells of the Third Army Corps on May 8, 1968. He had been arrested by junta officials while he was traveling to Athens bearing a decision of the Thessaloniki branch of the KKE on splitting the party. Stefanos Karamberis, Fokion Karapanos, Dimitris Stamatopoulos and Dimitrios Tasopoulos – high-ranking officials of the junta who were decorated by the military dictatorship for their repulsive actions – were charged with murder with intent and abuse of power and were sentenced to short terms of imprisonment.
