The Athens Polytechnic uprising occurred in November 1973 as a massive student demonstration against the Greek military junta of 1967-74. The uprising began on November 14 with the occupation of The Technical University of Athens, which ended in the early hours of November 17 when a tank invaded.
The uprising triggered a series of events that caused the injury and death of many civilians and led many others to imprisonment and torture. Nicolas A. Vernicos records the events secretly.
Citizens start to gather and the area is crowded. As night falls at 07:03 of the film we see the gun barrel of the tank. At 07:12 as the tank moves, it pushes a bus into the middle of the road. At 07:45, armoured vehicles arrive with soldiers.
At 07:50, a group of nurses carry a stretcher. At 8:59, the tank’s driver takes position. The filmmaker does not record the moment the tank crashes down the door, but just after that we see the tank entering a bit further and soldiers are invading (11:03 ).
The historical events were filmed by Nikos A. Vernikos who secretly took these shots opposite the Polytechnic, from the window of a corner room on the 1st floor of the “Acropolis” hotel, between November 14 and 17, 1973. As he describes, the room he had also rented to support the student members of the Hellenic European Youth Movement (EKIN), an organisation for mobilizing the student movement against the dictatorship.
As Nikos Vernikos mentioned in the relevant video on YouTube with these silent films: “The monitoring of the events around the Polytechnic was done through the lowered wooden shutter with the glass open, with bated breath. From midnight Friday 16 to Saturday 17 November at the corner of the “Acropole” was parked a tank waiting to intervene. The standing driver’s helmet reached the bottom of the corner window.
These films were shot from the window of a corner room on the 1st floor of the “Acropol” Hotel which is across from the National (Metsovian) Polytechnical University of Athens, by Nicolas A. Vernicos (NAV) between November 14 to 17, 1973. In a nearby room was the Dutch crew led by Albert Coerant (awarded for the film for the Polytechneio), who, at the same time, was filming the events! I rented the room for the support of the student members of the Hellenic European Youth Movement. It was an organization for the mobilization of the student movement against the dictatorship. My brother George A. Vernicos, who had a leading position in EKIN, was also a member of the takeover committee of Law School in February 1973 and was in constant contact and coordination with the Polytechnic’s takeover committee.
From this room, except for supplying the students within the University, information was provided through telephone (by Demi Vezyrouli and NAV) to the European media, especially to BBC, Le Monde, and Deutsche Welle in which the late Pavlos Bakoyannis was a collaborator for Greek affairs as the journalists Vassos Mathiopoulos and Angelos Maropoulos. The filming of those incidents around the Polytechneio took place through the lowered wooden blinds with the windows open and with bated breath. At midnight of Friday 16 to Saturday 17 November at the corner of the Acropol hotel was parked a tank which was waiting to intervene. The helmet of the standing driver almost reached the bottom of the corner window. Shortly before the intervention at the Polytechnic and while there was complete silence, a small noise was made in the room by the attending friends, fellow students, and the telephone. The soldier turned the armoured vehicle’s spotlight on the facade of the hotel, trying to locate the source of the noise. He paused for a moment on the window behind him and a little above, it was dark, with lowered blinds, the window of our room.
The headlight’s rays entered through the blinds. The soldier was trying to figure out where the noise, which was different from the sound of gunfire, was coming from. As it moved, it lighted the walls and especially the ceiling of the room in all directions. The breathing of those who were present in the room stopped. They lay like the Chalepas “Sleeping woman” marble statue on the beds and the floor. We breathed when the beam of light left. The armoured vehicle moved a little and covered the similar tank near it, across the door of the Polytechnic. Shots, fired by snipers were heard from the vertical streets in Patission Street. Around 2.30, after the besieged refused to leave the tank crashed into the University gate’s entrance, entered the yard, overparked cars, and the military entered. The students cried “Bread, Education, Freedom. We are brothers” and rushed out chased by the police and the army, while bullets were whistling all around us. Many, among the first people who were injured by the bullets earlier, found refuge on the ground floor of the Acropol hotel. A few of them, who were severely injured, were taken to our hotel room. Torill Engleland Magreth, a 22-year-old student from Molde, Norway, did not make it. Mortally wounded by the shots, she died of bleeding in the carotid artery in my hands and in the hands of George Lazaridis, a dentist who transported her dead body to the nearby First Aid Station on the 3rd Septemvriou Street. Moments when time shrinks and seconds seem like centuries and stay forever in our memories.
Vernicos was arrested at noon on Saturday, November 17 by the Military Police. He remained in prison until December 31 and was interrogated and tortured.
