"By giving its support to these series, the Onassis Foundation wished to explore the links existing between the culture of ancient Greece and the world today." "It was never in it intention to associate itself to any opinion concerning the history and the political life of modern Greece." "The Onassis Foundation insists in clarfying that the choice of the themes as well as the selection of the interviewed persons are the sole responsibility of the director." "THE OWL'S LEGACY" "5 AMNESIA or History on the March" "And yet the first word to come up in conversation wasn't exactly the one we were anticipating." "I pick up a word and as it happens the word written here is autopsy." "Everyone knows what that is:" "A murder leads to an autopsy." "But for the Greeks autopsy means seeing things with your own eyes." "That is the meaning." "There is a whole theory of autopsy, a process of knowing." "For a historian, this means making a distinction" "between what you've heard as a vague rumour" "throughout time immemorial and what you witnessed yourself and can say 'I know, I saw it'." "My attitude is:" "Dear History - we must rewrite you to believe you." "This one has been rewritten often." "Now, we simply re-interpret it." "The scholars will explain it." "It happens all the time." "We've reached a plateau in this." "As far as the French are considered," "I'm speaking from experience," "Greece is a matter of vicinage." "It's very partitioned country in a geographically divided world." "You can travel around, stop-over, drop anchor for the night and next day, weather permitting," "see the whole Mediterranean." "Beyond that, adventure starts..." "Would the politician wish to arrange, or to distance people from Memory?" "Instinctively, yes since memory may lead to debates." "If you have a good memory you won't accept things blindly because you can say 'Well, sir that's what you're saying today but yesterday you said that...'" "It takes a lot of courage to mention it in amnesic circles." "Politicians, in a subtler way make use of the 'here and now'." "When they make a statement it's for that time and place." "They know very well that" "they are over-acting." "'This day marks a new era in French politics'" "He knows he must speak for today." "A political speech is like eggs if it isn't today's, it's no good." "The speech should be fresh to be consumed within three days." "After 3 days, all is forgotten." "The mindlessnes of power sometimes creates memory from what was meant to be amnesia." "Those who in 1963 triggered an assasination of the left-wing representative Lambrakis, ended up making him into a legend a new name in long procession of heros that marked the whole history of Greece since the dark age." "People branded up the legend with a letter Z or zi - he lives." "And that letter, used in all the demonstrations of the time and used again as the title of a celebrated film adapted from a novel by Vassilikos, were probably made this the only world-renowed episode in contemporary Greek history." "Oscar Wilde" " Life Imitates Art." "Look at the map of Europe:" "At the very edge is this bit of land called Greece and two islands, Cyprus and Crete." "It's importance is that it links three civilizations:" "African, Asian and European." "It's always been a battleground." "That's why Churchill in 1945 tried so hard to keep it." "He gave Stalin the Eastern Block and kept this crucial country." "People usually refer to their native land, listen to the Greeks going on about the Aegean, the native seas..." "Let's have a historical summary of our 180 years of existence as an independent state." "After the war of independence, the 1820 war against the Turks," "the new Greek state was born with a Bavarian king - and why?" "Because the three foreign powers who participated in the war, the prevelant political forces, wanted a nonaligned king, not Russian, French nor English." "So a neutral country was sought." "Bavaria seemed to fit the bill." "Leopold of Belgium, a philhellen, was asked first and declined." "So they asked little prince Otto, just 14 years old at the time, saying: 'You can be King of Greece when you are 18 years old'." "'Where is that?" "', he asked." "'It'll be there when you're 18, it's now fighting for its freedom'." "It was all planned." "He arrived after the liberation tried to learn Greek in vain." "His first speech was in German, in Nafplion, the capital then, saying: 'Grieschische Bevolk...'." "The people didn't understand him." "There were no translators then, no EEC interpreters schools." "You could say he was a hippie, he seemed to be on drugs, ill, or maybe it was nervous disorder." "The countryside fascinated him, all the trees planted for him." "With him came the Bavarian army, all 14000 of them, who also settled in this country." "But the only thing they left us is a cake called 'The Bavarian'." "They left no other trace." "Yet they where here for many years then the Greeks said 'What's this?" "We created an independent state and he speaks a foreign language!" "'" "'Even more important..'" "(he was a Catholic not an Orthodox Christian)" "'He doesn't cross himself like us but in the Catholic manner.'" "This deeply annoyed the Greeks who wanted an Orthodox Russian." "Liberation fighters were jailed and the new regime goverened, the Bavarian King's regime." "Strangely, this happened in 1840, in 1940, one hundred years later, it happened again in World War II." "The Russians wanted to come here as ex-Orthodox Christians, since their rapport with Greece went beyond politics." "The English wanted to stop them," "Churchill wanted to keep us." "Europe wanted Greece independent," "Picasso with his famous drawing, Paul Eluard in France, etc." "The same three political powers took control after World War II." "Resistance fighters were jailed and another civil war started." "And you benefited from it in the shape of Greek refugees." "So history repeats itself with the same powers busily controlling this country." "We still have the same problem with the Turks as if we were never free of them." "Because all Greek politics today stems from the Turkish threat." "As recounted in history, but here to introduce a flashback lets call in a filmmaker..." "For where we left off the story of great powers, the Greeks were being driven into the sea..." "So things haven't changed much." "There is still this magic emanating from Moscow which ever since the Czars," "Stalin and his successors still wields over the country the power of Ancient Byzantium." "As for the English, when the British Empire crumbled the Americans took over." "We hold the English responsible as they were for Israel in 1948, trying to prevent its formation by repatriating the new settlers." "But when England tried that here she no longer 'ruled the waves'." "She passed the baton to the USA who found themselves dealing with a country in a civil war." "The Americans, being democrats, used to be on the people's side until 1947, when things changed." "Roosevelt died, Truman took over." "He replaced the Monroe doctrine of non-intervention with his doctrine of intervention." "So US interfered as a state, for the first time, in the affairs of another country using the army and napalm bombs which they first tried in Greece that was between '47 and '49." "So in fact all US foreign policy since 1947 has been linked to this decision to interfere with other countries." "It began with our little country which was used as an experiment as the Germans used the Armenians as forerunners for the Jews." "Our small nations, Armenia, Greece, Albania, people never know what's going on, they have vague ideas." "We're always used a guinea pigs for the major powers who use the experimental results on other nations, in other cases." "Aprils 21st, Athens awakes stunned struck down whilst fast asleep." "First symptom - phonelines cut." "Army radio, the only one working transmists an omnious message" "'The Army has seized power." "Martial law is imposed." "Stay calm or you break the law." "The death penalty is restored.'" "The edict signed by the goverment is a tactical trick." "The Colonels admit this later." "The Prime Minister is under arrest, as are other leading politicians." "The country went through a crisis." "We had to get out of it, out of the political deadlock in which we were trapped." "The Colonels were a local product of a certain civil war ideology." "They were neither meteors nor CIA, that's too easily said." "They were products of a cold war taking place in our own country." "Europe always regarded them as slightly quiant as part of the Greek folklore." "After 'Zorba the Greek' after 'Never On Sunday' now came the folkloric Colonels." "Greece is somewhat similar to the Latin American countries but with one difference." "It didn't have 'latifundia', no huge landed properties." "That aside, there are similarities, there are parallels between Latin America and Greece." "And one of the most recent was the coup of the Colonels who have just beat the Generals who were plotting with the King." "The Colonels took power first forcing the Generals and the King to choose which side they were on." "So the King chose exile." "He went to Rome and he never returned." "He didn't grasp the chance of going against the Colonels." "He did that just before their fall." "That was too late, a vote was held and he lost, so he couldn't return." "His mother had been a Nazi youth, she spoke Greek very badly but he had learned Greek." "Thus the Royalty had evolved." "The first king didn't learn Greek." "The last one did and spoke it." "And that's exactly what the Greek people did." "They decided otherwise." "Marios P-itis, the host of Dorothenean banquet appeared on TV to say that the king who refered to the tomb of ancestors would've done better not to speak about tombs at all." "For the first time in centuries, the German-built temples of imaginary Greece watched over people without a king and over non-occupied country." "So the pale shadow of little king orphan as Bavarian Greece painted it and 200 hundred year amnesia finally came to an end."