Many believe that the head located in the forecourt of the historic NTUA building on Patision Street is connected to a student of the November 1973 uprising but this is not accurate. The man depicted on the head is one of the greatest Greek historians. “I consider the cultural continuity of Hellenism as a dynamic phenomenon with different phases. I certainly do not believe in racial continuity. I don’t do zoology, I do history“, he said himself.
In addition to being a historian, however, he was also a fighter of the Left in years of discontinuity. In the midst of World War II and the Nazi occupation, he joined the ranks of the National Liberation Front, EAM (1943) and we contributed to the publication of the illegal magazine Protoporoi. He then joined the ranks of ELAS, where, in fact, he served as the military commander of Byron-Caesarianis.
The head at the Polytechnic is in the form of Professor Nikos Svoronos, who died on a day like today, April 26, 1989.
The same misunderstanding that exists with the head, of course, also exists with a marble column that exists to the right of the head (and right next to the gate of the Polytechnic that the tank had knocked down). This marble column is not dedicated to the dead of the 1973 uprising but to the NTUA students who “gave their lives for the ideals of the National Resistance 1941-1944”. At the same time, in front of the head there is the verse “Freedom wants virtue and courage” from the ode “Eis Samon” by Andreas Kalvos. Overall, therefore, if we look at the monument, it is an overall reference to the struggle for Freedom.
At the head of the Polytechnic every year thousands of people leave a flower, a wreath and stand with raised fists. The work belongs to the famous during the 20th century sculptor Memo Makris who was a friend of Nikos Svoronos and during the occupation period he was also in the EAM, developing intense activity.
The two met on the “ship of the great flight”, the legendary Mataroa, which at Christmas 1945 transported around 200 young Greeks (scientists and artists) to Paris as fellows of the French Institute. The two become close friends with Makris turning Svoronos into his… model.
Makris made the massive head in 1979, when, after the Republic had been restored, he returned to Greece. In March of that year, the State, recognizing his work, organized a retrospective exhibition in his honor. One of the exhibits was the head bearing the title “In Honor of the Victims”.
Makris donated this work to the National Technical University of Athens in memory of the dead of the uprising of 1973. The rector at that time at NTUA was his friend and old comrade from the KKE, Georgios Voudouris who placed it a few meters away from the main entrance of the historical building on Patision Street.
Nikos Svoronos was born on July 12, 1911 in Lefkada. He studied at the Philosophical University of Athens. In 1955 he was stripped of his Greek citizenship and in 1961 he acquired French citizenship. After the fall of the dictatorship, Nikos Svoronos, taught at the universities of Thessaloniki and Crete, was a member of the governing committee of the University of Crete and director of research at the National Research Foundation, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universities of Athens (1976) and Thessaloniki (1977). He breathed his last in Athens at the age of 78.
Memos Makris was born on April 1st 1913 in Patras. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Athens with teachers Michalis Tombro, Epaminondas Thomopoulos and K. Dimitriadis. He quickly became involved in the artistic and cultural life of the 30s.
After the liberation he continued his studies in Paris. He was deported from France in 1950 because of his left-wing political beliefs and found political asylum in Hungary. In 1964 he was stripped of his Greek citizenship, which he regained in 1975 after the fall of the junta. His work is the monumental sculpture dedicated to the victims of the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp. He died of a heart attack in Athens, in the early hours of May 26, 1993.
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