Greece - US Department of State

798 Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, Volume XXIX
where he was being held and got as far as the court yard—his plan
was to get to the American Embassy where he hoped to find sanctuary.
He didn’t make it. He was taken to another room where he was
manacled high on the wall for a total of twenty-five days (with a three
day break to heal his wrists) during which he was deprived of water
and food for long stretches and subjected to intensive psychological
pressures. A loud speaker blared continuously suggesting that his colleagues
had told all and implicated him to save themselves, that his
wife was taking advantage of his absence by bedding down with some
of his old friends, etc. He was beaten regularly with a cane on his legs
and ribs. Other wives described similar treatment their husbands had
reported receiving usually at the hands of the military police.
On the question of the manner of arrest, Mrs. Maronitis, wife of
Demetrios Maronitis, former professor (ancient Greek literature) at the
University of Thessaloniki, replied that the military police arrested her
husband in the dead of night in mid-March and without a warrant. She
and her husband both asked the arresting officers for a warrant, referring
to PM’s assurances on Article 10 of the Constitution. There was
none, either for the arrest or for the ensuing search of their home. Her
husband was a member of PAK, she was told, and they wanted to find
evidence of his collaboration. They went through all his papers and
found nothing, confiscated all the books and articles he had written
in order to search for references which might prove him Andreas’
[Papandreou] man.
The Universities: The Professors I saw of both the universities were
uniformly pessimistic about the general situation, unhappy with U.S.
support for the junta, highly critical of the condition of the universities.
One of them called his university a time bomb set in the dark—no one
knew when it would go off. The students seem quiescent, the work load
is great, the value of the degree generally recognized—but the great majority
are rabidly anti-junta. All that is lacking for an explosion is leadership
and opportunity. Through their Commissars in the Universities
for regime manages to control the universities entirely—retired General
Polyzopoulos at Thessaloniki University is fundamentally a decent man
but he is the junta’s man in the University and gets into everything. The
result is a totally intimidated faculty which will be cautious and avoid
any innovation or discussion which might be interpreted by the government
as somehow counter-revolutionary. Classes are still enormous,
contact with the students virtually impossible and as a result the schism
between faculty and students grows. Both universities in order to
do what they are set up to do should drastically reduce their student
bodies. Otherwise the education this generation of Greeks is getting will
continue to be mediocre at best. One young professor at a medical school
insisted that the graduates do not deserve the title of MD and it is a
crime to turn them loose on the public.