Greek resistance hero Glezos dies: state TV

Athens (AFP) – Greece’s foremost anti-Nazi resistance hero Manolis Glezos died in a hospital Monday at the age of 97, state TV ERT said.

ERT said the wartime icon, who had been hospitalised earlier this month with gastroenteritis and a urinary infection, had died of heart failure.

Glezos had been placed in emergency care in November with respiratory problems, news reports said.

Glezos was just 18 on May 30, 1941, when during Greece’s occupation by Nazi Germany he and friend Apostolos Santas, a 19-year-old law student, climbed onto the Acropolis in the middle of the night and tore down the flag bearing the swastika unnoticed.

After the war he was repeatedly elected to Greece’s parliament with communist, socialist and leftist parties over a 60-year period.

In 2014 Glezos was elected to the European Parliament with the leftist Syriza party, becoming its oldest deputy at the age of 91.

During Greece’s economic crisis, Glezos opposed his government’s austerity measures and campaigned to force Germany to repay money it was forcibly loaned by Greece during the war.