Personality - symbol of an entire generation, ideology, morals and fighting spirit, Giorgos Farsakidis, engraver, painter and writer, fighter of the National EAM Resistance, died today - full of days and struggles - at the age of 94.
G. Farsakidis, a symbol of the history of the Left, has a deeper relationship with Greek history. The long and fascinating journey of his life begins in 1926 from Odessa. His mother Russian and his father Pontius, hunted by the Turks, who was honored by the USSR as a "pioneer of socialist work". Upon his arrival in Greece in 1934, he lived in Thessaloniki the events of May 1936, the war of 1940, the German Occupation and participated in the Resistance. An 18-year-old partisan, wounded twice in a battle with Germans and Bulgarians, was left crippled in both hands. He was periodically exiled to concentration camps and other places of detention (Ai Stratis- Gyaros- Makronisos) for a total of seventeen years.
Self-taught (but also taught by his fellow prisoners, such as Christos Daglis, Vaso Katraki and Yiannis Ritsos) in the places of his detention, he painted and engraved with improvised carving tools and pyrographs, subjects with content from the lives of his fellow prisoners and later from the struggles of the Greek people.
His visual and literary "production" became known in the former USSR and in other countries and much later in Greece. He was honored for his fighting and artistic activity with the Supreme Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee.
His last public appearance in Thessaloniki, where he lived, took place in September 2017 at an event-exhibition of visual works organized by the Party Organization of Central Macedonia of the KKE, in the context of the celebration of the party's 100 years at the Lazarist Monastery.
The cultural contribution of Giorgos Farsakidis was also "sealed" with his significant donation to the Greek people. "At 18 Krasny Pereulok St. - Gretskaya passage, where the staff that prepared the revolution of the Twentieth was set up. A stone slab is built into the entrance. The Friendly Society was meeting there. The little house we stayed in for the last few weeks before we left for Greece, property - medial - of my father..." (from the book by Giorgos Farsakidis "The First Homeland", 1984 with the Menelaus Ludemis Prize of the Society of Greek Writers). George Farsakidis gave the title deeds of the small house at 18 Krasni Pereulock Street - Gretskaia Lane years ago to the Hellenic Culture Foundation as well as the objects of the house, which revive a typical urban house of the Greek neighborhood of Odessa at the beginning of the last century .
Author of a total of 28 books (his last one, entitled "The new homeland" was released last February, by "Sychroni eposa" Publications), Giorgos Farsakidis stated in an earlier interview:"It is a life that I would not want to change. Just as I didn't change my faith even though some things were debunked. The ideal remained the same. Lenin used to say that a communist is the one who contributes so that we advance at least one step towards the revolution. No big words, no outbursts... For me, the ideas of socialism are summed up in the phrase:"to humanize man".
The civil funeral of G. Farsakidis will take place tomorrow (Thursday, July 23), at 7pm, in the atrium of the Thessaloniki City Hall.