Eighty-five years ago today, on the first Oxi Day under German occupation, a philosophy professor at the University of A...

Eighty-five years ago today, on the first Oxi Day under German occupation, a philosophy professor at the University of Athens did something that could have gotten him killed. On the morning of October 28, 1941, Konstantinos Tsatsos posted a short note on the noticeboard of the Law School on Solonos Street. It read simply: "On Tuesday 28 October 1941 I am prevented from teaching. Konstantinos Tsatsos." The day before, the university rector had summoned him with a direct order: hold the lecture as normal, and if students tried to mark the anniversary of Greece's refusal to surrender, walk out and leave them. Tsatsos did the opposite. He gathered his students in the main lecture hall at the regular seminar hour and spoke to them about the country he was certain they would inherit. "You, as soon as you leave these student benches, will find a free country," he told them, invoking the soldiers still freezing in Albania and the men who had come back from the front with wounds. He didn't stop at sentiment. He told them that enthusiasm alone was not enough, that they had to reach the level of political consciousness and work for an order built on freedom and social justice. Then, according to student Alexandros Mangakis, who later became a professor and politician himself, Tsatsos delivered the line that ended the speech. "And now I will speak to you about the final principle, which I can no longer prove to you. This one must be believed. The principle of Freedom." Mangakis said the word "literally shot out with great passion and hit us in the chest." The hall erupted in applause. When Tsatsos finished, students surrounded him and escorted him out of the building, worried that Italian authorities would find out what had been said. They were right to be afraid. The next day, the occupation government issued a decree dismissing him from his post. The act was officially described as "ill-advised." He lost his salary and his pension rights. Mangakis later credited that lecture with helping to ignite the mass resistance demonstrations that followed in occupied Athens, bringing together students, wounded veterans, and workers. After Liberation, Tsatsos returned to the...