Ion Dragoumis, after 23 months of exile in Aiakeio in Corsica and seven months in the Glossa of Skopelos, is in Athens and is preparing for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Many call him the future leader of the United Opposition.

At noon on July 31, 1920, Dragoumis’ open black Ford with a driver and his only passenger moves from Kifisia to the office of the “Political Inspectorate”. He hurries there to write an article condemning the assassination attempt on Venizelos the day before. Four days earlier, he had published in the Cathimerini an article entitled “Cleansing Impossible”, in which he sharply criticized Venizelos in view of the – as it turned out fatal – Treaty of Sevres, which was already being waved like a winning trophy in an attempt to decisively tip the scales in the elections …

A small car stops at Vasilissis Sofias from the Venizeliks quarter in front of the Ton mansion. Some attack Dragoumis. One of them beats him with a rod (or bayonet) on the head, while others beat him with their fists and drag him out of the car. Someone, with a bayonet torn from the gendarme’s weapon, pierces Dragumi several times from behind, into the body and legs. He is none other than Vice-Consul Vasilios Antoniadis, who was called Dragoumis a little earlier! It’s him, catch him… and kill him. I am Antoniadis, Vice Consul, I, Antoniadis, give orders and report on me.” The uninvolved junior officers of the gendarmerie are watching what is happening. Dragoumis could think at this time about something that he had previously written in his notebooks:

“From 3 to 5 in the morning, life is the least in the world – this is the hour when the most sick people die. I love to die at noon.”

The notorious commander of the security battalions, Pavlos Giparis, pulls the bloody Dragoumis out of the crowd and leads him to his office. He will call Vice President Emmanuel Repulis and also have a short conversation with Emmanuel Benakis, who “accidentally” happens to be there at the fateful moment. A small company of eight Giprayans, led by a sergeant, was ordered to lead Dragumis to the garrison. After a while, this team acquires its real features. Soon you will hear: “Alt!”, “Stay here!”, “You took aim!”, “Fire!”. First a hitch, a hit that finds a target, and right after the homobronde, free throws and a few spears.

The deceased will be left lying on the street for a long time until he is taken to the mortuary of the 1st Athenian cemetery. Some passers-by stop. One kicks and spits on the corpse. The Dragumi family will be informed at almost midnight by a messenger captain that Ion is dead and that they can bury him in a close family circle between 7 and 8 am. Friends who rush to cook the murdered Dragoumis will find him, according to the collected case materials, “thrown into a corner like a dog, without any cover, naked, swimming in blood.” In the coming days, the Provenzuela press will publish a lot of inaccuracies and lies about real events. Elsewhere Dragoumis is said to draw a revolver and fire into the air to intimidate, elsewhere he grabs the gun of one of the soldiers and shoots him, elsewhere he tries to run away, etc.

Someone with a bayonet pierces Dragumi several times from behind, into the body and legs. Vasilisis Sophia, noon July 31, 1920…

Penelope Delta simply mentions the event in her memoirs in three words: “They killed Dragoumis.” However, as a consistent “hagiographer” of Venizelos, he informs us that upon his return to Athens, he sought to arrest the murderers of Dragoumis, that is, the eight soldiers of the detachment who had already fled to Crete. They will be the only ones to be tried and imprisoned until 1924, when they are amnestied. Emmanuel Benakis, Pavlos Giparis and others will face trial as moral criminals. Together with Antoniadis, who will be arrested at… the French embassy in Constantinople, where he has taken refuge. All of them will be acquitted voluntarily.

Giparis asked an eyewitness to the murder not to testify in court about what he saw, telling him that Dragoumis resisted and cursed Venizelos. “The monster has been killed. You don’t need to take innocent people by the throat now,” she told him. However, in 1922, in a letter, he convincingly asks Venizelos to mediate and intervene in relation to the upcoming trial: “I hope that if the characteristics of the council change and the court in Chalkis will determined, we will be saved.”

In 1921, a votive column was erected at the site of the murder, designed by Aristotle Zakhos, a friend of Dragoumis. In 1923, the monument was destroyed by Venizeli’s fanatics. Dichasmus still had a long way to go in Greece. During the restoration of the monument in the same year, it was discovered that the entire inscription had been brutally mutilated with a chisel. She had to wait 50 years for her “restoration” (1972). The last four stanzas of the Ode to Death, a poem that Kostis Palamas completed on August 8, 1920 and dedicated to the memory of Ionos Dragoumis, are now written on it: don’t say…) / white, with the image of the Motherland. / Only she is worthy of weeping for you, / mute, marble, to weep for you.

*From the publications of Pataki, 2021, “The Hidden Diaries, Oct. 1912 – Aug. 1913”, I.D. with an introduction, episode editing, and commentary by Noda Zigas.