We reopen the case that shocked the global community. It’s 1948. George Polk, a progressive American journalist and CBS correspondent, is murdered in Thessaloniki. According to the official narrative—which, in fact, needed to be constructed—he was reportedly preparing to meet Markos Vafiadis in the mountains.
Overnight, the scene is staged and the murder is blamed on the communists. Interrogations proceed at lightning speed, yet no solid evidence ever emerges. The court convicts the “sympathizing communist” journalist Grigoris Staktopoulos, who “confesses” under pressure.
Until his death, Staktopoulos, a journalist for the newspaper Macedonia, maintained that he was beaten to death and that the confession, which implicated two members of the Greek Communist Party (KKE)—one already deceased and the other living abroad—was fabricated.
In this episode of “Time in Greece”, Nikolas Angelidis, with the help of contemporary press archives, takes us step-by-step through the events of this infamous case—a calculated conspiracy.