Nikos Vasilikos

Nikos Vasilikos was born on September 30, 1898, in Theologos, Thasos, where he completed the six-grade urban school of the village in 1911. In the 1912-13 school year, he enrolled in the second grade of the Siatista Gymnasium, in 1913-14 in the third grade of the Serres Gymnasium, and attended the Piraeus Gymnasium for the next three school years. In 1917, he began his studies at the Athens Law School. The following year, he was drafted; he first served in Mytilene (1918-19) and then in Asia Minor. He was discharged from the army in 1922 and graduated from the Law School in June 1923. He then trained for a year at the office of the distinguished Piraeus lawyer Evangelos Primidis and, in September 1924, settled in Kavala, where he excelled as a criminal lawyer. Through his articles in local newspapers and lectures on various legal and social issues, he soon became widely known in the city. He served as president of the "Philippi" gymnastic club and legal advisor to the Swedish mining company in Limenaria, Thasos. He married Kaiti Zafeiriou and had two children, Elsa and Vasilis. A fervent supporter of Eleftherios Venizelos and a leading figure in the Democratic Defense of Kavala, he was actively involved in politics and spearheaded the Venizelist Movement of 1935. In coordination with General Dimitrios Kammenos, commander of the IV Army Corps, he called the people - in a mass rally in Kavala on March 3, 1935 - to take up arms in favor of democracy and civil liberties. When the Movement was suppressed, Nikos Vasilikos was sentenced to death along with other leaders of the revolution. He lived with the anxiety of a condemned man until May 20, when he surrendered to the authorities, and, during the appeal against the in absentia conviction against him, the sentence was reduced to five years in prison. In January 1936, he was elected the first MP of Kavala. That Parliament was dissolved by the Metaxas dictatorship. During the Occupation, he spent his time in Thessaloniki. In 1945, he returned to Kavala, but in 1947, he settled permanently in Thessaloniki. He ran again with Georgios Papandreou's party but was not elected. In April 1949, he defended the accused Staktopoulos in the famous Polk case, where he spoke for five and a half hours. He died in Thessaloniki in 1988.