NEW YORK – The Consulate General held its annual open house on March 22 in celebration of the 198th anniversary of Greek Independence.
As expected, the turnout was massive. New York Hellenism crowded the Consulate General to commemorate the national holiday and March 25, 1821, the day that marked the beginning of the Revolution against the Ottoman yoke and 400 years of slavery.
Consul General Konstantinos Koutras gave the welcoming remarks and spoke of the importance of the Greek Revolution, Philhellenism, the importance of historical memory and the preservation of the Greek language and tradition as a necessary precondition for our survival as a nation, not forgetting of course the contribution of our Cypriot brothers to the liberation struggle. “Today’s event is a history lesson,” Koutras noted.
The Consul General said, “Maintaining our language, our history, our tradition is sine qua non of our survival – as a nation. We owe the survival of our nation and its progress to the Thinkers of Ancient Greece, to Heroes of ’21, to all those who have been deprived, who sacrificed, fought against obscurantism, tyranny, to those who have never calculated the magnitude of the enemies of freedom and culture.
“We owe it to our ancestors, the pioneering Greek immigrants who founded the greatness of America’s Hellenism, made the Greek Diaspora strong and powerful so that today it is characterized as a ‘Valuable Power.’ That is why I urge you not to lose what our ancestors have bequeathed to us, as the poet (G. Seferis) says, ‘to rise up a bit higher’! Our times do not allow for rest; Freedom must not be taken for granted.”
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