After fatal Greek train crash, a campus simmers with rage

Record ID: 1718535

  • Title: After fatal Greek train crash, a campus simmers with rage
  • Date: 4th April 2023
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE)(Greek) UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR AND FATHER OF VICTIM LYSIMACHOS PAPAZOGLOU SAYING: “It was a huge blow to the university because the children are its future, so it is like the future has been lost, we are not the future, it was like there was a crack in the future.” VARIOUS OF STUDENTS SITTING AT TABLES IN UNIVERSITY WORKING ON THEIR COMPUTERS AND WRITING (SOUN
  • Embargoed: 18th April 2023 11:29
  • Keywords: CRASH GREECE THESSALONIKI TRAIN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
  • Location: THESSALONIKI, GREECE
  • City: THESSALONIKI, GREECE
  • Country: Greece
  • Topics: Disaster/Accidents,Europe
  • Reuters ID: LVA002262804042023RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A month after 12 students from Aristotle University, Greece's largest university in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, were killed in the country’s deadliest train crash, messages of grief throughout the halls are tinged with rage.
    “The crime will not be forgotten," reads one sign on the wall.
    Fifty-seven people died in the rail disaster on Feb. 28, when a passenger train and a cargo train collided head-on.
    Many of the victims were students returning from a long carnival weekend.
    Twenty-six students were also injured.
    Konstantina Ksini and Evangelia Grigoriou, 22 - year-old engineering students, lost their friend Agapi Tsaklidou, 23, a topography student.
    They hang a post-it message to Agapi on a makeshift memorial erected by the students in the foyer, which lists the names of the victims and their schools: “Agapi, we won’t forget you”.
    “Her presence will be missed at the school, and her smile, she was dearly loved,” said Ksini.
    “In the beginning, we didn’t believe it, it was like a lie. That you will lose someone that you see at the university every day, someone you talk with, someone you drink coffee with, and suddenly they say to you that this person no longer exists, it is a shock,” said Grigoriou, adding,
    “After, you are filled with rage, you ask yourself, why is this happening in the 21st century? We are engineering students, so we know what is possible in this era, we are talking about the fourth industrial revolution, and we can’t see that two trains are moving at the same time and are going to crash?”
    The anger over the crash spilled into the streets in students protests over safety failings at the ailing railways. In the university cafes, in corridors and in classrooms, discussions revolve around what can be done.
    “We made them a promise, that we won’t let this pass, and now we are acting on it. Our students associations have become their voices,” said Ksini.
    Lysimachos Papazoglou, a university professor of veterinary surgery, lost his son Giorgos, a 22-year-old physics student.
    Giorgos, had gone to get water from the train’s canteen moments before the crash, in one of the carriages that was obliterated.
    “Lately he was very happy, he had met a girl from Turkey, who had been traveling with him on the train and she was saved,” recalls Papazoglou. “We are now in denial that he is gone, that is the hardest part…We believe that next year we will start to accept that he is never coming back.”
    Papazoglou said it was a huge blow to the university, “because the children are its future, so it is like the future has been lost.”
    Rector Nikos Papaioannou says the institution suffered the worst peacetime loss of life in its 98 years, and planned to award degrees posthumously and launch scholarships in the students names.
    Psychiatry professor Vasilios Bozikas said councellors helped students deal with insomnia and nightmares after the crash.
    “We will slowly go on, but it’s a fact though that all of this will leave a scar, the wound will heal, but it will leave a scar,” said Bozikas.
    On the memorial in the university, students have left dozens of post-it notes to say their last goodbyes, such as one that reads: “safe journey”.
    (Production: Alexandros Avramidis, Thanasis Elmazis, Karolina Tagaris, Deborah Kyvrikosaios)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: Footage contains photographs or artwork. User is responsible for obtaining additional clearances before publishing this clip.
Register