Rosa Ioannou Imvrioti (1898-1977)

During the same period, in 1914, she graduated from the Arsakeio School and received her high school diploma. At a time when women’s education was limited to elementary level, Rosa enrolled at the University. As a first-year student, she taught at a training school for women workers, which had been established on the initiative of the Athens Labour Centre (EKA). This experience may have formed the roots of the multifaceted activity she would later develop for the renewal of education, the equality of women, the modernisation of the state, and the right of the working class to education. At a very young age, during her studies, Rosa met Giannis Imvriotis ([1888]-1977), then a librarian at the National Library and later Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Thessaloniki; a prominent Marxist scientist, with significant activity in the National Resistance.

She graduated from the School of Philosophy in 1916 and was appointed to a girls’ school. At the same time, her interest in education led her to join the Educational Club, an association of progressive educators and intellectuals who actively fought for educational and social reforms. Joining the circle of the Educational Club had a catalytic effect on her ideas, which is particularly evident in her writings. Moreover, during the interwar period, Rosa Imvrioti, socially and ideologically awakened, joined the feminist movement and in 1920 she became a founding member of the League for Women’s Rights. Through articles, lectures and studies, she would join the struggle for women’s rights to work, education, voting and equal participation in society in general. In 1923 she published her study I gineka sto Vizantio [Woman in Byzantium], the result of a series of lectures at the League. In her study she asks: “What could the wonderful female material, half of the whole of humanity, give if it were not bound up and thrown into disuse by laws and social superstitions?” From the late 1920s her progressive views on education, language and women’s rights were combined with her left-wing political commitment.

In 1924, having held other positions in education, she was appointed to the Marasleio Teaching School along with other progressive educators of the Educational Club. The important reform project of the Marasleio was to be fiercely attacked by the conservative circles of bourgeois society. Rosa Imvrioti, because of her pioneering teaching initiatives, was at the center of the attack and was accused of using historical materialism in history lessons. The outbreak of the “Marasleiaka” led to her dismissal from education in 1926. As she said, “The unjust persecutions, the distortion of the truth, the savage attack by reactionaries, the injustice of the state vibrated the mind and the heart like an earthquake”. And elsewhere: “The students are numerous, but the ‘black reaction’ is also numerous. And the exploitation of patriotism begins, infinite family and religious movements are sprouting, which the demoticists [supporters of the simplified language demotiki] are supposedly trying to destroy.”

Shortly afterwards she left abroad, together with her husband, for postgraduate studies. Rosa studied at the Universities of Sorbonne and Berlin, specializing in pedagogy and history, while Giannis Imvriotis studied psychology and philosophy. Having experienced new teaching methods and educational experiments that enriched her reflection on progressive education, she returned to Greece and in 1930 she was reappointed as a secondary school teacher. In 1934 she was the first woman to be promoted to the position of High School Principal (Kilkis High School). Her husband, from 1932, taught as a professor of Psychology at the University of Thessaloniki.

The dictatorship of 4 August 1936 removed her from the school, but she was not dismissed from the service. During this period Rosa Imvrioti cultivated the idea of founding a school for children with mental disabilities. The aim of the project was to make these children useful and capable people. The school operated in Kaisariani, under her organization and direction, from 1937 until the declaration of war, constituting the first substantial state intervention for the education of children with disabilities.

After the beginning of the war Rosa Imvrioti took over the management of a soup kitchen for the families of the soldiers of the Albanian front and in the spring of 1942, she managed to establish a soup kitchen in the school of Kaisariani. Giannis Imvriotis was arrested by the Germans in Thessaloniki and imprisoned in the Pavlos Mela detention camp, while in 1944 their house in Athens was destroyed by German bombing. Rosa actively participated in the Resistance and in the decision of EAM to mobilize the youth in the resistance struggle. Giannis and Rosa Imvrioti were among the educators and intellectuals who stood by the side of the young people, playing a guiding role. She was a founding member and member of the Central Council of EPON, while she collaborated under the supervision of her mentor D. Glinos in the EPON magazine Nea Genia (New Generation).Moreover, in 1944 Rosa participated in the Political Committee for National Liberation (PEEA). In the “Government of the Mountain” Rosa Imvrioti and her colleagues, educators and teachers, as members of the Secretariat of Education, took over the pedagogical-educational policy. Among the primary objectives of the PEEA was the issue of the education of the children of Greece, neglected by the war and the occupation. Rosa, as part of her responsibilities, collaborated in the drafting of the “Plan for a People’s Education”, a long-term education reform programme that would give the people “the right to be educated regardless of economic and class conditions”. At the same time she contributed to the writing of the 3rd and 4th grade reading book Ta Aetopoula (The Eaglets).

In June 1944, in “Free Greece”, she was assigned by the PEEA the management of the Pedagogical Training Centre in the mountainous village of Tyrna [Elati, Trikala], which aimed at the rapid training and preparation of teachers so that the schools could operate immediately with qualified staff after the withdrawal of the occupation troops. “I was stunned. In this small village with 671 inhabitants, at an altitude of about 1,200 meters, I had to set up a pedagogical school. No classroom, no staff, no material… I start… [The] only one who doesn’t show understanding is the “colleague” –that’s what we called him– who has to take me to Tyrna. He was a cute little donkey, who from the moment we started on the route sets his eyes on the hot bread in my bag. I give it to him; he eats it all and we both go hungry from then on.” In an almost totally destroyed village, the conditions were not at all favourable for the implementation of this educational project. However, as she reports, the help was substantial from members of the Resistance: the ELAS colonel Kissavos sent a doctor, the teacher Barbounakis sent teaching material and food, P. Kokkalis (Minister of Education and Health) organised a soup kitchen for the trainees and at the same time, apart from Rosa Imvrioti, other specialised professionals were sent to the school for teaching (pedagogy, psychology of children, professional orientation, history, civic education, etc.). “But the pride of the Training Centre was the human material, the students, at the beginning 85 and at the end 107 […] who with bruised legs and cuts on their hands and face crossed the dangerous zones; who escaped from repeated blockades until they reached Tyrna walking for 10 and 15 days.” The Training Centre was immediately accepted by the inhabitants of the area, and at its inauguration “some 1500 people, men, women and children, gathered from the surrounding villages and even brought food. It took the form of a festival.” The Training Centre of Tyrna operated until September 1944. It seems that the approaching liberation of the country had redefined priorities.

After the liberation, Rosa, now a member of the Communist Party (KKE), collaborated with the “scientific society for the study of modern Greek problems”, which was named “Science – Reconstruction” (EP-AN), while in 1945 she took the lead in the re-foundation of the Educational Club. Both were short-lived progressive initiatives, whose operation was suspended due to political persecution. At the same time, consistent in her struggles for women’s emancipation, she participated in the founding of the Panhellenic Federation of Women, a progressive association under the influence of the KKE, while she continued to write systematically, mainly on subjects in which she specialized. In addition, Rosa Imvrioti made efforts to reestablish the Special School in Kaisariani, which did not receive a positive response from the state authorities. The circumstances had changed.

In 1946, she was permanently dismissed from education due to her participation in the National Resistance and her political views. Her husband, Giannis, was also dismissed from the University of Thessaloniki. But the persecution did not stop there. In 1948, in the midst of the civil war, Rosa Imvrioti began her difficult journey into exile. Being displaced initially in Chios and Makronissos, she was transferred to the women’s exile camp in Trikeri. Living daily with the other exiles in Trikeri, Imvrioti realised that apart from the children, there were many illiterate women. Indicatively, 380 of them only knew how to write their name. A skilled educator even in the most inhuman conditions of exile, she inspired and implemented an educational programme for her fellow exiles, both for the illiterate and for those who wanted to complete their education and had discontinued it due to the war. She worked with a group of 52 displaced teachers of all levels, the “ekpaideftikes” (educationals) as they were called in the camp, and organised a broad educational programme combined with cultural activities. Gatherings of many people were forbidden, so lessons were held in secret, daily throughout the camp, while Imvrioti gave lectures on art, history, tradition and hygiene. “All the women who were middle-aged now, who never happened to hear a teacher, learned their first letters here. And those who wanted to learn a foreign language, here in the camp they succeeded.”

Her actions, however, disturbed the military authorities who supervised the camp. After an anti-communist speech in December 1949, attended by top officials, they called Imvrioti to the Command. When General Petzopoulos saw her, in the presence of an Archbishop, he attacked her: “You, eh? Oh, I know you, you won’t live anymore. You have been plaguing Greece with your words for years now. From today, hyena, your mouth will be sealed. You have destroyed the youth. […] I should put you up against the wall and lay you down with my pistol.” By order of the General, Imvrioti was transferred to Larissa (General Headquarters of Central Greece), where, together with other prisoners, she experienced horrible torture, since she refused to renounce her ideas. “How can I give this picture? Fifteen men with pistols in their hands, wild, unruly, disheveled all around, and we five weak, hungry for so many days, tormented, dehumanized at their mercy and fury. We felt how alone we were. We look at each other and draw strength. We stay for five minutes, petrified like this. The torturers did not expect this attitude, it seems.”

Rosa Imvrioti was released in 1951 without her political beliefs and her willingness for social struggles having been curbed. She joined the EDA, the legal party of the Left in the post-civil war period and was reunited with her husband, also displaced until 1951 in Makronissos and Ai Stratis and elected member of parliament with the EDA. Imvrioti continued to intervene systematically with articles, scientific studies, books and lectures not only as an educator, but also as a political figure. “Everything I wrote was always with the certainty that in the deep crisis of today’s world, people have the power to rise up and find the ways and means to escape the obstacles and create a new situation incomparably better, more humane than the present one… Thus, the crisis becomes the opportunity for new creation.”

During the period of the dictatorship (1967-1974) and although she was already in old age with poor health and her husband in exile again, she did not remain silent. She chose to express her opposition to the dictatorial regime through her studies. In 1972 she published the book To katigoro tis neolaias (The “J’ accuse” of Youth), on social protest and the deadlocks of youth. In the introduction she writes: “I hesitated to speak out, although many urged me to do so; my position was and is very difficult. I am out of my world […] But we have to work, work to help those who deserve it, work to protest. Because the first move we have to make is to shout every day, waking up in a world full of injustices and miseries of all kinds, I protest, I protest. Really sometimes to be silent is a crime…”.