It was October 5 in Greece, in the middle of the night. A storm was beating the waves of the Aegean Sea and off the island of Kythera, between the Peloponnese and Crete, a boat was thrown against a cliff, a boat from which Michalis Protopsaltis, 66, was able to save 80 passengers . 80 lives, of men, women and children. A gesture for which he was honored Monday, October 24 during a ceremony at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs. Yet he does not want the title of hero. He says he just did what he could.
And he would have liked to do more, because the boat did not contain 80 passengers but 95, and the missing fifteen died before his eyes. He cried about it. All have fled war and the violence of authoritarian regimes. Afghan and Syrian families, leaving from Izmir in Turkey, destination Italy. But the storm decided otherwise, pushing the boat back towards the coast, until it was wedged between two rocks, at the foot of a cliff. The castaways, trapped, scream in despair. Cries that bring Michalis Protopsaltis out of his home, who immediately understands the urgency. He’s the boss of a construction company, and he has a crane truck, so he set it up on top of the cliff, attached a large empty construction bag to the lifting hook and waved the castaways up. inside. With the help of a dozen other inhabitants of the village, a first person was brought up, then a second, and so on for three hours.
“The waves threw people against the rockshe confides on a daily basis The Guardian, they were trying to hold on to the boat but couldn’t, what we witnessed that evening was hellish, absolutely appalling, something I never imagined I would see. ” Opening the newspapers the next day, Michalis Protopsaltis did not understand what he read. He did not understand that he was called a hero, pointing out that he could have done nothing. “Çimplied what? That we would have taken the time to think about it? That we would let people die? It’s unbearablehe told the Greek press, what we did was just human, and it was the only thing to do. There’s no heroism in that.”