On May 5, 2010, during protests against austerity measures in central Athens, three individuals, including a pregnant woman, tragically lost their lives at the Marfin Bank branch on Stadiou Street. The harrowing images of this event shocked the world, with one particularly striking photograph capturing a woman pleading for help from a balcony. Fifteen years later, Maria Karagianni, the woman depicted in that iconic photo, recounts the terrifying moments she and her colleagues endured during the attack.
Maria was in the basement when she heard loud bangs and shattering glass from the ground floor. “We locked the vault and I grabbed the phone to call for help,” she recounted in a TikTok video. Despite her attempts to contact emergency services, the phone lines were down. In a desperate bid to escape, Maria took the elevator to the third floor, where she found her colleagues crowded in a narrow corridor trying to find an exit through a storage room.
“Our colleague Elias broke open the air conditioning unit’s grille with all his strength, allowing us to climb out onto a small 1×2-meter balcony,” she recalled. From there, they used metal rods to climb onto an adjacent building’s roof and eventually reached the main Stadiou Street balcony. “The smoke was choking us, and we couldn’t see where to step,” she said. Of the five people on the balcony, only three managed to cross to the neighboring building, leaving Maria and another colleague trapped.
For 40 agonizing minutes, Maria lived in absolute terror, wondering if her next breath would be her last. “You think, either I survive this or my next breath won’t come, and I’ll fall,” she described. Eventually, firefighters rescued her from inside the building, guiding her through the debris and intense heat. Reflecting on the ordeal, Maria noted the severe damage caused by the fire, including shattered marble stairs likely due to the extreme temperature.
Her survival story is a testament to courage and resilience amidst unimaginable circumstances.