Consulate General of The United States, Thessaloniki - Other Noteworthy Events and News

Other Noteworthy Events and News

• The Consulate has played a significant role in many high profile cases such as the George Polk investigation of 1948. The mysterious death of American journalist George Polk has long bewildered Americans and Greeks alike. Polk, who arrived in Thessaloniki in the spring of 1948, had attempted to contact the leader of the Andartes resistance group, only to disappear. Polk's body was found having been murdered, execution-style, and speculation and accusations were rampant as to who was responsible for his assassination. The Consul General at the time, Raleigh A. Gibson, invested a considerable amount of time on the case. The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair, a book written by Edmund Keeley, brother to aforementioned Robert Keeley, critically analyzes the case.
• The Consulate has its own competitive football team, The Eagles, who claim to be undefeated in official matches.
• In the book Midnight Express, based on actual events, Billy Hayes found asylum at the Consulate General in Thessaloniki following an escape from a prison in Istanbul in which he had spent almost five years.
• The Consulate has received a number of prominent celebrities. Most recently, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis visited the Consulate and gave a lecture in 2007; other visitors have included Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, actress Faye Dunaway, five-time Academy Award winning film director Francis Ford Coppola, film director Sofia Coppola, production designer Dean Tavoularis, former U.S. Secretaries of Defense William Cohen and Donald Rumsfeld, Tipper Gore, and actress and singer Juliette Lewis.