Helen Vlachos

A prize named in her honour "The Eleni Vlachou Award" is presented every two years starting from 2003 to Greek journalists by the German embassy in Greece for excellence in journalism covering European and international topics.

Eleni Vlachou is recognised as one of the World Press Freedom Heroes, an award sponsored by the International Press Institute. She received the award posthumously in 2000.

She died on 14 October 1995 in Athens, aged 84. She received a state funeral attended by political leaders and hundreds of journalists.

In 1987 she sold Kathimerini to George Koskotas and in the 1990s she published her memoirs Peninda kai Kati: Dimosiographika Chronika (Fifty Something: Journalistic Chronicles), alluding to her more than sixty-year career in the newspaper business. She had two homes located in Athens and London and spent her retirement years travelling between them.

In 1974 with the fall of the junta, she returned to Greece and restarted the publication of her newspapers. She became state deputy for New Democracy under Konstantinos Karamanlis in Greece's first democratically elected Parliament during Metapolitefsi. Later she resigned from her political position because she found politics boring compared to journalism.

She loved Britain and the British people and used her fluency in the English language and its idioms to deliver witty attacks against the junta, knowing that the British public appreciates humour rather than exaggeration. In 1970 she published House Arrest, a book detailing her life under the junta before her escape to London.

Soon after the coup of 21 April 1967, she closed down her newspaper Kathimerini as a protest against the dictatorship. In October 1967, her description of one of the junta principals, Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, then Minister of the Interior of the junta, as a clown, led to her house arrest, for which she later wrote a book under the same title.

The coup d'état of 21 April 1967, which overthrew the legitimate government of Greece, started at 2 a.m. local time. Soon after the coup had begun, Vlachos arrived at the offices of Kathimerini in the early hours of the morning, in complete shock, surprise and disarray, to plan the publication of what was to be the only edition of her newspaper during the dictatorship and started to organise the photographic and other recorded material which was to be included in that special edition.

Such attacks against the junta could have led to imprisonment or worse, yet she was not intimidated saying that should she ever go to jail she was expecting to be fed her favourite dish, which was meatballs. In October 1967, her description of one of the junta principals, Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos then Minister of the Interior of the junta, as a clown, led to her house arrest, for which she later wrote a book under the same title.

Following her house arrest, in December 1967, she devised a plan to escape. She obtained a fake passport and dyed her hair black with shoe polish to match the false identification. On the night of the escape, the 55-year-old climbed out of a window from her flat and then to the roof of a neighbouring apartment and, going from roof to roof in a cold Athens night, she finally managed to reach street level.

Andreas Papandreou, as Prime Minister of Greece, had said about her: "She was a truly great figure in Greek journalism... She was unwavering in her principles and her beliefs... Her immediate reaction to the coup of 21 April 1967, with the cessation of publication of Kathimerini and her other publications, is a crowning moment of resistance in the field of journalism."

When her father died in 1951 she took ownership of Kathimerini (Daily) and expanded it by publishing the afternoon edition of the paper under the name Mesimvrini (Noon edition). She published Eikones (Pictures), which was an illustrated magazine and the first of its kind in Greece. She also launched Ekdosis Galaxia (English, "galaxy publishers"), a quality paperback imprint, which became collectible. She had been a supporter of the monarchy and the Greek right-wing parties.

In 1935, Vlachos married Ioannis Arvanitidis. Vlachos and Arvanitidis later divorced. In 1951, she remarried, to Konstantinos Loundras.

Helen Vlachos (Eléni Vláchou) was the daughter of Georgios Vlachos, who founded Kathimerini, one of Greece's premier newspapers, in 1919. She worked as a journalist in her father's newspaper and covered the Berlin Olympics in 1936. During World War II, her father refused to cooperate with the Nazi occupation government and closed down Kathimerini. During the war she worked as a nurse.

Helen Vlachos (UK: /ˈvlækɒs/, US: /ˈvlækoʊs/; Greek: Ελένη Βλάχου, Eléni Vláchou; 18 December 1911 – 14 October 1995) was a Greek journalist, newspaper publishing heiress, proprietor, and anti-junta activist.