Yanis Kanidis

Yanis Kanidis ( _el. Γιάννης Κανίδης, also Ivan Constantinovich Kanidis, _ru. Иван Константинович Каниди) (January 1, 1930 – September 3, 2004) was a Greek-Russian physical education teacher. When armed Chechen extremists took more than 1200 school children and adults hostage on September 1 2004 in the Russian town of Beslan in North Ossetia, in what has become known as the Beslan school hostage crisis, 74-year-old Kanidis insisted on staying with his students, helped them survive and ultimately died to save their lives.

Two days after the start of the hostage taking, a number of nursing mothers were allowed to leave the building with their babies. The commander of the terrorist squad saw Kanidis, an elderly sickly man, and offered to allow him to leave as well. But Kanidis refused, saying he would stay "with [his] students till the end". And throughout the ordeal, Kanidis guarded and fought for the lives of his students as best he could. When the children were succumbing to the sweltering heat, stuffy air and thirst, Kanidis approached the terrorists insisting that "You have to give them something to drink, at least to the smallest children". When he was heavily beaten with the butt of a rifle by one of the terrorists, Kanidis continued defiantly, "How dare you!? You claim you are people of the Caucasus region, but here in the Caucasus even a dog wouldn't turn down the request of an old man!" At which point the terrorists allowed Kanidis to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths of the smallest children who were choking from thirst.

The surviving hostages tell how he repeatedly risked his own life in order to save those of the children and how he moved explosives which had been placed near the children, and tried to prevent others from being detonated.

Kanidis was killed on the third day of the hostage taking. The circumstances of his death remains not fully clarified. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, he was killed when he jumped on a grenade the terrorists had thrown at fleeing children, sacrificing his life to save theirs. According to the Greek/English newspaper Kathimerini, he was shot when he tried to dismantle a ceiling fan that had been wired to an explosive device. According to a feature by C.J. Chivers, Esquire, June 2006 [cite web|month=June | year=2006|url=http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/060610_mfe_June_06_School_1.html|title=The School (page 6, mid)|work=Terrorism|publisher=Esquire|accessdate=2007-01-10] Kanidis was killed while struggling with one of the terrorists, trying to buy time for others to escape. His last words were: "Get the children out!"

Afterwards one of the saved students compared him to the Polish hero Janusz Korczak, who had accompanied his pupils to Auschwitz.

On December 9, 2004 Kanidis was posthumously awarded the medal For Protection of Human Rights by the Russian Government [cite web|url=http://www.mhg.ru/publications/4EEFFB2|title=Declaration wouldn't survive without humanity|ublisher=The Moscow Helsinki Group|accessdate=2004-01-10] . Later same month one of two new schools being constructed to replace the school destroyed in the attack, was named “Ivan Kanidis” in his honour [cite web|date=December 23, 2004|url=http://www.ecclesia.gr/english/mosaic/mosaic_10.html#n4|title=New boarding school in Beslan will be named after the lost teacher of school number one|publisher=Regnum|accessdate=2004-01-10] [cite web|date=September 26, 2005|url=http://www.ecclesia.gr/english/mosaic/mosaic_10.html#n4|title=The Foundation Stone of the School at Tormented Beslan (Russia) Is Laid|publisher=Media Ecclesiastica|accessdate=2007-01-10] .

References

External links

* " [http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100021_06/09/2004_46964 Greek among Beslan dead] ", Kathimerini, September 6, 2004. Last accessed July 15, 2006.
* " [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132776,00.html The Hero Teacher of Beslan] ", Joanne Jacobs, FOX News, September 17, 2004. Last accessed July 15, 2006.
*ru icon" [http://www.rg.ru/2004/09/08/beslan-teachers.html Pedagogical Tragedy] ", Rossijskaya Gazeta, September 8, 2004. Last accessed July 15, 2006.
* " [http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/060610_mfe_June_06_School_1.html The School.] " By C.J. Chivers. Esquire, June 2006, Volume 145, Issue 6. Last accessed July 15, 2006.
* " [http://www.kp.ru/daily/23356/31894/ Feat of teachers of Beslan] ", Komsomolskaya Pravda, September 8 2004. Last accessed July 17, 2006.

Persondata
NAME=Kanidis, Yanis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Kanidi, Ivan Constantinovich; Kanidis, Ivan Constantinovich; Каниди, Иван Константинович
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Self-sacrificing victim of the 2003 Beslan hostage crisis
DATE OF BIRTH=January 1, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH=
DATE OF DEATH=September 3, 2004
PLACE OF DEATH=Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania, Russia