Outside a bank: The pensioner’s story behind the photos that went viral (see pics)

Photos of pensioner Giorgos Chatzifotiadis literally collapsing in tears outside a bank in Thessaloniki on Friday after failing to withdraw a pension on behalf of his wife were so heart-wrenching that they immediately went viral on the international media. Unwittingly, he became a symbol of pensioners pain after the application of capital controls in Greece allowing only for 60-euro ATM withdrawals and 120-euro pension withdrawals in order to combat people’s withdrawals out of panic.

The story of Chatzifotiadis is not unusual. In fact, even before capital controls were enforced, as a Greek pensioner he had been given the run around as bureaucrats typically send the elderly on a paper chase. On the day the photo was taken, Chatzifotiadis had lined up at three banks at Thessaloniki, northern Greece, before being told at a fourth bank that he could not withdraw his 120 euros.

Chatzifotiadis had spent years working at a German coal mine “very hard” and later at a foundry. Following the run-around he collapsed. “I cannot stand to see my country in this distress,” he told the AFP news agency.

He would like to exercise his right to vote at tomorrow’s referendum, however the polling station is 80 kilometers away and he “has no money to go there, unless perhaps if my children would take me in their car.”