he was acquitted. Sartzetakis was also the first president to welcome resistance fighters to the Presidential Palace for the 24 July celebration. Although he held anticommunist opinions and considered the defeat of DSE in 1949 a "national victory", he stressed the need for a genuine national reconciliation based on remembrance, thus disagreeing with the discontinuation of memorial services for the fallen of the Armed Forces and the taboo treatment of the subject in education. He, nevertheless,cooperated with Charilaos Florakis during the 1989 political crisis and eulogised him after his passing in 2005, praising the late communist leader for his "straightness, honesty and political rectitude". His term of office ended on 5 May 1990 when Konstantinos Karamanlis took office for his second term as president after being elected the previous day by an absolute majority in Parliament. He then retired from public life, but continued to publish opinions in newspapers and articles on his website. Personal life and death Sartzetakis married Efi Argyriou with whom he had a daughter. On 3 December 2021, he was intubated due to acute pneumonia in Laiko Hospital in Athens. Sartzetakis died of acute respiratory failure on 3 February 2022, at the age of 92. The government announced a period of national mourning between 3 and 5 February, with flags lowered to half-mast. The state funeral took place on 7 February at Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens and he was later buried in First Cemetery of Athens in an intimate family ceremony. Honours Grand Collar of the Order of Prince Henry (Portugal, 1990) References External links Official website 1929 births 2022 deaths 20th-century Greek judges 20th-century presidents of Greece Aristotle University of Thessaloniki alumni Deaths from respiratory failure Greek Macedonians Greek expatriates in France Greek prisoners and detainees Greek torture victims Politicians from Thessaloniki Presidents of Greece Prisoners and detainees of Greece Resistance to the Greek junta