The Larisa camp was established by the Italian Occupation forces in the summer of 1941 on the grounds of the former barracks of the Greek anti-aircraft artillery, within the airport area, to the left of the Larisa–Agia road, approximately five kilometers east of Larisa. The camp covered an area of about 1,5 hektars. Its initial form was quite primitive. There were nine buildings belonging to the old barracks, which had been damaged by the Larisa earthquake (March 1941), while many materials had been looted by residents. In its final form, the camp consisted of both built and wooden structures and was surrounded by five rows of circular wire fencing—initially simple, later barbed—plus a ditch. It had a square shape and twelve guard towers about five meters high, one at each corner and two in between on each side. In a narrow area on either side of the entrance from the public road stood four ground‑floor buildings used by the Italian guard: headquarters, guard post, guard dormitories, material and food storage. This zone was separated from the main camp by wire fencing. In its final configuration the camp consisted of four building complexes with cement floors. Complexes A, B, and C had three rooms each, and complex D had four. In total, there were 14 rooms, 12 of which housed prisoners. Complex A (rooms 1–3) was to the left of the gate and had two floors. Complexes B and C (rooms 5–10) were long narrow buildings in a straight line, parallel to each other and set at some distance behind A. Complex D (rooms 11–13) was to the right of the entrance and extended perpendicular and northeast of complex C. By April 1943 an infirmary, kitchen, bakery, food storerooms, baths, outdoor and indoor latrines, and an open area for washing clothes had also been built—many of them by the prisoners themselves.[1]
The Italians had designated Larisa as a POW camp, although there were no Greek military personnel in captivity, following a personal order of Hitler.[2] The first arrivals were about 1,100–1,300 demobilised Cretan soldiers of the Greek army who had been captured in groups in July 1941 by the Italian forces in Athens for security reasons. A second category of inmates consisted of soldiers from the British expeditionary force who had been captured while isolated and hiding in various parts of mainland Greece. From April 1942, men and women convicted by Italian military courts began arriving at the camp, either directly or by transfer from other prisons. From May to August 1942, 800 convicts were transferred to Larisa from Averof Prison. A distinct category of inmates consisted of the 300 communist prisoners from the Akronafplia camp, transferred in three groups from September 1942 to May 1943, including important members of the Communist Party (KKE), who were held separately in rooms 11 and 12 (complex C). Continuous arrests of resistance members or those suspected of anti‑occupation activity dramatically increased the number of inmates, resulting in the camp filling with residents from almost all parts of central Greece, mainly farmers.[3] Systematic forced labor was imposed in the areas surrounding the camp (digging trenches, building pillboxes, installing wire fencing, etc.), and the camp also served as a transit center for hostages to be deported to Italy. According to Italian military records, the camp reached its maximum capacity in June 1942, when 2,000 inmates were held there.[4] In terms of prisoner movement, it was the largest concentration camp in the Italian occupation zone and one of the largest in occupied Greece, as Red Cross officials estimated that more than 30,000 people passed through it for shorter or longer periods.[5]
For most of the Italian period, living conditions, nutrition, and medical care were tragic. During the first winter of 1941–42 there was no wood for heating and insufficient materials to reinforce the buildings. Food shortages, the general absence of organization, and the arbitrary behavior of the Italians—who handled food distribution themselves—resulted in severe hunger throughout the camp. As part of investigations into Italian war crimes in 1946, Allied sources estimated that at least 250 prisoners in Larisa lost their lives “from mistreatment and inhuman conditions of detention.”[6]The actual number was likely higher. Most deaths occurred among the Cretan soldiers, whose treatment by the Italians was intentionally atrocious. By May 1942, only 205 of those transferred nine months earlier remained alive.[7] Prisoners transferred a few months later described them as “human rubbish… unshaven, uncombed, with large tangled hair covering their ears, dried‑out faces, their bones clearly visible beneath the shrunken skin, eyes extinguished, rags instead of clothing, barefoot, most of them sunk in the mud of the yard.”[8]
Nikos Ramandanis, transferred from Averof Prison in May 1942, recalled in 1945: “Our daily menu was always the same. Plain water with a few macaroni noodles at noon and in the evening. That was our food along with a triangular piece of bread every twenty‑four hours, smaller than the priest’s antidoron. […] As time passed, our body reserves decreased, and we felt the first sensation of terrible undernourishment. We felt dizzy and preferred to sleep like worms. […] The first symptoms of exhausting diarrhea and scabies—‘scabbia,’ as the Italians called it—appeared, threatening all the prisoners. There were about eight hundred of us in the camp, and it’s doubtful whether half could stand on their feet. The others were dying from intestinal disease, scabies, and malaria, with constant fevers of 40 and 41 degrees.”[9] In the spring of 1943, life in the camp improved significantly. The Akronafplia communists built structures and warehouses, organized food committees, staffed work crews, and generally contributed to improving conditions for inmates, while visits from the ICRC and the Greek Red Cross were permitted, and initiatives were organized in Larisa to support prisoners through fundraising and donations.
Something else that distinguished the camp was the brutality of the Italian guards. Beatings, torture, and punitive roll calls lasting hours were almost daily occurrences. The Cretan soldiers received harsh treatment, as their imprisonment was purely retaliatory, and the communists suffered similarly: for the first group (September 1942) it is recorded that each received thirty lashes immediately upon arrival. Flogging was a standard collective punishment. Indicatively, after a successful escape on 28 October 1941, twenty prisoners from each room were flogged in retaliation.[10]
Inevitably, the improved organization of the camp starting in early 1943, combined with rising resistance activity throughout the Italian zone, turned it into a central point in the system of occupation terror. The Italians treated the inmates as hostages who would be executed in cases of guerrilla attacks or sabotage. Between February and June 1943, six mass executions of prisoners were carried out as reprisals for resistance actions against Italian forces, with a total of 371 victims. The largest occurred on 6 June 1943, when 106 prisoners from the camp were executed in Nezeros in retaliation for the blowing up of an Italian military train by ELAS in Kournovo.[11]
The camp continued to operate after the Italian surrender. In late August, the 350 political prisoners—mostly from Akronafplia—were handed over to the Germans and taken to the Haidari camp, which had just begun operating. In September, the German Occupation forces released all remaining approximately 500 prisoners, but soon decided to reopen the camp. On 15 October 1943, 850 detainees from various parts of Thessaly were transferred there, and a week later 2,000 captured Italian soldiers arrived. Thus, throughout the remainder of the Occupation, the camp continued to support the reprisal policies of the Germans, which were extremely brutal in this region, partly because responsibility for Thessaly lay with the 4th SS Police Division. In April, it is reported that 1,350 people were held in the camp, 350 of them labeled “communists,” along with hundreds of female prisoners—whose total number reached or exceeded 300—and even children under 12. Forced labor policies were applied even more systematically. Groups of prisoners were sent to load and unload trains at the Larisa railway station, build fortifications around the camp, perform agricultural work, and carry out various tasks of all kinds. The cruel violence of the Germans remained vivid in the memory of Thanasis Katsavos, a member of EPON from Larisa: “The behavior of the commanders was inhuman. They beat mercilessly, without regard for human life. A prisoner being chased by a German with a stick got caught in the wire of the cement mixer, and the gears pulled half his body inside. The sight was tragic. The man cried for help and they laughed. They finally pulled him out half‑dead. The SD beasts behaved even more inhumanly. I remember one day they took us to the Larisa station to unload coal wagons. We worked without pause and they beat us constantly. They didn’t let us catch our breath. They beat us and cursed us ‘raus,’ ‘verfluchter Mann.’ When we returned to the camp that evening, our fellow prisoners could hardly recognize us. Blood and coal had become one mixture.”[12]
Executions became more frequent. A notable one took place on 8 March 1944, when 100 hostages, including 40 prisoners from Larisa (35 men and five women), were shot in the nearby location “Asmaki.”[13] The final number of victims of mass executions connected with the camp remains unknown, as the sources (local press, Red Cross archives) do not always specify which hostages were inmates and which were not. The total number of victims during the four years of the camp’s operation may approach 800–1,000.[14]The figures highlight the Larisa camp as the place of imprisonment with the highest mortality rate—due both to living conditions and executions—throughout the Occupation period. The camp was formally dissolved on 23 October 1944, when the German forces evacuated the area.
[1] Nikos Tzafleris, Larisa, in: Megargee, Geoffrey P., & Joseph R. White (Eds.), Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, Vol. III of Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Bloomington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2018, pp. 519-521.
[2] PAAA, RZ 405/40741, OKW an das AA, Betr. Griechische Kriegsgefangene bez. Schnellbrief vom 16.5. Nr. R 14044, Az. 2 f 24.90a Kriegsgef. (I b. G.), Nr. 3020/41, Berlin-Schöneberg, 28.5.1941.
[3] Tzafleris, Larisa, p. 520.
[4] Fonzi, Fame di Guerra, p. 125.
[5] Flountzis, Antonis I.: Stratopeda Larisas Trikalon 1941 – 1944. I gennisi tou antartikou sti Thessalia [The camps of Larisa and Trikala 1941 – 1944. The genesis of the partisan movement in Thessaly], Athens 1977, p. 34.
[6] Fonzi, Fame di Guerra, p. 126.
[7] DAEES Archive, ΚS Liste 1, Deputy Prime Minister to GRK Prisoners’ Bureau, 1409, Athens, 29.5.1942.
[8] Kostas Stournas. Casa Preventiva. Ta prota italika stratopeda stin Ellada [Τhe first Italian camps in Greece], Athens 1974, p. 37.
[9] Cited in: Flountzis, The camps of Larisa and Trikala, p. 95.
[10] Archives of Contemporary Social History (ASKI), Antonis Flountzis Archive, Box 8, various notes.
[11] Flountzis, The camps of Larisa and Trikala, p. 449.
[12] Cited in: Flountzis, The camps of Larisa and Trikala, p. 579, 580.
[13] Flountzis, The camps of Larisa and Trikala, p. 539.
[14] Tzafleris, Larisa, p. 521.
