Hagios Eustratios (Ai-Stratis) is an island in the north-eastern Aegean Sea with 257 inhabitants according to the 2021 census. Administratively, it belongs to the regional unit of Lemnos in the North Aegean region. From 1912 until the implementation of the Kallikratis plan (2010), it belonged to the prefecture of Lesbos, with its capital in Mytilene. It is the most isolated island in the Aegean Sea and is 18 nautical miles from Lemnos.

From 1929, it was used as a place of exile for communists, along with other islands (Gavdos, Anafi, Kimolos, Folegandros). From 1929 to 16 July 1943, approximately 950 political exiles, both men and women, passed through the island. The exiles lived in houses in the village and organised their lives in communal groups, following the model of all the exile islands. On 26 April 1941, two days before German forces occupied the island, the Gendarmerie guard prevented an escape attempt, killing three exiles. In 1941, the number of exiles decreased due to the release of those who signed a declaration of repentance. In November 1941 there were 175 exiles in Agios Efstratios, guarded by the local Gendarmerie station and the German forces of Lemnos, which carried out at least one terror visit to the island.[1] Due to the general food situation, the remote location of the island and the repression of the Greek authorities, which deliberately created obstacles to daily life (prohibition of food ration cards, prohibition of fishing on pain of execution), food supplies were extremely difficult to obtain, resulting in deaths from starvation among the exiles. In February 1942, the GRC informed the Ministry of Public Security that the situation on the island was “desperate,” seven people had died since mid-January and 30 more tuberculosis patients were dying, “breathing their last breaths as a result of complete exhaustion from months of starvation.”[2] The number of victims actually reached 33.[3] Food shipments initiated by the GRC in August 1942 halted the rate of deaths, but the situation remained serious. In September 1942, a team from the GRC managed to visit Hagios Efstratios, bringing winter clothing and submitting a report: 75 exiles remained on the island (including four women and two small children). Most of them were confined to a house with a barn and a stable, 17 had tuberculosis, and 21 were bedridden from exhaustion and starvation: “Everyone’s faces look like mummies, because all you can see is skin stuck to their bones. When I went to see them, they welcomed me with applause, and they all smiled at me. I shuddered because it seemed to me that I saw skulls showing me their teeth. All this is a very small and inadequate description of reality.”[4] Appeals made by the GRC in May 1942 to the Ministry of the Interior for the transferring of the exiles to the sanatorium in Petra, Olympus, were not accepted, nor was the request to the DES Relief Management Committee for the supply of emergency aid the following year, as the Committee replied that Hagios Efstratios belonged to a border area not covered by the agreements governing food shipments from Turkey.[5] At the end of 1942, 14 exiles were transferred by the Germans to the Pavlos Melas camp, according to the Red Cross, because they were considered prisoners of war, most likely due to their origin from Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia and Thrace.[6] Several of them were later executed in retaliation.[7] The history of Hagios Efstratios as a place of exile ended on 16 July 1943, when the 60 remaining exiles were freed by local ELAS forces, who transported them with caiques to the mainland.[8]

The island served again as a place of exile for political prisoners from 1948 to 1963. In 2007, the “Museum of Democracy” was inaugurated at the school of Hagios Efstratios under the auspices of the Directorate of Modern Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture and with the political backing of the New Democracy government and in the presence of the then Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis.[9] The website of the Municipality of Agios Efstratios states that the Museum “is the first public Greek museum dedicated to a critical period in our modern history, from a political and social point of view.”[10]

[1] Ai Stratis. I machi tis peinas ton politikon eksoriston to 1941 [The battle of hunger of political exiles in 1941], Historical Publications, Athens 1977, pp. 30-32.

[2] ELIA-MIET, Aristotelis Koutsoumaris Archive, F. 51, subfile 2, Greek Red Cross EES, Food Distribution Committee under the International Committee of the Red Cross, Athens, 22 February 1942.

[3] Ai Stratis, p. 6.

[4] DAEES Archive, TB No. 15, Application of the political exiles of Agios Efstratios, December 1942, attached EES report [September 1942].

[5] DAEES Archive, TB No. 15, S. Mavrogordatos to the Ministry of the Interior, 2 May 1942. Also, Zarifi and Mavrogordatos to the DES Food Distribution Committee, 7805, 3.7.1943 and Commission de Gestion pour les Secours en Grèce/D.3. Provincial Service to EES Prisoners of War Office, AP 33-12113, Athens 15.7.1943.

[6] DAEES Archive, TB No. 15, “Report on the Health and Food Situation of Civilian Prisoners in Agios Efstratios,” Athens, 23 October 1942. Cf. A. Stratis, p. 6.

[7] Istoria tis Antistasis [History of the Resistance 1940-45], Avlos, Athens 1979, vol. 1, p. 205.

[8] Ai Stratis, p. 6.

[9] “Inauguration of the Museum of Democracy in Agios Efstratios by the Prime Minister,” in.gr, 30 November 2007 https://www.in.gr/2007/11/30/culture/egkainia-toy-moyseioy-dimokratias-ston-ai-strati-apo-ton-prwthypoyrgo/ (last accessed: 16/9/2025).

[10] https://agios-efstratios.gov.gr/places/mouseio-dimokratias/ (last accessed: 16/9/2025).