Author: Jason Handrinos

The Kallithea Prison was in the current block bounded by Eleftherios Venizelos Avenue (Thiseos) – Skopeftiriou – Platonos and Filaretou Streets. The building was constructed in 1896 as an Olympic Shooting Range to host the shooting competitions of the Olympic Games that took place in Athens that same year and was designed by the leading architect Anastasios Metaxas. After the Games and until 1925, the building was rarely used as a shooting range, while at the same time the area it occupied was reduced and part of the complex was handed over for school use. From 1925 to 1940, two primary schools were housed there.

During the Occupation, they were converted into prisons under the administration of the Italian authorities (until September 1943) and were the most important prisons for Italian prisoners in the capital after the Averof prison, resistance fighters and civilians arrested for participating in anti-occupation activities, and officers considered dangerous to the Occupation authorities. A group transfer took place on 5 March 1943, when 41 people arrested during a demonstration against conscription were transferred there. One of them, Giorgos Tzinis, describes his entry into the chamber: “Before I went in, I took off my shoes and left them outside the door. The entire small chamber, along its entire length and width, was covered with rags and colorful village blankets. I walked inside, stepping on the blankets with my socks. I felt suffocated and looked around for a window to breathe. The window I saw had been bricked up. Only high up had they left a skylight, and that was closed with bars. At that moment, I felt imprisoned.”[1] In April 1943, there were 633 prisoners in Kallithea Prison, while the capacity was estimated at 450.^[2] Two months later, the Ministry of Justice reported that the prisons “were overcrowded in a manner that posed serious risks to public health, without taking into account the adverse living conditions of the prisoners due to the lack of space.”[3]

Prisoners were often tortured by the Carabinieri and members of the Italian secret service: “They revived medieval torture methods and added new varieties to them. Apart from the cane, hot eggs under the armpits, burning the fingers and stretching the bodies according to the Procrustes system, they considered the iron crown to be more effective in discovering the truth. It was tightened around the prisoner’s head and the pain in the temples was unbearable. It was used frequently. In the Kallithea prison, they used it in the Maratheas case [a collaborationist landowner killed by ELAS] with such ferocity that twenty prisoners, to be freed from the torment, each confessed separately that they had killed Maratheas![4]

After the Italian capitulation, the prison came under German jurisdiction. Until the end of the Occupation, the number of inmates fluctuated between 300 and 500 on average.[5]  After 1945, the Kallithea Prisons continued to operate as prisons for political prisoners. In 1951, members of the clandestine KKE group who had reentered Greece illegally, Belogiannis, Argyriadis, Batsis and Kaloumenos were imprisoned there and executed in March 1952. The prison ceased operations in 1965 and was demolished in 1966. A school complex was built in its place, which today houses two schools, the 4^th Gymnasium and Lyceum and the 10^th Gymnasium of Kallithea (175 El. Venizelos Avenue).

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[1] Tzinis, Bloodstained Notebooks, p. 33.

[2] Karavis, The Italian Occupation of Greece, p. 281.

[3] GRGSA, Ministry of Justice Archive, f. 176, Greek State, Ministry of Justice/Directorate of Penitentiary Administration to the Ministry of Public Security/General Directorate of the Gendarmerie, AP 41304, 11.6.1943

[4] Koukkidis, Their Justice, p. 66.

[5] DAEES Archive, TB No. 15, EES Prisoners’ Office to the Medicine Distribution Committee, AP 13106, Athens, 7.10.1943.

The Agia Rural Prison is in the village of the same name and seat of the community of the prefecture of Chania in Crete. They were established in 1929 as the fifth agricultural prison in Greece, after the prisons of Tiryns, Kassaveteia, Vidos (1925) and Assos (1927).[1] During the German occupation of Crete (1941-1945), the Agia Prison was used by German forces as their main military prison on the island for Greek citizens, resistance fighters and their relatives who were tried by the German authorities on various charges (possession of weapons, care of British soldiers). It also served as a place of execution. The prison was connected to the German Military Court which was established in Chania at the end of September 1943.[2]

During the Occupation, the building complex was entirely under German jurisdiction and underwent significant development. A new wing was built, the outer walls were reinforced and a strong fence with barbed wire, watchtowers and machine gun nests was erected. In the main prison building, to the right of the main entrance, there was a wing with six group cells, enclosed by a wall with bars and a glass roof.[3] The death row wing was a narrow, long, single-storey building with 17 cells on the north-western side of the large prison courtyard. The cells had a capacity of 6-8 detainees, but many more people were forced to stay there; some testimonies mention 100 or more. Hygiene conditions were non-existent. Food rations were inadequate, usually consisting of soup or legumes, while terror, torture and psychological violence were daily occurrences. A prisoner who was a doctor described a typical arrival of prisoners at Agia: “I hear footsteps. The [German] detachment brings in a group of about thirty-five men. They are rebels from Keramia, Kampos, Samona, etc. They have been locked up for four days, and they are being pushed and beaten with sticks and clubs because they do not understand the orders and do not carry them out immediately. Three by three, one by one, they are forced to run and turn their heads towards the isolation cell. Some of them are singled out and lined up with their backs to the isolation cell so that they cannot see what is happening behind them. One turns slowly and looks, but is hit hard on the head by a German because this is also forbidden. They bring in many groups, fifteen to twenty, human flocks with pale faces, clenched teeth and eyes full of horror, as are their hearts. Then they brought two groups of women, and so they separated 13 men and 4 women, 3 young girls and one middle-aged woman […] The iron doors banged as they opened and a human-like beast shouted with a foreign accent. I did not hear the rest of the sentence, which was spoken more quietly, nor the reply, but I heard the thuds made by the body being beaten. It did not take long for the air to be filled with heart-rending cries. The thuds continued to mingle with the girl’s cries, the cries stopped, although the thuds continued for a little longer, indicating that the victim had fainted. There was a sound like a bolt being thrown, the sound of the iron door closing behind the unconscious girl. Another door opens with a bang and the beast shouts again, “Come out, you bitch, or you’ll suffer the same fate.” Who are the partisans from your village? “No one, I don’t know.” The body makes the same sounds, the silence is followed by the same heart-rending cries, then fainting and falling again: “Get up, bitch.” A bucket of water poured over the girl’s body brings her round for a moment. The blows are heard again, she faints one more time and falls, thrown into the cell to repeat the same thing repeatedly… How many did they torture and for how long… Did they torture for two hours or two centuries? […] Now the tragedy moves to the corridor of the common cells. There they torture the men. I cannot hear the words, but the sounds of the tortured bodies are so loud that I think they will pierce my ears.[4] The prisoners were forced to listen to the reading of the list of those condemned to death from neighbouring cells, but also to the sound of the executions that took place a short distance from the prison, in a small ravine about 500 metres from the north-western side of the enclosure, which became known as “Golgotha”.

The prison community was organised in connection to the local economy. The inmates of Agia were often engaged in forced labour outside the prison, such as agricultural work, breaking stones, digging trenches, installing barbed wire. They also worked within the complex: there were gardens, together with carpentry and blacksmithing workshops. According to one testimony, women and young children were forced to sort sacks of sheep and goat hair that had been looted by the Germans.[5] The type of work was usually related to the type of sentence: those sentenced by the German court martial to shorter sentences usually worked outside the prison.[6]   The importance and size of Agia as a place of confinement reflects on the term “katseti” that was used in everyday language when referring to the prison, a corruption of the German abbreviation KZ, which stands for concentration camp.[7] 

It is estimated that approximately 20,000 men and women from all prefectures of Crete were held in Agia Prison during the Occupation, including women of all ages and even young children. There, those convicted by German military courts and hostages of reprisals were executed, either individually or in groups. The number of those executed has not been verified. 225 names have been identified, although it has been reported that the number of victims may have reached, or even exceeded, 2,000.[8] Among the many victims were prominent local Resistance leaders, such as the secretary of the Communist Party of Crete, Vangelis Ktistakis, who was murdered in prison on 16 June 1944 by German guards when he tried to react, and the Lasithi politician and member of the EAM, lawyer Roussos Koundouros, who was shot on 29 August 1944.[9]

The Agia Prison also served as a transit camp. On 10 February 1944, almost 400 men and a small number of women who had been arrested in a large purge operation in various provinces of the Prefecture of Chania (mainly in the villages of Meskla, Zourva, Theriso, Epanohori Selinou, etc.) on the same day, were transferred there.[10] Giorgos Stamatakis from Meskla recalls: “On the first night in Agia, they put 500 people in one room. It was a shack and they had blocked the windows. And there were informers outside watching – they knew who had a fake ID and if someone gave a false name, they would grab them. The interrogations began in prison. They tortured us […] They let some go, then  they let some others and in the end, there were 9 of us left from my village – me, my father and 7 others – and from Meskla there were 38 of us in total.  And of those, 11 of us returned.[11] After about a month and various releases in the meantime, about 250 detainees were sent via Athens, Thessaloniki and Belgrade to Mauthausen.

According to post-war Greek and German judicial records, the prison commander during the period 1943-44 was Major Friedrich Wilhelm Klamt from Dortmund, who, according to a Greek witness, was also a member of the German military court in Chania.^[12] The duties of camp commander were probably performed by Hermann Tauchert, a lieutenant in the military police, who was later captured by the British in Egypt and has since disappeared without trace.^[13] The prison secretary was a Greek-speaking Warrant Officer named Rogoss, who is referred to in several testimonies by inmates as “Rokos,” and nicknamed “the angel of death”, as he was the one who usually read out the names of prisoners who were to be transferred or executed.^[14] Major Klamt personally took part in executions and torture, while the humiliation of the hostages awaiting execution is particularly etched in the memory: “Klamt was a brutal man, culminating in his order to execute about 10 prisoners in early 1944, who were performing forced labour in the area of Profitis Ilias. Some of them were to be released after a few days. They lived in the open air and, after being given spoiled canned food, suffered from constant diarrhoea and did not know where to go to relieve themselves. They were executed. Klamt’s inferior officers shot them at close range.^[15]

After the war, Agia continued to function as an agricultural prison and remains in operation to this day. In 1953, the Municipality of Chania erected a monument at the site of the executions, designed by sculptor Yannis Kanakakis. The monument is made of marble, with successive levels ending in a cube at the top. The names of 225 executed prisoners are inscribed on the sides and back. There is also an underground ossuary.[16]

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[1] Stefanos K. Anagnostakis, I agrotikes fylakes Kassandras (Erevna sofronistikis politikis) [The Rural Prisons of Kassandra (Research on correctional policy), Thessaloniki [1954], p. 17.

[2] “Militärgericht auf Kreta,” DNG, Jg. III, no. 226 (24.9.1943).

[3] Antonis Sanoudakis, Raus. Stin kolasi tou Melk o Kostas Kseksakis [Raus. Kostas A. Kseksakis in the hell of Melk,], published by the Association of Philologists of Rethymno, Rethymno 1996, p. 49.

[4] Testimony of Dr. Hatzimanolis, in: Vardis Vardinoyannis, Argyro Kokkovli, Germanikes Fylakes Agias [German Prisons of Agia] 1941-1945, Society for the Preservation of Historical Archives (EDIA), Chania 2005, pp. 174-176.

[5] Vardinoyannis, Kokkovli, German Prisons of Agia, p. 141.

[6] Testimony of Michalis Peirasmakis, in: Antonis Sanoudakis-Sanoudos, Iroes ke Demones. I Ethniki Antistasi tou Krousona [Heroes and Demons. The National Resistance of Krousonas], Taksideftis, Athens 2013, pp. 119-125.

[7] Vardinoyannis, Kokkovli, German Prisons of Agia, p. 99. Also, Sanoudakis, Raus, p. 49.

[8] Vardinoyannis, Kokkovli, German Prisons of Agia, pp. 22-29.

[9] Vardinoyannis, Kokkovli, German Prisons of Agia, pp. 119-125.

[10] NARA, T-78, roll 331, Tagesmeldung OB Südost, 11.2.1944.

[11] Mauthausen Memorial Archive, Μ_5_2_616 Stamatakis

[12] BArch, B 162/17352, Bl. 30, 31. Report of an affidavit hearing of a witness, Evangelos Fronimos, Chania, 7 April 1947 (German translation of Greek original).

[13] BArch, B 162/17352 , Bl. 20, StA Bochum, Abschrift, 16 Js 40/57, Bochum, 17 February 1969.

[14] Testimony of Radamanthos N. Kondylakis, in: Vardinoyannis, Kokovli, German Prisons of Agia, p. 111.

[15] BArch, B 162/17352, Bl. 46f., Geogios Papadopetros to the competent office regarding the war criminals of the military command, 20.7.1945 (German translation of Greek original)

[16] Vardinoyannis, Kokovli, German Prisons of Agia, p. 28.

The Thiva concentration and labor camp, was located about 2–3 kilometers east of the city and a short distance from the railroad line. The camp was established by the Italian occupation forces in October 1942 to serve as a mass detention center for detainees and hostages from central and eastern Central Greece, and its capacity, according to Italian sources, 1,500 to 2,000 people.[1]

The first detainees were 167 residents of the village of Kaloskopi in Phocida who were arrested and sent to the new camp in October 1942 in retaliation for the assistance that, the village had supposedly provided to partisans and British soldiers who had parachuted in the previous days. According to Georgios Priovolos, “they cut our hair; we slept on the damp ground with a single blanket; the rations were awful; our usual meal was a black broth with a few green beans floating in it—no oil, no bread. “We wouldn’t have survived if our own people hadn’t brought us a little food.”[2] The camp resembled a large encampment. Lambros Bourogiannis from the village of Filiadona in Domokos, who arrived around the same time via the Domokos Gendarmerie, describes it as “newly established, unprepared, disorganized, fenced in with barbed wire, and heavily guarded,” and continues: “There were about 150–200 of us held hostage. We stayed in tents on the ground; very few had brought any clothes to cover themselves, everyone else wore whatever they had on […] There was absolutely no cleanliness, just filth and stench; toilets were communal latrines; water was rationed, and washing was not necessary.”[3] Thiva was probably the third-largest of the Italian camps in Greece, after those in Larissa, Akronafplia. From the camp, prisoners were transferred to other prisons and camps, referred to a court-martial, mainly in Athens, or taken for interrogation and beatings at the Italian garrison in Thiva or to solitary confinement in the city’s prisons.[4]

In March 1943, the second and most significant phase of the camp began, when the site became part of the German plans to modernize the Greek railway network. In the camp area or at roughly the same location, construction began, under the supervision of the Organization Todt, on the large railway complex “Neu Theben” (=New Thebes), which would include a passenger station building, a network of 11 bypass tracks, a turning triangle and a steam locomotive coal-loading area, an engine house, material warehouses, a power generation unit, and other facilities.[5] The construction of the project required the harsh forced labor of thousands of men, mainly Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from Thessaloniki who arrived there by train in the last days of March 1943. Holocaust literature mentions approximately 1,000 Jews held in Thiva,[6] while in his testimony, a Jewish survivor mentions 1,240 Jews at a multinational labor camp with a total of 4,000 forced and free laborers, many of whom came from Athens.[7] The resistance press estimated, with considerable exaggeration, that in the summer of 1943 there were 3,000 Greek political prisoners and hostages/forced laborers in Thiva, 1,500 Jews from Thessaloniki, and 1,500 Soviet prisoners of war.[8] Another source puts the number at 200 Greek civilians, 800 Jews, and 100 Soviets.[9] One of the few testimonies from former prisoners comes from Dimitris Pontikas, then 17 years old, from Vounichora, Phocis, who was sent to the camp in late September 1943: “They took us to Thiva, where there was a barracks housing around 300 people. They fed us about 5–6 okas of legumes, meant for 300 people. Just with salt. No oil, nothing. And a small loaf of bread that the three of us shared. It was like mud; we couldn’t eat it, despite how hungry we were. So we’d put it on the coals and eat it that way. There, next to us on one side, they had Italian prisoners they didn’t need, and on the other, Russian prisoners. It was even worse for the Russians; they were dying every day… And there were fathers with children and such.”[10] The camp housed the largest number of forced laborers in mainland Greece. The Jews were removed in early August and replaced by other forced laborers, mainly political prisoners and hostages from various regions of Central Greece who had fallen victim to reprisal operations, such as the 135 residents of Arachova who had been arrested in September 1943.

Forced labor was directed toward supporting railway projects and included various tasks: digging, building construction, the construction of railway facilities, and primarily the extraction and transport of ore (gravel) from the nearby SEK quarry and gravel pit located at the adjacent Ypato railway station and which had been operating since before the war to support railway operations. The work at Ypato was grueling for those unlucky enough to be sent there, and it is certain that reprisal executions, both individual and group, took place within the quarry grounds.[11]  

The workers’ living conditions, combined with the demanding nature of the work, were particularly harsh. Although we do not have further details, the fact that lists of detainees were found in the archives of the EES Prisoners of War Office suggests that the Red Cross had access to the camp, as well as the right to provide clothing and shoes.^[12] The daily meal consisted of a legume soup without oil and a piece of bread, while water was so scarce that they were often forced to drink water from the steam engines, even though they knew it was dirty and unsuitable.[13]  The treatment of the Jews was literally inhumane, something that undoubtedly shocked their fellow prisoners, as is evident from the following account by one of them: “Before we got there, there were 300 Jews from those who had been in Greece, mainly from Thessaloniki. What did they do to them? When one of them stopped to catch his breath, in the pile of gravel, they stuck a bayonet with the tip pointing upward. And they gave him a stone to hold it up like that… How long was he supposed to hold it? He’d fall, and the bayonet would pierce him from behind. Finally, he says, after they’d wiped them out like that, there were two left. One committed seppuku with a small dagger he had, but it wasn’t long enough to inflict a fatal wound, so they took him further away to a crater made by a bomb, fired a burst at him, and he fell inside. The other one, as the train was coming, fell onto the tracks, and as the wheel passed over him, it cut him in two. One half was flung this way, the other that way. Horrifying…”.[14]

Judging by a floor plan (horizontal projection) of the facilities found in the German military archives dated June 1944, construction work had been completed by the summer of 1944. It is also confirmed that “New Thebes” was destroyed by the Germans themselves during their withdrawal from Greece. Today, only a few traces remain at the site.

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[1] Nikos Tzafleris, “Thebes,” 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. 522, 523.

[2] Georgios A. Priovolos, Apo ton ellinoitaliko polemo 1940-41 stin Antistasi 1941-1945 [From Greek-Italian War to the Resistance 1941-1945], Athens 2008., pp. 58, 59.

[3] Bourogiannis, Lambros: Anamnisis apo ti zoi sta stratopeda Thivas ke Larisas [Memories from the life in the camps of Thiva and Larisa], Ethniki Antistasi, issue 39 (February 1984). pp. 19, 20.

[4] Priovolos, From the Greek-Italian War, pp. 59–63.

[5] BArch RH 66/273. Bf. Neu Theben. Site Plan, 1:1000. June 1944   

[6] Molcho, Michael (ed.), In Memoriam. Afieroma is tin mnimin ton Israiliton Thymaton tou Nazismou en Elladi [In dedication to the memory of the Israelite victims of Nazism in Thessaloniki], Thessaloniki 1974., p. 114.

[7] Albert Marcos, VHA, Interview Code 453, 22.12.1994.

[8] Ethniki Allilengii (National Solidarity), 30.7.1943.

[9] GRGSA, K51 Emmanouil Tsouderou Collection. Information Bulletin No. 15, 18.1.1944.

[10] Pontikas, Takis, Interview mog014, Memories of the Occupation in Greece, https://archive.occupation-memories.org/de/interviews/mog014 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17169/mog.mog014 (last accessed: 25.1.2025).

[11] For example, see Arachova Registry Office Archive, death certificate

[12] DAESS Archive, THIVA-Greek Names and Surnames of Jewish Workers in Thebes” [1943] and “Thebes Mission,” August 7–8, 1943. The first document (school notebook, handwritten) lists 161 Jews; the second (typed list) contains 300 names of workers, 240 of whom are Jewish.

[13] Pontikas, Takis, Interview mog014, Memories of the Occupation in Greece, https://archive.occupation-memories.org/de/interviews/mog014 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17169/mog.mog014 (last accessed: 25.1.2025). Also, Michael Matsas, The Illusion of Safety. The Story of the Greek Jews During the Second World War, Pella Publishing House, New York 1997, p. 134.

[14] Pontikas, Takis, Interview mog014, Memories of the Occupation in Greece, https://archive.occupation-memories.org/de/interviews/mog014 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17169/mog.mog014 (last accessed: 25.1.2025).

The building is located at the intersection of Mavili Avenue and Palama Street, opposite the old Railway Station building. It was constructed in 1923 by the tobacco merchants Ioannis, Christos, and Anastasios Papapetrou to function as a tobacco warehouse. It is a four-storey building of imposing dimensions, measuring 67 meters in length and 37 meters in width. The total area of the building is 7,444.34 square meters, while the surrounding area covers 2,648.65 square meters. During the 1930s it is estimated that more than 2,000 workers were employed in the tobacco warehouses, mainly of refugee origin.

During the Occupation, the Papapetrou warehouses were used as quarters for Italian troops, as well as facilities for the detention and interrogation of individuals suspected of participating in the Resistance. In March 1944, the warehouses also briefly held a total of 524 Jews from Preveza and Arta who had been arrested in their cities and were later transferred to Athens and from there to German concentration camps. [1]

The Warehouses related to the main incarceration place in Agrinio, the Hagia Triada Prison, functioning as a “selection” point for those who would later be transferred to the prison, many of them destined for execution. On April 11, 1944, following a large German roundup carried out in retaliation for an ELAS sabotage in Stamna railway station, nearly 3,000 people were transferred to the Warehouses. During the subsequent selection process, the suspects were transferred to Hagia Triada Prison, and approximately 70–75 of them were executed on April 14, 1944. [2]

In 1946 the Papapetrou Tobacco Warehouses resumed operation for two years with limited production, and during the 1950s they were converted into a Gendarmerie training school. During the 1960s and 1970s part of the surrounding land was sold (the area where the small houses had been located), and the warehouses were rented out as storage facilities for the olive cooperative of the Agricultural Bank, as well as for the tobacco warehouses of Ioannidis, the Iliou brothers, and the Panagopoulos brothers, until the final abandonment of the site in the 1980s.

It is one of the few former prison or camp buildings whose museological development is currently planned. In 1992, by decision of the Minister of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works and the Minister of Culture, the building was designated as a preserved monument requiring special state protection (Government Gazette 546/D/2.6.1992). In 2002 it was purchased by the Ministry of Culture through a direct acquisition for archaeological and museum purposes, specifically for the establishment of an Archaeological Museum. [3] In 2016, the Municipal Council of Agrinio approved the “Sustainable Urban Development Strategy of the Municipality of Agrinio”, which was subsequently approved (2017) by the Region of Western Greece. Within this strategy, Action 1.8 — “Utilization and Energy Upgrade of Municipal Buildings” — includes, among other municipal buildings, the restoration and promotion of the preserved building of the former Papapetrou Tobacco Warehouses for the creation of a Local Historical Museum. The rationale of the decision emphasizes that “this building, directly connected with the economic life of the city of Agrinio, is important for the study of architectural history, as it represents an interesting case of the influence of foreign architectural trends in Greece on buildings constructed by Greek entrepreneurs.” However, references to its use as a prison during the war period are absent.[4] Today the former prison spaces attract the interest of the local community through historical walks which highlight their significance.

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[1] Yitzchak Kerem, I evreoi tou Agriniou ston Deftero Pagosmio Polemo [The Jews of Agrinio during WWII], in: Konstantina Bada, Thanasis D. Sfikas (Eds.), Katochi-Antistasi-Emfylios. I Aetoloakarnania sti dekaetia 1940-1950 [Occupation-Resistance-Civil War. Aetolia-Akarnania in the 1940s], Athens 2010, σ. 79-88.

[2] https://drw.gr/kapnapothikes-papapetrou/ (last access: 15.9.2025). 

[3] Gitsa Pantazi Nastouli, Kapnapothikes Papapetrou [Papapetrou Tobacco Warehouses], Digital Tobacco Museum of Agrinio https://agriniotobaccomuseum.gr/kapnapothikes-papapetrou-sto-agrinio/?cn-reloaded=1 (last access: 15.9.2025).

[4] Agrinio Municiality Archive, Decision Nr. 242/26.9.2016.

Since the end of the19^th century^, the area of Goudi in north-western Athens has been a military zone with many Greek army camps. The camp was one of the most important during the Greco-Italian War as a training centre. In the autumn of 1943, Section I of the Wehrmacht’s Transit Camp 135 (Durchgangslager / Dulag 135) was transferred to Goudi. Beforehand, it was in Nea Kokkinia as a prisoner-of-war camp and previously in Zagreb and on the Eastern Front. It was subordinate to Army Group E in Belgrade and had the military post office number 34670.[1] Although it was a typical POW camp, hundreds of Greek civilians who had been arrested for involvement in the Resistance passed through it, most of whom were deported to Germany. During the same period, the 1^st Athens Evzones Regiment was installed in the barracks in Goudi. “Surrounded by high fences, elevated watchtowers, with machine guns and double-barrelled rifles at the gate, it was the castle of the tagmatasfalites [security battalionists] in the capital.”[2] The headquarters of the Evzones was stationed in the “Barbara Kaserne” at the southeastern corner of the compound, with a force of 130 officers, 327 non-commissioned officers and 1,447 privates.[3] From the autumn of 1943, almost  together with the formation of the Evzone Battalions, the camp also served as a detention centre for resistance fighters, members of the EAM-ELAS organisations who were mainly arrested in groups. According to the few testimonies available, the prisoners were placed in a large group cell in the building that served as headquarters. Michalis Vasiliou, who was arrested on 14 July 1944 during an SD raid in the neighbourhood of Gkyzi, describes the reception of the arrested: “After they passed through the gate, they continued until they were brought to the centre of the camp, to a two-storey stone building that was the headquarters. There they were ordered to sit down. Shortly afterwards, a group of soldiers with belts came out of the headquarters and, after beating about thirty of them, took them upstairs, hitting them on the body and head. They took them all upstairs in the same way. On the upper floor, where the staircase ended, on the right, there was a wooden double door. The chamber was huge and full.[4] In 1943-1944, Goudi became a key hub for the system of detention, transfers, executions and deportations to German camps. In December 1943, 188 residents of Kalamata were deported via Goudi (Dulag 135/I) to Dachau. On 14 August 1944, all prisoners in Goudi were transferred to Haidari and from there deported to Nazi Germany.

Postwar, the Goudi barracks housed the Army’s cavalry. In 1945, the Armoured Corps School was established to train officers and soldiers, but it only operated for a few months. In September 1954 the school returned to Goudi as the Armoured Training Centre and operated until July 1975, when it was transferred to Avlona, Attica. In 1977, the Greek Parliament passed Law 732/77, which provided for the transfer of 965 acres to the Municipalities of Athens and Zografou, with the aim of creating a green space, which today forms the core of the Metropolitan Park in Goudi. In 2001 it was also decided to create sports facilities in view of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens (Badminton court). Since 2004, the buildings of the former royal stables are the home of the National Sculpture Gallery. To this day, Goudi is home to Greek army facilities, such as the Supreme Military Command for Army Support (Zorba camp), the Athens Guard Headquarters (Variti Camp) and the Military Archives Service, as well as the Greek Police’s Sub-Directorate for the Restoration of Order. The Metropolitan Park in Goudi is currently the only large, free, public space in Athens, a unified urban landscape in which the natural features, the history of the area and the architectural value of its buildings play a major role.

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[1] Alexander Kruglov, Durchgangslager 135, in: Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, Vol. IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities under the German Armed Forces, edited by Geoffrey P. Megargee, Rüdiger Overmans, Wolfgang Vogt, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2022, p. 86.

[2] Michael A. Vassiliou, Apostoli sto Biblis [Transport to Biblis], To Pontiki, Athens 1988, p. 53.

[3] BArch, RH 34/263 Annex to Athens City Command Tgb. No. 730/44 geh., List of troops present in Athens, 10.4.1944.

[4] Vasiliou, Transport to Biblis, p. 53.

The Vagianou Clinic was a private neurological clinic located at the intersection of Chalkidikis, Analipseos and Thermopylon Streets in Thessaloniki. It was built in the early 1930s by architect and neurologist Andreas Vagianou, who also set up his private residence there. During the Occupation, it was requisitioned by the German forces and became the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Thessaloniki. Civilians, both men and women, who had been arrested based on information or during raids in the city and its suburbs were taken there. The complex housed interrogation offices and isolation cells in a specially designed basement. Prisoners were often transferred to other locations for interrogation or detention, such as the SD headquarters at 117 Vasilissis Olgas Street or the offices of the Secret Military Police (GFP) 510 and 621 in 1 Italias and 72 Tsimiski Street resprectively, and then to the Pavlos Melas Camp or directly to places of mass executions.[1]

The Vagianou Clinic became one of the main incarceration sites in Thessaloniki and gained a notorious reputation as a “Gestapo stronghold.” According to a feature in the newspaper Dimokratia (March 1946), “when someone entered the isolation ward, they remained standing for two or three days straight, because the Germans filled it to capacity so that those in isolation could not even move, and they were sprayed with dirty water dripping from the sewer, which deliberately passed through the concrete roof. During their isolation, they were given neither bread nor water, and were forced to relieve themselves on the floor, suffocating in an atmosphere of indescribable stench.[2] Georgios M. Vellos, a resident of Thessaloniki, filed a claim for compensation in October 1961 for his imprisonment during the Occupation, in which he stated the following: “I was arrested on 4 June 1944 and taken to the torture chambers of the ‘Vagianou’ clinic in Thessaloniki, where I was tortured day and night for thirty consecutive days by all kinds of means, resulting in physical injury (disability) that reduced my ability to work by more than 60%.”[3]

After the war, it continued to operate as a neurological clinic and later as a conservatory. Today, only the two-storey house of Andreas Vagianous (50 Chalkidiki Street)  remains of the complex, which has been converted into a luxury guesthouse. 

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[1] Raphael Gaidatzis, “The cries from the basement – When a clinic in Thessaloniki was turned into a den of horrific torture,” parallaxi, 29 September 2025, https://parallaximag.gr/thessaloniki-news/oi-krayges-apo-ta-ypogeia-otan-mia-kliniki-tis-thessalonikis-metatrapike-se-antro-frikton-vasanistirion (last accessed: 4.3.2026).

[2] Democracy newspaper, 22 March 1945.

[3] GRGSA-IAM Digital Archive, GRGSA-IAM_JUS001.S02.SS01.15_001587_IT000208_00007. Court of First Instance of Thessaloniki, Application by Georgios Miltiadis Vellos, 25 October 1961

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]

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[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).

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.

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[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.