In early 1943, the Organization Todt set up one of its railway worksites at the Karya railway station on the southwestern side of Mount Othrys, between Lianokladi and Nezeros in Sterea Ellada. At that location, the German occupation authorities had decided to open a deep cut into the rocky hill almost opposite the station building, in order to extend by roughly 300 meters an existing “blind” or “safety” siding, in railway terminology.[1]
The project was carried out by the Überland company (Überland Hoch-, Tief-, und Straßenbau AG), a subsidiary of the Munich-based firm Leonhard Moll, which had been integrated into the Todt Organization as a project unit. The chief engineer was Hans Reschler, and the camp commandant/foreman was Josef Langmaier, both officers of the Todt Organization and employees of Überland/Moll.[2] The camp–worksite was organized in February 1943 and staffed exclusively with Jews from Thessaloniki, who were sent there in two groups at the end of March and mid-April 1943, during the mass arrest and deportation of the members of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki to Auschwitz. The first group consisted of men arrested during a roundup on 24 March in the (ghettoized) 151 settlement; the second group came from those seized inside the Baron Hirsch ghetto. According to a 1945 testimony, the second group numbered 420 people.[3] The basic bibliographic references speak of 300 forced laborers in Karya,[4] but the total was likely around 500.
The few surviving testimonies describe a true hell. The Jewish workers slept in two wooden barracks built by Todt, each holding about 250 people, and during the day they were forced to break rocks and carry the rubble to the other side of the railway line using small wagons. They worked 12-hour shifts, water was scarce, and the food consisted mostly of boiled beans and pickled cabbage, with bread rarely distributed and never exceeding 100 drams per portion. They were given no proper clothing or shoes, and many were forced to walk barefoot on sharp stones.[5] Disease was rampant (avitaminosis, dysentery, typhus, etc.), while the guards and overseers—mostly ethnic Germans from the Balkans, Croats, and Serbs—were free to execute on the spot anyone they deemed not working hard enough. Since trains continued to operate, the suffering of the Jewish workers was visible to passing passengers. One of them, the writer Georgios Vafopoulos from Thessaloniki, left the following description:
A few kilometers before Lamia, the train had stopped again, near a wasteland where my soul was tested by the horrifying scene of a Dantesque inferno. This oft-used expression is no figure of speech here. Down in the small ravine, in front of the stopped train, the final act of an episode from the hell of the great Florentine was being played out. Some shacks stood there, where perhaps only a few months earlier a “labor battalion” of tormented Jews had been housed. Now several living remnants remained—what once must have been human beings. Skeletal bodies with scraps of cloth on them could barely move from weakness. Their faces, devoid of humanity, resembled wounded animals dying away. They tried to walk and staggered, stumbling on stones, and then their guard—a renegade Jew—ran up and brought the German whip down with force on their tattered bodies.[6]
The total number of those who died in Karya remains unverified; it was one of the forced-labor camps with the highest mortality rate in Greece. According to the testimony (1954) of the Thessalonian Isac Mois Coenca, who managed to escape in early August 1943, about 40–50 people died from hardships or were murdered by the guards at the Karya worksite, which he describes as “hell on earth”. They were hastily buried along the railway line, on the right side heading toward Athens.[7]
About 800 people managed to return to Thessaloniki from the railway worksites–camps of Central Greece. They were deported to Auschwitz on 10 August 1943 with the 19th and last transport from Thessaloniki. Most were so weak and exhausted that they were deemed unfit for labor and were sent immediately to the crematorium. Only 271 men were admitted into the camp.[8]
The Karya worksite was abandoned after the completion of the works. The location continued to function as a stop on the SEK and later OSE railway network until 2019, when it was closed due to the rerouting of the line. Despite additional information about the existence of a mass grave near the tracks, its exact location has not yet been identified. The site has been the subject of extensive research within the scope of a Greek-German educational an exhibition program carried out by the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center (Dokumentationzentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit) in Berlin under the title “Karya 1943. Forced Labor and the Holocaust”. The travelling exhibition which was produced was presented in Berlin, Athens, Thessaloniki and Lamia in 2024 and 2025.
[1] Zissis Protopapas, Touristikos sididromikos odigos [Tourist railway guide], Athens 1992, p. 31.
[2] “Karya 1943. Forced Labor and the Holocaust”, https://karya1943.eu/en/karya-1943-en/ (last access: 28.6.2025).
[3] Schmuel Arditti, Yad Vashem Archive, ITEM ID 3556222.
[4] In Memoriam, pp. 114-115.
[5] Sam Cohen, VHA, Interview Code 34795, 2.11.1997.
[6] G. F. Vafopoulos, Selides aftoviografias [Autobiographical pages], Thessaloniki 1971, pp. 168-169.
[7] Ηistorical Archive of the Israelite Community of Thessaloniki (IAIKTH), file 323, sworn testimony of Isak Mois Koenka, 1.11.1954.
[8] Pepo Matalon, VHA, Interview Code 49030, 13.11.1998.
