Hagioi Apostoli is a coastal area 4.5 kilometres west of the city of Chania. In 1934, the Chania PIKPA organised the “Children’s Holidays” programme in the area, which provided accommodation for the city’s children. The facilities included a two-storey building with two halls, each with 70 beds, storage rooms, a medical centre and offices.[1] In 1940/41, British forces set up the 7tho Military Hospital in the area, which operated during the Battle of Crete in May 1941. After the occupation of the island, German forces established a military prison camp in the same area. The area was cordoned off with barbed wire. From June to August 1941, Hagioi Apostoloi was the largest Allied prisoner-of-war camp in Greece, along with the camp in Corinth (Dulag 185). In June, the number of prisoners reached 15,000, including 4,000 Greek officers and soldiers and 9,000 men from the Allied forces, most of them New Zealanders, along with a number of Palestinians, Cypriots and Indians.
Groups of prisoners from Hagioi Apostoloi were sent to perform forced labour in the surrounding area, mainly in Galatas, Chania, and Maleme airport, clearing aircraft wreckage, digging trenches, building machine gun bases and filling sandbags.[2] Detention conditions were horrible. There was a constant shortage of water and food and, initially, no medical care. Most prisoners lived in tents and other makeshift outdoor shelters, without coats or adequate clothing. Toilets were not provided until three weeks after the camp opened.[3] “Naked, barefoot, hungry, without shade, without tents, without water, with fourteen drams of flour and a spoonful of canned food a day, they were hit by the scorching rays of the sun and ravaged by epidemics and hunger. Officers and soldiers, together with civilian volunteers, mixed together and formed a mindless mass that wandered aimlessly around the camp, unrecognisable from each other. The Nazi guards, especially at night, fired into the camp to terrorise the prisoners, and there were many victims that the work teams gathered in the morning to bury.[4]
The Red Cross was denied access to the camp. Civilians were strictly forbidden from entering and prisoners were told that they were being held hostage and would be executed in the event of a British attack on Crete.[5] Some residents showed their solidarity by approaching the perimeter and throwing food into the camp. In 2004 in Chania, former prisoner Alf Smithard met sisters Anna and Vera Tapinaki, who were children during the war. They gave a joint interview: “We would sneak up to the camp fence. We had food wrapped in cloths, tied them to a stick and passed them over the wire. Rusks, milk, bread, even soap and toothpaste that we found in the abandoned British camps and settlements.” “What they did was incredible,” Alf Smithard recalls with emotion. “I thank God that I was able to find them again. After my mother and my wife, I adore the women of Crete,” he says. The German guard brutally beat the 12-year-old girl. For months, the two girls made the same journey every day. One day, however, the German guard returned earlier than usual, before 12-year-old Anna had time to pass the food and leave. Vera barely had time to hide. “The German started hitting me with the butt of his rifle and spinning me around,” describes Ms. Tapinaki-Loupasaki. “All of us who were watching the scene with the armed soldier beating the child burst into boos,” describes Mr. Smitard, continuing: “Then he let go of the girl, picked up a large stone and threw it at us, the prisoners.”[6] There were also several escape attempts, some of which were successful: with the help of the local population, the escapees used stolen boats to reach mainland Greece.
As early as June 1941, the Germans transferred the first group of prisoners to Dulag 185 (Corinth), while 6,500 prisoners remained in Crete. In early July 1941, 2,300 of them were transferred via Dulag 183 (Thessaloniki) to Germany, followed by another 1,900 a week later. An epidemic then interrupted the transfer of prisoners to Germany, which resumed in early October. At the end of 1941, only 100 prisoners remained in Hagioi Apostoloi.[7] The number of victims in the camp is certainly in the double digits. According to reports by former inmates to the United Nations War Crimes Commission on the mistreatment of prisoners in German camps, on 17 July 1941, the guards opened fire indiscriminately into the camp through the fence at least three times, killing four and wounding three prisoners. According to the same report, on 30 May, a number of Greeks were led by German guards to the perimeter of the camp and, after being shot in the back, were buried in a makeshift grave at the site of the execution[8]. In 1945/46, Commonwealth Army services, mainly the Australian War Graves Unit, investigated the area and located several graves of soldiers, almost all of them New Zealanders, who had been buried in a makeshift manner.[9]
From 1942 to 1945, Hagioi Apostoloi served as a German military prison and possibly a place of execution for soldiers sentenced to death by court martial.[10] After the war, the Children’s Camps operated again for a while, while the area west of the peninsula was used by the Greek army as a firing range. In 1965, the land of Hagioi Apostoloi was expropriated by the state and given to the Greek National Tourism Organisation, which demolished all the private buildings. The plan for tourist development was not implemented. After the coup d’état of21st April 1967, the security forces rounded up citizens suspected of left-wing sympathies and temporarily imprisoned them in the closed building of the Children’s Camp. Later, the buildings were given over to the army and housed Commando units until 1974. The Children’s Camp site was exchanged for another in Kalathas Akrotiri, where it has been operating since the 2000s. With the departure of the army, the facilities were destroyed.[11]
[1] Manolis Manousas, “Photographic Reflections on Old Chania, No. 253 / Holy Apostles,” Chania News, 13 February 2010.
[2] TNA, WO 311/368, Random Shootings by German Guards at Canea, Crete, July 1941, Ref. No. MD/JAG/FS/54/1.
[3] TNA, WO 311/368, Random Shootings by German Guards at Canea, Crete, July 1941, Ref. No. MD/JAG/FS/54/1.
[4] Eleftherios N. Papagiannakis, Crete. The Great Night. June 1941-May 1945, Pitsilos 1996, p. …
[5] TNA, WO 311/368, Random Shootings by German Guards at Canea, Crete, July 1941, Ref. No. MD/JAG/FS/54/1
[6] George Konstas, “He found them (again) 63 years later”, Ta Nea, 1/6/2004.
[7] Alexander Kruglov, “Kriegsgefangenenlager (KGL) Kreta,” 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. 533.
[8] TNA, WO 311/368, Random Shootings by German Guards at Canea, Crete, July 1941, Ref. No. MD/JAG/FS/54/1.
[9] Personal collection of George Tsampa, New Zealand Searcher Party (Crete), Daily Report of Activities 11 Nov 1945 – 8 Jul 46, July 1947.
[10] Telephone conversation with George Tsamba, 6/3/2026.
[11] Manolis Manousakas, “Photographic Reflections on Old Chania, No. 253 / Holy Apostles,” Chania News, 13 February 2010.
