Tatoi was one of the largest forced labor camps in the Attica region. It was connected to Tatoi Airport, which was used by the Italian Air Force (until 1943) and by the German Air Force from the beginning to the end of the Occupation. The airfield was one of the oldest military airfields in the country. It began operating in 1918, and during the Greek-Italian War of 1940–41, it was also used by the RAF.
German forces made extensive use of Tatoi and expanded its grounds. Its dimensions were approximately 1,830 x 640 meters, and it featured a 915-meter-long paved runway. The area also included underground fuel tanks, bomb depots, and storage facilities, as well as various maintenance workshops, vehicle depots, and a fire station. There were three dispersal areas (west, north, and east), with a total of 36 open aircraft shelters and three more under construction in June 1943. From Tatoi, numerous units of bombers, fighters, and primarily transport aircraft of the Luftwaffe operated throughout the eastern Mediterranean. In November 1942, the 1st Air Transport Command of Southeast Europe (Lufttransportführer I Südost) was established at Tatoi as a temporary tactical command comprising units of the 2nd Special Purpose Fighter Wing (Kampfgeschwader zur besonderen Verwendung / KG z.b.V. 2), with the mission of supplying Rommel’s forces on the North African front. From May 1941 until its evacuation in October 1944, the German base at Tatoi was subjected to a total of 12 air raids.[1]
According to documents from that period, between 1942 and 1944 there were approximately 200 to 300 political prisoners held by the German authorities in Tatoi.[2] Many them, if not all, were employed in projects to expand the airport, construct facilities, and clear the area following Allied bombings. This type of forced labor was undoubtedly harsh and dangerous. Strong evidence of this comes from various directives of the Red Cross, which regularly supplied the camp with medical supplies from the ICRC warehouse, bandages, antiseptics, calcium tablets, camphor injections, and tonics for prisoners suffering from illness or exhaustion, as well as first-aid supplies “for air raid casualties,” such as gauze, injections, and tetanus antitoxins.[3] The camp must have been fairly well-organized, as evidenced by the fact that there was a Greek doctor present. The number of victims remains unknown. A compilation of compensation claims from the early 1960s indicates at least six deaths of detainees at the Tatoi SS camp: two by execution, two from hardship and deprivation, and one from an accidental incident (a gun discharge). In one of these reports, we read that the victim, “a worker conscripted to the Tatoi airfield, was forced to move about daily and, as a result of his exhausting labor, the hardships and deprivations, he contracted tuberculosis and, as a result of the above, passed away on March 28, 1944.”[4]
[1] Henry L. deZeng IV, Luftwaffe Airfields 1935–45: Greece, Crete, and the Dodecanese, 2015, pp. 19–20.
[2] DAEES Archive, TB No. 15, L. Zarifi to EES/Medicine Distribution Committee, No. 13737, Athens, August 6, 1942. Ibid., Zarifi to DES Drug Distribution Service, 13791, Athens, December 9, 1943.
[3] DAEES Archive, TB No. 15, L. Zarifi to DES Drug Distribution Committee, No. 13154, Athens, October 11, 1943.
[4] GRGSA, Nazistikes Apofaseis [Nazi Decisions] 1963, No. 3373/1963.
