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.
[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).
