A mass execution
This is how Giorgos Oraiopoulos described to Kathimerini the preparations for the execution of 101 prisoners on June 5, 1944: «The camp was unusually busy that afternoon. They called out about 100 hostages and other prisoners and ordered them to gather up their personal belongings. The rumor was being spread that they were being taken to work at Domoko. They were taken out into the yard outside the permanent inmates’ building. It was a moonlit night. We wished them well, thinking they were escaping from the hellhole that was the Pavlos Melas camp. At about 5 a.m. we were woken up by the noise of the 101 prisoners being organized into lines, carrying their belongings. German soldiers, their guns at the ready, were surrounding the lines. I watched from one of the barred windows. They had never taken so many people to be executed, not at night or with their personal effects. We were still hoping, but we were not left in doubt for long. They were told to put their things down and to take a few steps forward. They were going to be executed. Then the condemned men began to sing, the national anthem, the song ‘Fare thee well, poor world,’ while the Germans shouted, ‘Los!’ (Move!), and struck them with the butts of their guns. A short while afterward, the sound of machine guns echoed from the place of execution.» Oraiopoulos himself was in the camp for nine months for taking part in a demonstration against the civil mobilization and for his resistance activities within the youth wing of the wartime Greek liberation army, EPON. One day he managed to escape after he went shopping with other prisoners under heavy guard, and so survived. A brother’s story
