Portraits of narrators
Theodoros Ayiotis
(1924 - )
Member of the Youth Resistance Movement EPON, in his home village Metohi (Pelion). He was arrested on 28 March 1944 during the German reprisal drive on Mount Pelion. Tortured in the Yellow Warehouse prison of Volos, transferred to Larisa and the Pavlos Melas camp of Thessaloniki. In early June 1944, he was deported to the POW camp of Moosburg in Germany and from there to a labour camp in Augsburg. At the end of April 1945, he was liberated by US troops. After his return to Greece, he worked as a bus driver in Volos.
Afroditi Koutrouli-Kalatzi
(1923 - 2021)
Born in Karditsa. From the age of fourteen, she worked as a textile worker at the Papayeoryiou plant of Volos. As an active member of the workers’ branch of EAM, she was betrayed and arrested on 5 August 1944. After spending some time in jail in Volos and Thessaloniki, she was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp on September,1, 1944. There she was assigned to a forced-labour commando, unloading barges.
In January 1945, she was brought to Dresden to work in an arms factory. After an adventurous journey through central Europe, she returned home in August 1945. After her return, she went back to the textile factory.
Parisis Maliokapis
(1925 - 2016)
Born in Syki, Pelion. At the age of 18, he joined the partisan army ELAS. In March 1944, he was arrested during the German reprisal drive on Mount Pelion while being treated in a guerrilla hospital. He was tortured in the German prisons of Volos, sentenced to death by a German court martial, but his sentence was commuted to forced labour in Germany. On June 5, 1944, he was deported to the Moosburg POW camp in Germany and then sent on to a labour camp in Augsburg.
After Liberation he returned to Greece via Italy. During the Civil War (1946-1949), he was sent to the notorious concentration camp on Makronisos island, which was created to "reform" left-wing soldiers. In the post-war years, he worked at the cement factory of Volos.
Marianthi Nachmia-Souli
(1926 - 2022)
Born in Kalambaka, she was orphaned at a young age. In 1939 she came to Volos to find work at the Matsangos tobacco factory. On August 5, 1944, she was arrested at a roadblock along with her sister Trygona. She was imprisoned in the Yellow Warehouse and in the Pavlos Melas camp in Thessaloniki. Then, in September 1944, she was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and from there to a labour camp in Köpenick, an industrial suburb of Berlin, where she worked in an A.E.G. arms factory.
She was liberated by the Red Army and in December 1945 she returned to Greece, together with her future husband, a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Thessaloniki. After repatriation, she resumed her job at the tobacco factory.
Nikos Samouris
(1924 - 2021)
Born in Volos, he joined the EPON youth resistance organization in 1943 and was involved in the transport of supplies to the partizan army ELAS. After his arrest In June 1944, he was imprisoned in the Alexandras and Yellow Warehouse prisons in Volos, and then in the Pavlos Melas camp of Thessaloniki. From there he was deported to the Maria Lanzendorf forced labour camp, near Vienna. In April 1945, during a forced march to evacuate the camp, he managed to escape, but got wounded by a gunshot, losing four fingers.
He was liberated by the Red Army and returned to Greece via Bulgaria, together with his wife, the Ukrainian former deportee Antonia Sofiyenko. In the post-war period, he was harassed by Greek state authorities because of his wife's Soviet origins. In 1954, the couple temporarily emigrated to Ukraine. After their return to Greece, Samouris worked as a barber and was active in the Association of former Forced Labourers of Magnesia.
Yorgos Fokoulis
(1922 - )
Born in Volos, he began to work at the age of 10, while also attending night school. On April 26, 1944, he was arrested at the Ano Volos roadblock. He was transferred to the Yellow Warehouse and then to Larisa and the Pavlos Melas camp. On July 10, 1944, he was deported to the Moosburg POW camp and deployed on forced labor details in Klein-München and Kempten, Bavaria. On April 27, 1945, he was liberated by the Americans and in September he returned to Greece via Italy.
During the Civil War he served as a conscript in the Greek National Army. After the war he was employed in a girls’ school in Volos.