Political Prisoners in the Greek Civil War, 1945—50: Greece in Comparative Perspective

Antonis Flountzis, a young communist medical student in Athens, was arrested for the first time in August 1935. He remained in prison for five months and was finally released without trial. On 10 April 1937, during Metaxas' dictatorship, he was arrested again and banished to the Akronafplia prison. In April 1941, political prisoners were handed over to the Germans, under whose administration six prisoners were executed. In March 1943, the remaining political prisoners from Akronafplia were transferred to the camps in Katouna and Larissa, which were under the Italian occupation authorities. Flountzis was interned in the Larissa camp, where he witnessed the execution of 56 of his fellow inmates. At the end of August he was transferred to Chaidari, another Italian-run camp, on the outskirts of Athens, which was taken over the following month by the German authorities. The Chaidari camp was one of the main concentration camps in Greece, and a transit camp for the deportation of slave labourers and Jews destined for Germany. During Flountzis' internment in the Chaidari camp, eight political prisoners were executed at the beginning of 1944, and another 200 on May Day that year, in reprisal for activities of the resistance. Flountzis was spared, probably because he was the camp's doctor. On 16 September 1944, a few weeks before the liberation of Athens, he was released. But not for long. On 2 June 1948 he was arrested together with his pregnant wife (who subsequently had a miscarriage while in jail). After eight months in jail, he was transferred to the Makronisos island camps, and his wife, Katina Flountzi, to the Trikeri camp. In the Makronisos camps he was tortured (his fingers were broken) because he refused to recant communism. Katina was also transferred to Makronisos but husband and wife were only allowed to visit each other infrequently. At the end of August 1950, Antonis was transferred to the island of Aghios Efstratios and Katina was sent back to Trikeri island. In September 1952 Antonis obtained the first permit to leave Aghios Efstratios on condition that he would stay at Aitoliko, his birthplace. His persecution, however, continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He spent a total of 24 years in prison, despite the fact that, as he bitterly wrote: