The Ministry of Culture is proceeding with the designation of the Karya Railway Station in Fthiotida as a historical place, following the positive opinion of the Central Council of Modern Monuments.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Culture, the Karya Station, as a place of important historical events, is a monument to the brutality and atrocity of Nazism and is an integral part of the collective historical memory, not only for the Greeks but also for the world community.

The heavy story of the Karya Railway Station

Karya was in the area of ​​the Italian occupation, but the Germans had complete control of the rail network. The strategic importance of the spot was decisive, as the line was there near Lianokladi, an important sorting station.

The project served the needs of the Nazi refueling, which had intensified the efforts to transport raw materials and military forces.

At the construction site, 300 to 500 Jews from Thessaloniki worked on the site

The malnourished and exhausted workers were forced to break stones with their hands and load bonuses under violent conditions.

Under the administration of the German Todt organization, and with the aim of serving Vermacht’s military needs, they were called upon to open a 100-meter-long railway section and 20 meters deep in a rocky hillside to create bypass line on the Athens-Thessaloniki route.

Many died either from exhaustion or executions.

After the projects were completed, the construction site was abandoned.

The few survivors, upon their return to Thessaloniki in August 1943, took the road to Auschwitz

The wooden barracks were removed from guerrillas and today only one stone building and a well are preserved.

Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said: “Karya is a place of forced labor and the testimony of the Holocaust in Greece. It is one of the places where the Nazis implemented the policy of “exterminating Jews through forced labor”. ”

“The Karya Railway Station is a step towards the historical justification and maintenance of the collective memory of the Holocaust in Greece. The aim of the Ministry of Culture is to conduct the necessary studies to restore the train station and reuse it as an exhibition space that preserves and highlights the memory of those who have been victims of the hate and atrocity of the Nazis. ”

The material documentation material in Karya emerged from the research program “Deadly forced Labor in Karya – German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece”, which was prepared by the University of OSAmbrick in collaboration with the Nazi Documentation Center for Nazi work.

At the heart of the research was the photographic archive of the German engineer Hans Hermann Reesler, which was rescued in 2002 by Andreas Assel, son of the Holocaust. The archive includes valuable photos that substantiate the inhumane conditions of forced labor hundreds of Greek Jews from the Thessaloniki ghetto at the Karya construction site in 1943. The research program found material remains and other traces of the construction sites and the conditions of livelihoods. In the autopsy carried out by the competent department of the Ministry of Culture, he confirmed the historical character of the area of ​​the Karya Railway Station.