By Nicolas Bard

During the 20th century, the isolated and cut off from the rest of Greece of Agios Efstratios was used as a place of exile for the left. The island is located on the barren line of the northeast Aegean, and is many nautical miles from both land and neighboring islands. The beginning was made in 1929 by the government of Eleftherios Venizelos under the 1929 law “On the Offender”, when the first displaced communists were transferred to the island. The following governments continued to use Ai Stratis for the displacement of the left and the phenomenon culminated in the dictatorship of John Metaxas (1936-41), where hundreds of opponents of the regime were displaced there.

On April 26, 1941, shortly before the Germans occupied the island, and negotiations were being held to liberate the exiles between the exiled and commander -in -chief of the island’s guard, the Commander -in -Chief, fearing that the exiles would be fired at 12 to injure the other two. Then the commander handed over the exiles of Ai Stratis to the German conquerors. During the German occupation, the exiles suffered the lack of food, supplies, care and died of hunger 33 communist prisoners.

After the liberation of Greece from the German yoke, in October 1944, the Ai Stratis exile camp closed and the last political prisoners were liberated. A few years later, in the spring of 1947, Ai Stratis again opened as a place of exile left. With the forced Law 511 of December 31, 1947 (A299) “on the measures referring to them in displacement” the official name of the Ai Stratis camp became “a camp of disciplined displacement”. After the closure of Macronissos, Ai Stratis was the most massive place of exile in Greece.
Great people of the Spirit were displaced on this island, such as the teacher, writer and politician Dimitris Glenos, the poets Kostas Varnalis, Yiannis Ritsos, Tasos Livaditis, the literary Menelaos Lundemis, Themos Korinos Still, many leftist politicians were displaced to Ai Stratis, such as Elias Iliou, Antonis Brillakis, Kostas Gavriilides, Stefanos Sarafis and others.

It is estimated that from 1947 to 1962, about 10,000 left -wing exiles passed from the island. Ai Stratis’s detention camp was finally closed in 1962. During the dictatorship it was used as a site of displacement for a small number of exiles. Among them is the subsequent Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament and the Temporary President of the Hellenic Republic, Yiannis Alevras, the leader of the PAK of the Inner.

Giannis Ritsos describes the situation on the island in his poem “Letter to Zolio Kouri”.

“My dear Zolio, I am writing to you by Ai Stratis,
We are here, somewhere three thousand
Simple people, slaves, literate
with a rug hole on our shoulder
with an onion, five olives and a dry light on our tagar
People simple like trees in front of the sun …
people we have no other shame on our throat
Except only that we love as well as
freedom and peace“

On the night of February 20, 1968, a powerful 7.1 -magnitude Richter earthquake struck Agios Efstratios, leaving behind twenty and dead and dozens of injuries, and the disasters in neighboring Lemnos were extensive. The remnants of this disaster, as well as the human prison that was the island in the last century, remind us of all that we should never forget.