Lela Karayianni ΛΕΛΑ ΚΑΡΑΓΙΑΝΝΗ
Born 1898 Died September 8, 1944
Section One, Number 461
Some stories are so terrible that you are reluctant to lift the veil of history and look closer. And yet, stories like this one need to be re-examined, not merely for the heroism they reveal, but as a reminder that terrible things do happen, and that, even in the worst of times, one person can make a difference. Lela Karayannis was a housewife and mother of 7 when the Second World War turned her life upside down. A comfortable lifestyle with her pharmacist husband in a large house near Plateia Amerikis in Athens ended as, during the German occupation, she became the head of a resistance group code named Bouboulina. Her involvement and that of her husband and children threatened them all with unspeakable torture at the Gestapo headquarters in the centre of Athens, incarceration at the notorious Haidari concentration camp, and it ultimately led to her execution on September 8, 1944, a mere month before the Germans abandoned Athens in defeat.
To the Nazis, hers was just one other death like so many that they had rained down upon a captive population. But for Greeks, her story is a profile in courage, a courage as great as any warrior’s from 1821, all the more admirable because her story began, not out of political conviction, but with a simple act of kindness to a Commonwealth soldier just days after the Nazis occupied Athens.
Her Life until 1941
Lela was born in 1898 on the island of Evia to a family that hailed from Spetses. Before 1941 her life followed the predictable pattern of so many women of her class: marriage and children.
A smiling teenager in 1916
Her husband Nikos’ pharmacy was located at Patission 16 near busy Omonia Square. The family lived farther north at number one Limnou Street. It was a good life in pleasant surroundings.
Number one Limnou Street
She and Nikos would have 7 children: Giorgos, Byron, Ioanna, Nefeli, Electra, Nelson, and Eleni. During the Greek-Italian war of 1940-41 which preceded the German invasion, two of her daughters were old enough to serve as nurses on the battle front. Like so many after the initial success against the Italians, her family may have hoped that a German invasion would never come. But, of course, it did.
Commonwealth Soldiers Became Fugitives in Greece
When the Germans invaded on April 6, 1941, Greece had already been successfully pushing back Mussolini’s Italian forces for six months (1). In February, during that pushback, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was already looking at the larger Balkan picture and feared a German invasion of Greece in order to protect their southern flank and the Romanian oil fields. Unlike many members of the Greek government and royal court, he realized that the Germans would not ignore Greece for long. Churchill therefore persuaded Greece to accept an Allied Expeditionary Force consisting of 58,000 British, Australian and New Zealand troops, diverted from Egypt, to help hold the Olympus-Vermion line on the Greek mainland. They arrived that March.
But it was too late.
Less than a month after their arrival, Germany invaded. In short order, both the British and the Greek armies were compelled to retreat south, pushed back by the German Blitzkrieg. The allied troops must somehow be evacuated – a huge undertaking.
Retreating New Zealanders Taking a Break
The British did succeed in evacuating over 50,000 men along with the Greek king and members of Greek government. This left Greeks with a compliant quisling government under the thumb of Nazi invaders and thousands of leftover allied troops, hungry, exposed, and hiding out wherever they could to avoid being captured either by the Italians or the Germans who controlled the countryside and the cities.
Lela’s Act of Kindness
Lela’s involvement in the resistance movement began with a simple act of kindness. She encountered John Wilson, a wounded Commonwealth soldier, cowering outside of her house – just one of the many who had been left behind. Her son Giorgos took him to a First Aid station where a doctor named Kannelopoulos patched him up. (Kannelopoulos would later join Lela in her effort to help other soldiers in the same dire situation). These soldiers were entirely dependent on the good will and efforts of ordinary Greek citizens to hide them, feed them, and to move them when possible through the islands to the Middle East which was under Allied control. Many Greek citizens responded and helped create networks to do just that.
Try to imagine this situation as it was unfolding. The effort to care for and move these soldiers required complicated logistics and many, many people whom you simply had to trust knowing that discovery could lead to prison, torture and death. Lela’s husband’s pharmacy near Omonia Square became a communications centre for organizing aid to fugitives such as those hidden by monks in a cave near their monastery in Megara. Lela made many dangerous trips there with supplies. The head of the Monastery would later say that he had been impressed by Lela’s absolute belief in final victory even at that early stage of the occupation. Lela may have been in charge of as many as 150 people in the early days and her entire family were involved as well.
Her son Giorgos was the first to be arrested. John Wilson had been apprehended while openly walking about in Athens and, under interrogation, had brought the Karayannis family to the occupiers’ attention. Giorgos, with sisters Ioanna and Electra , was arrested for aiding the British. The girls were released because Wilson said he did not know them and luckily Giorgos managed to escape and flee to Mount Helicon to join the resistance there.
None of this deterred Lela. She continued her rescue work and managed to remain free and active until October 23, 1941. On that day both she and her husband were arrested separately and sent to the Averoff prison on Alexandras Avenue in Athens. (2)
The prison was built to improve the care of young offenders. The irony...
She used her maiden name so the connection between the couple was not realized. Nikos was released after two months but not Lela. She quickly became a leader in the women’s wing of the prison until her trial. The man who had betrayed her in the first place turned out to be the sole witness against her and he was pressured to say he had been wrong. Her husband had been able to use influence with three anti-fascist Italian officers and his own network of connections to secure a good outcome. (3)
After seven months, Lela was freed in April of 1942. Typically, she did not forget her fellow inmates and continued to send them supplies of food and medicine. Remember, this was the winter of the great starvation in Athens.
Inside the Averoff prison
You might think she would have decided that enough was enough, but her stint in the Averoff prison merely strengthened her resolve that more needed to be done beyond helping the Allied soldiers. It was then that her resistance cell which she code-named Bouboulina (4)– really got under way - to aid soldiers, yes, but also to infiltrate the occupiers, report on their movements, and impede them whenever and wherever possible.
By the beginning of 1943, the large resistance operations led by ELAM-ELAS on the left and EDES on the right had also geared up and they had the advantage of financial support from the Allies. It is estimated that, besides these two well known groups, approximately 140 smaller resistance cells like Bouboulina had sprung up in Greece, groups which basically had to finance and organize themselves. Co-ordinating activities or even establishing trust as they interacted must have been an act of great faith considering the circumstances in the country: the Greek government was in exile, the existing Greek state totally compromised. Think of the harrowing moments when one group worked with another – the fear of betrayal had to be there at every moment. This was especially true throughout 1943 because the Germans had ramped up their large network of spies among the Greek population.
Whom to trust?
Bouboulina members slowly infiltrated German organizations and their military in order to report on troop movements, future plans, and glean whatever information they could pass along. There was not any right wing or left wing in these endeavours. One of Lela’s fellow conspirators, Zisimos Patridis, put it this way: all the fingers of the hand must be clenched into a mighty fist aimed at the face of the Germans!
One of the groups that Lela worked with was called Apollona which was also known by the code name Byron and together they accomplished much in terms of intelligence, finding arms for the rebels, and neutralizing the roaming patrols which were always roving the city ferreting out illegal radio transmissions.
During the period from October 1943 until March 1944, the Bouboulina cell did its most important work. It co-operated with many other organizations including EAM, EDES and British agents such as Christopher Woodhouse.
Her Second Arrest
Her second arrest came as a result of the apprehension of several Apollona members. Her name had been found written in their files. Four of her children were arrested on July 10, 1944 and she was apprehended the next day at the Red Cross Hospital where she was recovering from an illness. At one point during that dreadful summer, she was sent for several days to the notorious Gestapo headquarters on Merlin Street in downtown Athens. Apparently her file would label her as the biggest spy in the Balkans. No easy escape or bribery of officials was possible there. She was tortured by razor cuts and other means.
A door of the Gestapo headquarters has been preserved as a memorial in the lobby of Number 6 Merlin Street.
She revealed nothing and was sent to spend her final days at the grim prison camp at Haidari which since the fall of 1943 had been run by the German Schutzstaffel.
Haidari
Haidari had initially been a Greek army barracks, became a camp for prisoners under the Italians, and a Hell-hole after the Germans took over from the somewhat more easy going Italians in 1943. During the year that they operated this camp, nicknamed the ‘Bastille of Greece’, 21,000 Jews, Italian prisoners of war, and political prisoners, some from the Metaxas era, (5) passed through its gates. 1800 never left alive and the Jewish people who did, were sent to certain death in Auschwitz.(6)
One block of that horrible prison has been preserved, in memoriam
The Germans knew that they were losing and that made them desperate and vicious. During that September there were many executions. On September fifth a 17 year old, Iro Konstantopoulou, who had been active in the resistance in spite of her young age, was one of those executed. As she was led out, Lela called to her:
Bravo, my Iro, this is the way Greek women die!
Μπράβο. Ηρώ μου. Έτσι πεθαίνουν οι Ελληνίδες
Three days later, Lela was taken along with 70 others and was executed. The bodies were thrown into a gorge near the Daphne monastery.
Some say that before her own execution, she and others danced the ‘dance’ of the women of Zalongo who had chosen death over captivity during the War of Independence (7); others say she faced the Germans singing the Greek national anthem. Given her amazing personality and courage, both stories could be true. Her children escaped the camp before their execution could be carried out. They did not realize at first that their mother had already been executed.
The family located her body after the Germans evacuated. George-Pararas Karayannis, then 8, remembers the grim search for her body. She now rests in the First Cemetery of Athens.
Lela Karayannis was a remarkable woman.
In 1947, the Greek Academy awarded her the Prize of Excellence. She received accolades from the Greek parliament and the British government and from many others. Her marble bust stands in a small square near the Athens Archaeological Museum.
Her home has been preserved as a monument and just this year is to be turned into a refuge for the poorer children in the neighbourhood, a joint venture of the mayor of Athens and the Greek Orthodox Church.
Limnou Street has been renamed Lela Karayannis Street.
The Grave
Her grave was not always in the First Cemetery. She was first buried in the Second Cemetery of Athens but, at the insistence of the women who had been imprisoned with her and survived, her body was brought here in 1989.
Section One, Number 461
ΕΠΕΣΕ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΤΡΙΔΑ: She died for her Country
The Map
Footnotes
(1) The Greco-Italian War took place between the kingdoms of Italy and Greece from 28 October 1940 to 23 April 1941.
(2) Greece’s great benefactor, George Averoff (see http://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2016/09/george-averoff.html on our blog) had donated the prison in an effort to create a better environment for young offenders. It soon became a prison for all offenders (Greek political prisoners as well under the Metaxas regime). It was demolished in 1971 and replaced by law courts.
(3) In the beginning of the occupation when the Italians were in control of many aspects of Athenian life, there was a certain amount ‘wiggle’ room for appeals and bribes and even appeals to kindness.
(4) The code name Bouboulina was an apt choice. Laskarina "Bouboulina" Pinotsi was born in 1771, the widow of a Spetse sea captain and trader whose business she took over. She fought heroically during the Greek War of Independence and was named an admiral in the Russian navy. Lela’s family were descendants.
(5) I was astounded to find that political prisoners from the Metaxas era who were in jail when the Germans invaded, were simply handed over to the occupiers. I had never considered the plight of prisoners in a situation like this.
(6) Of the well over 70,000 Greek Jews, over 59,000 perished in the German death camps.
(7) See https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2020/05/kitsos-tzavellas.html for the story of the women of Zalongo who preferred death to capture by the Turks.
Two Important Sources
1. http://www.drgeorgepc.com/LelaCarayannisGrandmotherTribute.pdf
Thank you for another astounding post. Lela's story should be made into a movie (perhaps the Greek Ministry of Culture could help with this) for the education of the younger generations. The heroines and heroes of Greece do not exist solely in Greek mythology or ancient era, we must remember the modern heroes too.
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