The man-“monument” of European history died today a few days before the celebration of his 103rd birthday. Barba Yiannis Karageorgiou, a man who fought against Nazism, was arrested, he fled from the Gestapo camps in Mytilene, the prisons of Pavlos Melas in Thessaloniki and the concentration camp in Stein, Austria. The man who buried 700 of his comrades who were shot by the SS in the massacre on April 6, 1946. He himself survived, falling to the ground just before the machine gun crackled.

Barba Giannis was Mytilinios, the last witness to Nazi atrocities. And he charmed everyone when on January 15, 2020, celebrating his 100th birthday with friends in Mytilene, he told APE BEE his story.

In April 1942, he, along with 19 other young men, tried to flee Lesvos and go to the Middle East. They were arrested and taken to the prisons of the infamous Villa Iliopoulos by the Gestapo in Surada of the city of Mytilini. He was sentenced along with his accomplices to five years in prison. He was taken to the Pavlos Melas POW camp in Thessaloniki, and from there in the spring of 1944 to the prison workshop in Stein, Austria.

A few days before the surrender of Nazi Germany, the SS executed 800 prisoners. At the last moment, Giannis Karageorgiou is saved. The testimonies of barb Yannis are shocking: “They took us and put us against the wall … I was … three to the side against the wall, there were two more in front of me … Before he shot … 20-30 meters away he had machine guns, I fell…next to the wall…and corpses rained down on me…I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything!I sat there for an hour and a half…25 corpses would have fallen on top of me and next to me.. “I killed a beetle! Sometimes they brought another batch for slaughter … but they were Italian workers with documents … they were not killed … but they were not pursued either … They gave a blanket in pairs and the dead were let through and taken 20 meters further, to open the graves. Sometimes it was my turn … they caught me and put me on a blanket … I got up on my ass and sat down. I looked in my direction if the German saw me … he was not there. I call Italians in German rollen, that means don’t talk… I also went and grabbed the edge of the blanket… and luckily I got clothes from the warehouse I didn’t tell you that when we came to prisons, we gave away our clothes, they are warehouses put it in a box and gave us prison clothes (striped overalls), but because our exit from the prisons was dirty – where can I find my clothes? !!! – I went and got another box… There was a brown suit in it, I threw away the prison clothes and put the brown suit on… There was blood on it, I wiped it a little, it was brown, it was not very visible… I I also caught it, told the Italians not to talk, let’s see what happens … I would also pick them up and take them to where they will open the graves … at the same time they will kill Arada … sometimes he comes with a ruler and marks two graves three four meters and says three meters erudda – he will say three meters down… He went to the warehouse, he gives us money and things. I grab a little… But I always keep my head out of sight… The Italians laughed… I tell them don’t laugh. Finally we dug in… killed all day long… killed about 700 nomads. At the same time, when we opened the graves, I went down… Feet of people, how they pickle sardines, a meter of earth, a meter of people, a meter of earth… Let’s not count them, 700 people were thrown into two pits… I always marinated until the evening … like sardines … When the pit reached half a meter from the ground, they brought wagonloads of lime – and extinguished it from above … Do you know why? To not stink … as I later found out. And we buried them, man… We were put in cells again… Two days later we were taken from prisons, put on a boat on the Danube and taken from Austria to Bavaria… a village called “Bernau…”.

Of a group of 20 young men who wanted to fight the Nazis in Mytilene, 14 returned. Barba Giannis was the last to live to this day.

Source: APE/MEB