Run, mother dear, as fast as you can
run to save me
and from Chaidari *, mother dear,
to liberate me.
Because I am condemned to die
judged and sentenced,
I, a boy of seventeen,
locked in chains
From Sekeri street
they bring me to Chaidari
and with every passing hour I am expecting
Death to take me.
Markos Vamvakaris (1905-1972), Chaidari, 1943
The grave of the prominent rebetiko figure Markos Vamvakaris is located in the Third Cemetery.
Rebetiko music during the Occupation authentically captured the sentiments and struggles of the Greek people. It provided genuine accounts of events, experiences, and individuals, reflecting the realities of occupied society through folk melodies. The daily hardships, particularly hunger and executions, were conveyed in rebetiko songs shared from person to person, such as “O Saltadoros” and “Oi Mavragorites” by M. Yenitsaris. While some of these songs were recorded later, for others, only the lyrics remain.
“A Zeibekiko. I didn’t record it on an album. I sang it in parks.” [Markos Vamvakaris (ed. Angeliki Vellou-Kail), Autobiography, Athens 1978].
The lyrics of the song composed by Markos Vamvakaris in 1943 were published in the 24th issue of the magazine Elliniko Tragoudi in 1947. The melody remained lost for many years until the public rediscovered it through George Dalaras’s album Rebetika tis Katohis (1980), featuring music by Stelios Vamvakaris.
Listen to it with the voice of Markos Vamvakaris and his original music from the concert at “Kentrikon” in 1966: Chaidari, Markos Vamvakaris (youtube.com).
Note: In its original version, there are two additional verses:
And when you see me, mother, dead,
tell the other mothers
Cause they suffered too
with even greater sorrows.
How I saw their children
bound in chains,
in prisoner’s clothes,
wrongfully killed.
Chaidari
Chaidari was the largest concentration and transit camp in Greece during the Occupation. Its initial use dates to 1936, when it was established as a barracks by Ioannis Metaxas. It was first used as a prisoner camp on September 3, 1943, by the Italians, who controlled the camps in southern Greece. However, as an Italian camp, it operated for only a few days, as the Germans swiftly took control on September 10, following the Italian surrender. Initially, it operated as a subsidiary of the Averoff prisons, and by the end of November, the administration changed hands, passing into the control of the SD (Sicherheitdienst), the Security Service of the SS.
As described by Antonis Flountzis, a doctor and a former prisoner of the camp, in his book Chaidari: Castle and Altar of National Resistance, the camp was surrounded by a tall wall with heavily armed watchtowers placed approximately every 200 meters. There were triple rows of barbed wire extending outward, as well as dense barbed wire inside the wall. It consisted of several building complexes, including barracks, cells, dormitories, storage areas, the Administration building, baths, a hospital, and the infamous “Block 15,” the strict isolation building, where death-row prisoners were usually sent.
Thousands of prisoners passed through the Chaidari camp. The first were communists who were transferred from the Akronafplia, Trikala, and Larissa camps, along with Italian prisoners of war. Soon, those arrested in roundups, Jews, and prisoners from Averoff, Kallithea, and Hatzikosta prisons, as well as those interrogated and tortured at the detention centre of the German secret state police, known as the Gestapo, at 6 Merlin Street in Kolonaki, were also brought to the camp.
Those who ended up in Chaidari during the occupation were held and tortured in unimaginably brutal and inhumane ways, both physically and psychologically. Many died from injuries, others from hunger, and thousands were executed or sent to concentration and extermination camps in Germany and Poland. However, many heroic and grand acts also took place there, performed by the prisoners who passed through its gates and were tested in a daily life of relentless turmoil, suffering, and anguish.
The most horrific centre of torture and extermination in Greece for resistance fighters, as well as Jews from all over the country, closed on September 27, 1944