The Haidari concentration camp (Greek: στρατόπεδο συγκέντρωσης Χαϊδαρίου, stratópedo syngéntrosis Chaidaríou, German: KZ Chaidari) was a concentration camp operated by the German Schutzstaffel at the Athens suburb of Haidari during the Axis Occupation of Greece in World War II. Operating from September 1943 until it was shut down in September 1944, it was the largest and most notorious concentration camp in wartime Greece, becoming known as the "Bastille of Greece".
It was a transit camp established on the grounds of a Greek Army barracks, and it is estimated that in the one year of its operation, some 21,000 people passed through it, including Jews, Italian POWs and Greek political prisoners. The majority of these was transported north, to Auschwitz in the case of the Jews, or to forced labour in Germany, while others were detained for questioning by the Gestapo. It is estimated that ca. 2,000 inmates were executed there during the camp's operation.
Read more about Haidari Concentration Camp: Establishment, Under The Germans, Post-war History and Commemoration
Famous quotes containing the words concentration camp and/or camp:
“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp.... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents—about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)