[Handout/Culture Ministry]
A railway site in central Greece where dozens of Greek Jews died during the Nazi World War II occupation after being conscripted for hard labor will be restored and turned into a public memorial and exhibition space, authorities said Friday.
The Culture Ministry said it has been handed responsibility for the disused Karya railway station and its surrounding area, which belongs to the GAIAOSE railway real estate company.
“This is a first step to restoring the monument, with the intention of preserving historic memory and protecting a site of particular significance for Greece’s modern history,” a ministry statement said.
In 1943, German occupation troops forcibly transported men from Thessaloniki’s Jewish community to the site, to carve out a large railway cutting in a rock through manual labor under a planned track expansion for military purposes. Brutal conditions led to dozens of deaths.
Practically Thessaloniki’s entire Jewish community was subsequently rounded up and sent to Nazi death camps in occupied Poland and elsewhere, where the vast majority was murdered.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said the handover of the site from GAIAOSE “sets the foundations to start a systematic effort to restore and display this historic site that bears the indelible signs of Nazi brutality.”
She said her ministry, which has already listed the station complex as a historic site, wants to turn it into a restored, accessible venue where visitors can learn about the events of WWII.
“This is our historic debt towards the victims of Nazi barbarity, and the need to preserve historic memory,” Mendoni said.
Surviving structures on the site include the stone railway station, a well and the German army huts, the ministry said. The large cutting in the rock has also survived, along with contemporary photographic documentation of the labor camp.
