ΧΑΪΔΑΡΙ ΧΑΪΔΑΡΙ - ΣΥΝΑΝΤΗΣΗ ΜΕ ΤΗΝ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ | Page 262

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They got up at seven and were re-counted at eight. Then
they exercised and some helped with cooking. They
were allowed out one hour every morning and evening.
Trepte used to say goodnight in Greek so his nickname
became “Kalinychta”. His internal guard numbered eight
men. Prisoners Panagiotis Maurommatis and Napoleon
Soukatzidis were appointed interpretors. The two of them
and Trepte too were arrested by the Gestapo on the 21st
of November 1943 and were taken to Averof, perhaps
due to a fund misappropriation by the commander. In
23-28 November a German sergeant took over and
then the administration was passed over to the S.S.
and the infamous major Paul Radomski. General Stroop
undertook the re-organization of the camp, and stayed
for a few weeks, soa as to record, arrest and transfer to
Poland all Greek Jews. He also organised the special
torture rooms and the horrible isolation areas, with the
help of the S.S..
The Chaidari S.S. camp
– major Paul Radomski
The S.S. administration initialised a definitely harsher phase
for the prisoners. The first words by the new commander
are very characteristic. He demanded absolute order,
discipline and quiet, and also immediate execution of
his commands. The camp was to be a labour location.
Prisoners were divided into groups of one hundred, each
of which was divided into teams of fifteen. Each team and
group had their head, responsible for the team.
Forced labour increased and became harsher. The
ferocity of the commander and the soldiers increased
too. Labour was about repairs, cleaning and the
enhancement of the buildings of the camp. They rarely
had a supposedly practical reason and Radomski and
his men obliged the prisoners to dig pits with their
bare hands and then refill them, or create dump heaps
and then re-scatter them. Reporter N. Ramantanis, then
a prisoner, mentions that Radomski’s aim was not to
enhance the camp but actually fullfill his sadism, by
refilling pits or transferring piles of rocks or stones with
bare hands. Stone benches were built and then brought
down. The guards hit them and the food was not enough.
K. Vatikiotis narrates another incident, which illustrates the
S.S. sadism. He was forced to collect toilet dirt with his
bare hands and transfer it to a nearby pit.
Paul Radomski transformed the Chaidari camp into an
endless working site, where nobody was allowed to stop
or even catch their breath. Some of the prisoners were
sent to external tasks, such as work at the S.S. office in
Merlin Street, the bombed areas of Piraeus, Phaliro and
Skaramangas. These were the lucky ones that came out
of the camp for a while. Inside, the tiredness and little
food led the prisoners to complete exhaustion.
Radomski was around fifty. He was born in Prussia and
came to Athens straight from the Kiev front. He was
stern, had grey eyes and wore thick spectacles. He was
carrying a whip and went round the camp shouting and
hitting. When he approached, the prisoners used to shout
“alarm” (“syrma” meaning “wire” in colloquial Greek) and
his nickname became “Syrmas”.
The S.S. administration doubled the number of the
internal guards. The hardest of them was the infamous
Kowacs, an eighteen-year old soldier. His nickname was
“handless” (“Koulos”) because he missed three fingers
from his left hand. D. Poulakis remembers “snake”
(“fidaki”), his favourite torture. He took two hundred
prisoners, commanded them to take off their jackets and
obliged them to crawl on their stomachs like snakes in
the mud. He had a wire to beat whomever touched his
hands down. This lasted one hour.
The fi rst execution in Chaidari
The first execution happened on the 7th of December
1943. The vistim was executed by Radomski himself and
had come to Chaidari with a group of twelve from Averof.
K. Vatikiotis was with him. He remembers a prisoner being
beaten to death. He was Levi, a Jew serving as an officer
in the Greek Army. The prisoner was then whipped by
the commander, who then shot him in front of the other
prisoners. He commanded the rest to dispose of the dead
man, who was buried before he was actually dead.
According to psychological work on the phenomenon of