The Ministry of Culture is proceeding with the characterization of the Karya Railway Station area in Fthiotida as a historical site, following the positive opinion of the Central Council of Modern Monuments.
The Karya Station, as a place of important historical events, is a monument to the cruelty and atrocities of Nazism and is an integral part of the collective historical memory, not only for the Greeks, but also for the world community. The project served the supply needs of the Nazis, who had intensified their efforts to transport raw materials and military forces. The malnourished and exhausted workers were forced to break stones with their hands and load wagons under violent conditions. Many died either from exhaustion or from executions. After the completion of the works, the construction site was abandoned. The wooden barracks were removed by guerrillas, and today only a stone building and a well survive.
Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni stated: "Karya is a place of forced labor and a testimony to the Holocaust in Greece. It is one of the places where the Nazis implemented the policy of "extermination of Jews through forced labor". The workers had to open a cut in the side of a mountain for a railway line, under inhumane conditions, while many died during this process. 300 to 500 Jews from Thessaloniki worked at the construction site. The few survivors, upon their return to the city in August 1943, took the road to Auschwitz. For the designation of the Karya Railway Station as a historical site, evidence from an international research program was used that sheds light on the tragic history of Nazi forced labor in Greece. The Ministry of Culture, with this decision, as well as with the support of the joint exhibition organized in Athens and Berlin a year ago, dedicated to the forced labor of Greek Jews during the German occupation, recognizes the events in Karya and pays tribute to the victims of Nazi forced labor in Greece. The surviving Ressler photographic archive constitutes rare documentation of the crime, while the rocky cut itself constitutes timeless testimony to the "extermination through labor" implemented by the Nazis in Karya. The Karya Railway Station constitutes a step towards historical vindication and the preservation of the collective memory of the Holocaust in Greece.
The aim of the Ministry of Culture is to carry out the necessary studies for the restoration of the Railway Station and its reuse as an exhibition space that preserves and highlights the memory of those who were victims of the hatred and atrocities of the Nazis."
The Service for Modern Monuments and Technical Works of Thessaly and Central Central Greece, within the framework of its mission to document and protect modern cultural assets, forwarded to the Directorate for the Protection and Restoration of Modern and Contemporary Monuments a documentation file for the characterization of the Karya Railway Station in Fthiotida and the wider area of the Todt Organization construction site as a historical site, in accordance with articles 2 and 17 of Law. 4858/2021. The documentary material of the events in Karya emerged from the research project "Deadly Forced Labor in Karya - German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece", which was carried out by the University of Osnabrück in collaboration with the Documentation Center for Nazi Forced Labor and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. At the center of the research was the photographic archive of the German engineer Hans Hermann Rössler, which was rescued in 2002 by Andreas Assael, the son of a Holocaust survivor. The archive includes valuable photographs documenting the inhumane conditions of forced labor of hundreds of Greek Jews from the Thessaloniki ghetto at the Karya construction site in 1943. The research program identified material remains and other traces of the construction site and the living conditions of the Jews who were used in forced labor. In the autopsy carried out by the competent Service of the Ministry of Culture, it confirmed the historical character of the Karya Railway Station area.
Karya was located in the area of Italian occupation, but the Germans had full control of the railway network. The strategic importance of the point was decisive, as there the line passed near Lianokladi, an important sorting station. In 1943, Jewish men from Thessaloniki were taken to Karya in Fthiotida for forced labor. There, under the command of the German Organization Todt, and in order to serve the military needs of the Wehrmacht, they were asked to open a railway section 100 meters long and 20 meters deep in a rocky mountainside, in order to create a bypass line on the Athens-Thessaloniki route.
SOURCE: website Ministry of Culture, 3.7.2025