Mandra Block of Kokkinia

On 17 August 1944, a total of 75 people (72 men and 3 women), fighters who actively participated in the Resistance, were executed by the Nazi occupiers and their local collaborators in the struggle to liberate the country from Nazi/Fascist occupation. This happened in the Mandra Block of Kokkinia, in the old carpet factory of the city.

The total number of those executed in the Kokkinia Block, who tragically lost their lives in Mandra, Kamena, Armenika and other parts of the city, is estimated at over 200, not including those who were sent by train to the concentration camps of Germany and the neighbouring hellholes of Austria and Poland, many of whom never returned. The Mandra Block of Kokkinia hosts organised visits of schools, associations, institutions and resistance delegations from various countries of the world, and organises events of cultural and historical interest. The group visits of the interested public and the educational programmes of the schools include information on the history of the Battle and the Kokkinia Block, the narration of the testimonies of the protagonists of the events, a tour of the site and the screening of the documentary film by Dionysis Grigoratos entitled “Kokkinia’s Block” from the archives of ERT SA. The total program’s duration is 2 hours. The maximum number of visitor is 120 people per visit.

The visitor can see the historical portara, the preserved wooden door through which the fighters passed to be executed, the loom room of the old textile factory where the executions took place, the imprints of the bullets on the walls, the photographs and names of those who took part in the battle and the Kokkinias Block, the sculptures created for the monument by Michalis Kassis and Michalis Papadakis, historical evidence of the Occupation, samples from the German arsenal and artistic photographs of resistance fighters.

As a monumental symbol of the Resistance, the Kokkinia Mandra Block commemorates the horrors of war and emphasises the value of freedom, as it was manifested by Greece’s painful and fierce anti-fascist struggle during the Occupation.