7 Ağustos 2019 Çarşamba

TNT POW Reports: Turks in Greek Hands (1920-1923)/Part XXVIII-F

//Ed. Note:  In this segment of his extraordinary report, 
Pharmacist Muzaffer Akpınar describes the "health care"
and "bathroom facilities" at the Liosia Prison Camp. 
Grim indeed.//

prisoner of war medical ile ilgili görsel sonucu

At the garrison there was no proper place for a sick person to lay down,
nor was there any medicine.  Those who were ill were sent from Liosia 
to a hospital in Piraeus, 30 kilometers away.  Three days later they 
would come back to the garrison dead.  There was no ill person who 
went to that hospital and returned alive but one escaped from the 
hospital building and came back to our garrison.  He was surrounded 
by us all, who wanted to know what it was like there, as if he had 
returned from the dead.  

He said that prisoners who went to the hospital were put in the bottom 
floor’s marble corridors and left there for a couple of days.  If in that 
time he died, or somehow didn’t die, he would be brought to a room 
on a stretcher and left there, where the hapless prisoner would be left 
to starve to death if he was still clinging to life.   Three days later they
returned the body to the garrison in a “crucifix cart”.  Money was 
collected from among the prisoners to buy wood .  A fire was lit, 
water heated and the body cleansed.    In lieu of a burial shroud, the 
body was wrapped in whatever kind of cloth available.  

Transport to the cemetery posed another problem since it was located 
1.5 hours away, outside of town.  If we made a thousand gestures of 
gratitude, a permit might be given and the body taken there for burial.  
Without permission the body remained at the garrison and, of course, 
would begin to rot.  We witnessed this many times.  One of the 30 or 
so women prisoners in Averof Prison died and they refused permission 
to remove her body for 3 days.  On the fourth day the problem was left 
to our garrison.  Finally, after appeals to the commander and others, 4 
prisoners went and brought the woman’s body to our garrison, where 
we buried her.

Those Who Leave Don’t Return:

The daily deaths and murders went unaccounted for.  40 people would 
be taken to forced labor but only 32 of them would return.   35 people 
would be taken to move provisions but only 19 returned.  We were told 
that those who didn’t come back went to another camp or were kept as 
forced laborers at the ammunition depot.  No one had the courage to 
question this.

pow latrines ile ilgili görsel sonucu

The ditchs that they made into toilets were located 500 meters behind 
the tents and between two rail lines.  The ditches were a meter wide and 
a bit more than a meter deep and 10-meters long.  There was no lack of 
incidents involving these latrine ditches.   In rainy weather, to get from 
the tents to the latrine was even more difficult with the increased risk 
of falling in.  We saw this happen a number of times and it was quite 
nasty.  In fact, an elderly retired soldier from Adapazarı  fell in and 
suffocated.  At night, a number of people had to go at the same time for 
safety’s sake.  If fellows went one by one they would be stopped by the 
guards, robbed and, according to what we were told by prisoners who 
came before us, many were killed and thrown into the ditches.  

In our time there, thanks to our heroic army’s effort in Anatolia to 
cleanse the land, the Greeks were more careful about their treatment of
us, so as not to bring down the Turkish Army’s wrath on their soldiers
and populace in Anatolia.   Consequently, they were more reluctant to 
kill in public.   Nevertheless,  we witnessed a prisoner being killed by 
a Greek guard over a line-cutting argument in the chow line and another 
prisoner being dragged to the garrison’s jail on the pretext that he had 
relieved himself close to the tents at night.  This prisoner was beaten 
until morning and died two days later. 


//END of PART XXVIII-F//


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