Going downhill to Riha Nera, Ypsipyli sights a monument. World War II, Occupation, Resistance, Memorial to the Executed, Monument to the Sacred Band, she reads. She looks up. During the Occupation, on the hill above the sea, four Lemnians with their backs against the wall, facing the firing squad. Next to her on the beach, at the hour of liberation, a lad falls wounded; it is Panagiotis Dimoulas.
During World War II the Lemnians fought as the “independent battalion of Lemnos” in Albania. During the German Occupation (25/4/1941 to 16/10/1944) the island was transformed into a large fortress. The Lemnians waged an incessant struggle against the conquerors, with the flight of fighters to the Middle East and North Africa, and with the support of resistance fighters returning to Greece. On the island, four Lemnian patriots were executed by the Germans (Aristides Triantaflaros from Moudros, Georgios Kouskousis from Nea Koutali, Sarantis Borbolias from Pesperago -Pedino-, Georgios Fouskoudis from Skandali). The same fate was shared by five Lemnians from Lyhna, one from Kalliopi and one from Kontias, in Haidari and in the Pavlou Mela prison in Thessaloniki. The executed Lemnians of Thessaloniki also include Konstantinos Andriotis and Vasilios Fanoudis. The resistance organisation of EAM, with Andreas Noulas as its secretary, and the heroic port director Ioannis Arvanitakis were active on the island. The Lemnian fighters found allies among the German soldiers, especially from 1943 onwards, who joined EAM or ELAS and prevented the destruction of the island’s power station. On 17 October 1944, a commando detachment of the Sacred Band (the special forces unit for the liberation of the Aegean from the Germans) occupied Lemnos with the help of the British under Colonel Themistocles Ketseas, after a short but deadly battle, in which Sacred Band fighter Reserve Lieutenant Panagiotis Dimoulas was killed.
