More bodies of executed civil war-era prisoners uncovered under Greek city park [View all]
Source: AP
By COSTAS KANTOURIS
Updated 3:48 PM CDT, June 7, 2025
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Another series of unmarked graves — this one containing 14 individuals from Greece’s civil war era — have been dug up in a park in a suburb near the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, local officials said Saturday.
As in the previous tight cluster of unmarked burial pits excavated earlier this year in Neapolis-Sykies, the bodies belong to prisoners who were held in a nearby Byzantine fortress. The prisoners, alleged communists and sympathizers, were executed between 1946 and 1953, according to historians.
The Yedi Kule castle, also known by its Greek name Eptapyrgio (“seven towers”) was a prison where communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece’s 1946-49 Civil War and immediately afterward.
The burial pits were uncovered on the site of a municipal park undergoing renovation, including the installation of new benches. The graves were not far beneath the surface, Haris Charismiadis, the supervising engineer of the park project, told The Associated Press.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/thessaloniki-mass-graves-executions-civil-war-0caaa06d24fa2faa27033965f5199a22
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