Leros…Malta of Aegean Sea

This 30 min travel documentary aims to promote the history and natural beauty of the island of Leros. A unique passage through the island’s 2nd World War shipwrecks, artilleries, refuges, museums and natural tranquility, that Leros has to offer.

Summary…

In the Harbour of Leros today, a sign welcomes visitors in four languages. In Greek, Italian, English and German. It was these four countries that fought in 1943, a fierce battle that is not very well known. Since then, thousands of visitors that once fought on the island, or relatives of the ones that fell, come to leave their respects.

Whoever went up there the next day, wept for all that took place there when he saw the dead bodies piled on top of the other, with the expression of hate still drawn on their faces, from that last attempt of battle until death, as if they were still fighting between fallen guns, broken branches, turned up rocks and soil. After the battle, a German officer who had fought from the Polish borders until Taigani of Russia, said that the battle of Leros was the most brutal battle he had ever seen.

Μιχάλης Σαμάρκος, Γυμνασιάρχης Λέρου

An amazingly beautiful frontier island, Leros still guards ineffaceable signs of war within her bowls. Artillery stations lying all around its circumference, hidden inside the mountains like small autonomous states with army barracks, warehouses and shelters. All of them rigged with canons that are referred to history as the guns of Navarone, machine guns, anti-air aid cover, aerophones, giant lights and an independent fighting ability of many days.

If we can only imagine the above war setting, we can feel the tension and see Leros as the ultimate time machine into the past. Tunnels with heavy armored doors, hideout shelters all over the island, act like a time machine that cannot be encountered in many places.

With the passage of time…

The fortresses became places of interest…

The shipwrecks became monuments…

The shelters became museums…

And the pain of war became history…