A year ago, pupils in various schools across Greece set out to locate the relatives of a number of Greek victims of Nazi persecution, with the goal of returning personal belongings taken from them during the war. All the families the pupils were searching for have now been found.

Between 1941 and 1944, Greece was occupied by the Nazis. During this period, hundreds of thousands of Greek nationals were forced into labor in their own country, and more than 200,000 died under catastrophic conditions. Starting in 1943, the Nazis deported and murdered tens of thousands of Greek Jews. Around 10,000 non-Jewish Greeks were deported to the German Reich. The Arolsen Archives still hold the personal effects of five of these victims of Nazi persecution – items that were taken away from them on their arrest.

Students undertake detective work

The first time the personal effects of someone from Greece were returned to their family in person was in 2024 at a ceremony held at the Greek embassy in Berlin. This was thanks to the efforts of historian Loukas Lymperopoulos and Vaso Panagou, the granddaughter of a Neuengamme prisoner, who managed to locate Vasilios Kontogeorgiou’s granddaughter. To encourage more volunteers to join in the search for families, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education called on schools across the country to take part in #StolenMemory at the beginning of 2025. Within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project was coordinated by Georgios Polydorakis. As well as heading the diplomatic archives, he also represents Greece on the International Commission of the Arolsen Archives.

Sixteen schools from different parts of Greece have since taken part. The students do real detective work, carrying out on-site research in archives and civil registers and asking local organizations such as the Red Cross or the police for help. Their teachers support them throughout the whole process and often integrate lessons on the history of Nazi persecution in Greece.

“I wish history lessons were taught this way more often, so you don’t just get told about history, but can almost step inside and experience it up close. That would make school much more interesting.”
Eleni Boutraki, student at Evosmos School in Thessaloniki

The first successful search: A tragic fate

In the summer of 2025, students from Aspropyrgos High School near Athens were the first to trace one of the families. They found a relative of Theofilos Simonidis, who had been held as a political prisoner in the Neuengamme concentration camp from May 1944 on. He was one of the victims of the Cap Arcona tragedy in the Bay of Lübeck, which claimed the lives of over 6,000 prisoners in the final days of the war. His personal belongings, a pocket watch and a lucky charm with a horseshoe pendant, had been stored at the Arolsen Archives since 1963.

After extensive research in various institutions – including the archives of the Greek Red Cross and the University of Thessaloniki, where Theofilos studied law before his arrest – the students managed to trace the son of Theofilos’s cousin. Together with the then director of the Arolsen Archives, Floriane Azoulay, and the Greek representative on the International Commission of the Arolsen Archives, Georgios Polydorakis, the students returned the effects to Theofilos’s relative in person at a moving ceremony in Thessaloniki.

Georgios Hanas: Finally, his family learns his fate

Shortly afterwards, a group of students from Evosmos Vocational School in Thessaloniki found Georgios Hanas’s niece, Renia Kontogeorgis. Thanks to the research carried out by the students, her family not only learned that the Arolsen Archives still have a ring that belonged to him, but also received information about his persecution, his date of birth and the date of his death, and the site where he was buried in Hamburg. His sisters had spent years searching in vain for this information after the war.

Photo credit: Kathimerini

Together with her daughter, Renia Kontogeorgis immediately booked a flight to Hamburg to visit the Neuengamme Memorial and her uncle’s grave at the cemetery in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, where they held a small ceremony. “I felt blessed to be able to take the last steps that would take me to him at last – steps no one in our family had ever taken before.” The moving presentation of the effects by the group of students took place on November 28 at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, exactly 81 years to the day after Georgios Hanas’s death.

Student group traces the son of a concentration camp inmate

In October 2025, students from Neochori High school in Artà finally located 83-year-old Antonis Taktikos. His father Christos was arrested and deported in 1944 for helping a Jewish couple to hide from the Nazis. He never returned, and Antonis spent the rest of his life wondering what had happened to him. When the group of students contacted him and told him that they wanted to give him two rings that had been taken from his father in the Neuengamme concentration camp, it was a complete surprise, and he could hardly believe what he was hearing. “I’m 83 years old and I have lived without a father for 83 years. The discovery of these items is a sign of life,” he said during the ceremony in Thessaloniki on February 2, 2026, when the rings were handed over to him.

In this case, the students had carried out particularly lengthy and complex investigations before finally finding the son of the owner of the effects. Their methods ranged from launching a large-scale search in the press and on social media to conducting research in countless archives and civil registers. They even involved the police authorities. The overwhelming emotions they felt when their search was successful more than made up for all their hard work, as one of the students explained at the ceremony: “When we finally found him, we were deeply moved. He had become part of our daily lives. We engaged with his story nearly every day.”

By March 2026, thanks to the help of the Hellenic Red Cross and other school classes, the families of all the people from Greece whose personal effects were stored in the Arolsen Archives had been found.