Event on Sunday to commemorate deaths of Italian POWs on Oria steamship
An event commemorating the deaths of 4,100 captive Italian WWII soldiers on the Norwegian steamship Oria will be held this Sunday at 11 a.m., 76 years after the major naval tragedy, at the 60th km of Athens-Sounio coastal road.
The sinking of the Norwegian steamship Oria is considered one of the greatest naval tragedies in world history, claiming three times as many victims as the Titanic, but one which is not widely known. It occurred on the night of February 12, 1944 near the islet Patroklos in the Saronic Gulf, during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
In the fall of 1943, after the German invasion of the Dodecanese, the Germans had to transfer tens of thousands of Italian prisoners of war over the sea. These transfers were often carried out in unseaworthy vessels, with prisoners crammed into the hull of the ships, and without any safety standards.
Several ships...
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