She was born Eleni Minopoulou on June 24, 1898, in the village of Limni on the island of Euboea (Evia). History would remember her not by her birth name, but by her married one—Karagianni. And with that name, she would become an icon of the Greek Resistance.

On the morning of September 8, 1944, just weeks before the liberation of Athens, 71 Greek resistance fighters and prisoners were executed by firing squad in the Athenian suburb of Chaidari. Among them stood Lela Karagianni. She was 46.

A Housewife Turned Resistance Leader

In October 1941, with Greece already under brutal Nazi occupation, Karagianni formed a resistance group she called “Bouboulina”—named after the legendary 19th-century Greek heroine Laskarina Bouboulina, from whom Karagianni claimed maternal descent.

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Her mission: to smuggle stranded Allied soldiers out of occupied Greece to safety in Egypt, sabotage Nazi operations, and build a clandestine intelligence network that would pass vital information to the Allies.

The British military officer and author Wilfred Byford-Jones met Karagianni’s family shortly after the war and would later write: “From 1941, this woman helped hundreds of British officers and men escape. A mother of seven, she even managed to infiltrate Gestapo and SS ranks with agents who passed her critical intelligence.”

When German forces marched into Athens, Lela didn’t hesitate. Without telling her husband, she sold her jewelry and used the money to buy two homes—one on 226 Filis Street and another on 1 Limnou Street. These homes became safehouses—waystations on an underground railway helping Allied soldiers and Greek patriots escape to the Middle East.

Her family quickly joined her cause. Her children, her husband Nikolaos, even her son-in-law—each played a role. Working alongside a sympathetic police officer named Georgios Mitsos, who forged false identity documents, and a baker at a German POW camp in the neighborhood of Kokkinia, the Karagianni family helped dozens of prisoners escape.

To ferry them across the Aegean Sea, Lela even used her own fishing boat, captained by a trusted ally, Ilias Chrysinis.

Building a Spy Network

Karagianni’s work soon caught the attention of British Intelligence. She formally connected with the British Secret Services, and what began as a modest escape route became a sprawling network of espionage and sabotage. The secret route—Filis Street to the Monastery of Saint Ierotheos in Megara, and from there to the Middle East—was just one artery in a web of resistance.

Her organization forged links with the guerrilla forces of Napoleon Zervas, one of the key leaders of the armed resistance against the Axis. Her eldest son, George, served as a liaison between Athens and the mountainous strongholds of the rebels.

Bouboulina became one of the most effective underground intelligence organizations in occupied Greece. Her network even included anti-Nazi Germans and anti-fascist Italians willing to pass on sensitive information.

Arrest and Imprisonment

The Nazis grew suspicious. As early as June 1941, Lela’s daughters Ioanna and Electra, and her son George, were arrested but later released. That fall, the Italians detained Lela and her husband Nikolaos. She was imprisoned for seven months. But even behind bars, Karagianni remained a thorn in the Nazis’ side.

She used her time in prison to gather names—informants, collaborators, German spies—and secretly smuggled those names to her allies on the outside.

When she was finally released, she didn’t lie low. She built a more secure and extensive network. Her entire family was now deeply embedded in the resistance: her daughters Ioanna, Electra, and Nefeli; her sons George, Byron, and Nelson; and her son-in-law Spyros Krassas.

One account noted: “The case of an entire family of spies is truly unprecedented. Most of the Allied bombing raids on German airfields in Greece were carried out thanks to intelligence passed on by Lela Karagianni.”

She monitored the movements of German troops across the region of Attica. Her sources included Greek laborers forced to work on German fortifications, who supplied her with information at great personal risk.

Karagianni wasn’t naive. She understood full well that her release from prison was a trap—the Gestapo likely hoped she’d slip up and lead them to the core of her resistance network. She didn’t. For nearly three more years, she outwitted them.

Betrayal and Execution

But in the summer of 1944, just as liberation drew near, her luck ran out.

Somewhere, someone slipped up. Secret resistance messages fell into German hands. On July 11, 1944, Gestapo agents stormed the premises of the Red Cross Hospital, where Karagianni was working undercover as a nurse. She was arrested.

Within days, five of her children were captured as well: Electra, Byron, Ioanna, Nefeli, and Nelson.

What followed was a brutal and systematic effort to break her. At the notorious Gestapo headquarters on Merlin Street in Athens, Karagianni endured days of torture—forced to witness her children being tortured before her eyes. The infamous SS interrogator Becke personally tortured her son Byron, hoping to force the mother to talk.

Not one of them did.

Dawn of Martyrdom

After weeks of savage interrogations, the Nazis prepared their final act. On the dawn of September 8, 1944, German military trucks rolled down the Sacred Way toward Daphni, a region just outside Athens. The prisoners sang patriotic songs in defiance, their voices defiant even as they neared death.

In a ravine at Daphni, the Gestapo lined up 72 prisoners—men and women of the Greek Resistance—and executed them by firing squad.

Among them: Lela Karagianni. She was shot at dawn.

Legacy

Lela Karagianni is more than a name in the annals of history. She represents the extraordinary power of ordinary people to defy tyranny. Her home on Filis Street is now a museum, and her story has become a symbol of Greece’s courage during its darkest hour.

A 1946 sketch by political cartoonist Fokion Dimitriadis depicts her stern and dignified—head held high, unbowed by terror, surrounded by her seven children and the ideals they fought for.

In a war filled with unspeakable horror, Lela Karagianni’s story is one of undying light. She turned her family into a fortress of resistance, her home into a battlefield, and her life into a weapon against fascism.

She was not a soldier by training. She was a mother by nature. And in the face of the Third Reich, that made her all the more dangerous.

Thirty-six years to the day after her execution, Greek journalist Giorgos Gatos wrote: “The silence of the city, the rasp of the Gestapo’s voices, the gunshots in Daphni… And among the fallen, Lela Karagianni. Executed at dawn, September 8, 1944. A name carved forever into the soul of Greece.”