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German Occupation

Second World War

On 25 April 1941, in the thick of the Second World War, the Germans captured Lemnos. Myrina and the castle were taken at 11 a.m. The German war correspondent who accompanied the force, Ernst Lothar Reich, in his dispatch for that day wrote that the German military flag was already flying on the fortress.

During the German Occupation, the German military carried out various construction works of fortification, such as opening a tunnel and galleries for storing ammunition, building gun emplacements, blockhouses, sentry posts and smaller buildings for diverse uses, such as storerooms for food supplies and catering facilities. To construct them, the Germans had exacted forced labour from the populace. In the area of the lighthouse, they blasted into the rock, in the west part of the hill of the citadel and on a northeast-southwest axis, opening a tunnel about 60 m long. The debris was loaded on a mine-cart moving on tracks and taken from the inside to the outside, where the workers threw it from the west wall over the precipice behind the lighthouse. This tunnel was used to store artillery shells. Around the castle they had set up guns and on the highest tower their flag post.

In July 1943 the British submarine Taurus, after bombing the harbour of Myrina withdrew, where the German flag was flying, with 3 rounds of fire, which as the captain of the submarine states in his report, where accompanied by rude gestures of the crew.

Tunnel for the storage of munitions.

The End of the German Occupation

The German Occupation ended and the German troops quit Lemnos on October 16th 1944, leaving behind them in their haste considerable amounts of provisions. The tunnel, two galleries, two walls in the northwest part of the lower north terrace, traces of a stone building with shed roof, obviously a guardhouse, on the inner faces of the fortification walls on the south side of the space of the central gate, remnants of a small building abutting the inner face of the north fortification wall of the central entrance (inside it intact missiles were found), as well as stone platforms, obviously emplacements for artillery weapons, behind the battlements of tower 1 (northeast of the central gate) remain as constant reminders of the German past in the castle.

Tunnel for the storage of munitions.
Tunnel for the storage of munitions.
Tunnel for the storage of munitions.