Panagis Topalis was a wealthy Greek of the diaspora. He was also a great collector. He was active mainly in Brazil where he married Lucia Schell of Dutch origin and they had a daughter Sofica.
At some point he sold all his property, returned to Greece and invested in a very large area in Lechonia Magnesia with crops and built a rural “palace”, Topaleiko.
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In 1939 he died and the management was taken over by Loukia and Sofika with the help of Filitsa Kalavrou. When the occupation came, the Topalaines, as they were called, opened up the estates and gave the harvest to the villagers so that they would not starve. And they hid the girls’ dowries in their basements.
From March 44 there was a pro-Nazi organization in Magnesia, the EASAD, led by a former gendarme, the infamous Takis Makedonas, and among them criminals and remnants of the “Legion of the Vlachs” that had been disbanded.
Under the guise of the anti-guerrilla fight, they were armed by the Germans, circulated in civilian clothes with a green armband with the initials of the organization and were the fear and terror of Volos. Their seat and place of torture and rape was the terrifying “yellow warehouse”.
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They took part in the block of Ano Volos with 32 executed and in the discovery and delivery to the SD of 17 Jews. Their main purpose and not the pretext was looting and terrorism which they achieved through the threat of the pro-insurgent “retsinia”. Thus the EASADites had their eye on the property of the Topalis family.
Under the pretense that they were sending supplies to the rebels of Pelion, which may have been true, through Filitsas, they were arrested and taken to the Gestapo where they were subjected to terrible torture.
Finally, on July 7, they were hanged on the large mulberry tree in the square of Kato Lechonia as an example. Immediately afterwards they entered Topaleikos and ransacked it.
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Untold wealth in gold, paintings and writings of great value became the prize of the traitors. The crime was hushed up by those responsible while the irresponsible were afraid of the former. The famous post-war trials of the traitors acquitted them with the excuse that they did not harm Greeks but leftists. And the defense witnesses were from the “good society” of Volos – probably accepted by the looter -. The Katolechonians “forgot” the Topalaines from whom they had benefited. They had a loop in their memory and so those who lived through them did not pass them on to the younger ones. Much later the nooses loosened due to eternal shame.
The journalist Nitsa Kolovou raised the issue and the expert of the events as a child Yiannis Mantidis wrote the book “Sofia Topali, loop in the memory”.
At the same time, the granddaughters of Van Shelle, Lucia’s brother, Heltago Maria, a pediatrician, and her sister, Julia, a botanist, come from Brazil to search and ask about the fate of their relatives.
The monument today
After unwrapping the entanglement they set up a simple monument at the place of martyrdom in the square with the mulberry tree and buried the remains of all three together. So the heroines may not have been vindicated, but with a private initiative, their memory was finally kept alive, an example and a lesson to the younger generations.
Source: www.zougla.gr
