Even 100 years ago, black flags were flying on the shores of this tiny island near Crete. They warned every ship that passed by: it is forbidden to land on the shore on pain of death. No, no, the island was not a haven for Mediterranean pirates. It did not contain especially dangerous maniacs and killers. There was no secret military base on the island. But not a single sane captain would dare to moor to him …
Kalydon - this is the official name of the island, given to him in 1957 - is located north of the Cretan peninsula of Spinalonga. However, the locals call it the same as the peninsula itself.
Citadel of the Venetians
It is understandable why - it is so small in size, a real spit of land, and is so close to the peninsula that it is, as it were, inseparable from it. Moreover, it owes its existence as an island to the enterprising Venetians, who ruled Crete since the 13th century. It was they who demolished a narrow stone isthmus almost destroyed by earthquakes and built an impregnable fort.
So, right next to the Spinalonga peninsula, an island with the same name appeared, and then, almost nowadays, the peninsula turned into an island - in 1897 the French blew up the Poros isthmus and separated it from Crete. "Spinalonga" in Italian means "long thorn" or "long vertebra", but the inhabitants of Crete never called it that. They were simply trying to explain to strangers that the peninsula is located opposite the town of Elounda, that is, the "stin of Elounda". The Venetians wanted to hear what they heard. The peninsula was elongated and long. So he began to be called Spinalonga ever since.
Before the Venetians, Spinalonga, like all of Crete, was ruled by the Greeks, before them - by the Minoan civilization. Elounda (ancient name - Olus) has been one of the largest Cretan cities since ancient times. However, in the Middle Ages, not a trace of its former greatness remained. In the 9th century, Crete was captured by Arab pirates, a century later, the Byzantines managed to regain control of the island, but after another 300 years, during the Fourth Crusade, the island came under the rule of Boniface of Montferrat, who sold his rights to Crete to the Venetians.
They began to explore the island. Spinalonga was a pretty wild and uninhabited area, but salt has been mined here since ancient times. Salt was a great source of income. In addition, the peninsula was located so well that it covered the eastern coast of Crete and could be used for military purposes. It is not surprising that the Venetians invited the engineer Genese Bressani in 1578 for large-scale fortification works, that is, to separate the northern tip of the peninsula from the land and build a powerful medieval fortress there.
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The Venetian fort was erected on an impregnable hill and surrounded by water on all sides. Until the beginning of the 18th century, this citadel remained in the hands of the Venetians and exerted a tremendous influence on all Mediterranean trade. But in 1715, the Ottoman Empire forced them to surrender Spinalonga on favorable terms (by that time, all of Crete had already been lost). And the citadel came under the rule of the Turks. They immediately drove the local residents out of their villages and forbade them to settle near the fortress. Moreover, they settled their compatriots on the peninsula.
The struggle for independence
Turkish power lasted in Crete until the beginning of the 20th century. The Cretans, like other Greeks, strove with all their might to gain independence. They were outraged by the Islamization carried out by the Turks; for a century and a half, many of their compatriots, in order to avoid oppression, abandoned the faith of their fathers and grandfathers. According to official figures, 45% of the inhabitants of Crete have converted to Islam. And - of course - they became for Christians not Greeks, but Turks. Discontent intensified especially in the years when the mainland Greeks began a liberation war with the Ottoman Empire. Greece became an independent state, but according to the agreement of 1830, Crete remained part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish families expelled from the mainland began to flock to Crete. In 1866 the Great Cretan Uprising broke out. For three years the Greeks fought for their freedom. The Turks fiercely resisted, slaughtered entire villages and eventually won. But from then on, the uprising followed the uprising. This forced the world powers to intervene. The island was surrounded by warships. It was then that the Poros isthmus was blown up to ensure better control over Crete. And in 1898 the island received autonomy and was removed from the rule of the Turks. The Ottoman troops had to leave the island.
But the Turks did not want to leave Crete! After all, not all of them were soldiers. Peasant settlements have long been established around the impregnable citadel of Spinalonga. Refugees also settled in the citadel itself and in Ierapetra. It was then that the Greek plan to liberate the island from the last Turks arose. In 1903, the Greeks announced the creation of an
isolated leper colony on an islet separated from the rest of Crete.
A nightmare in reality
Both Christians and Muslims were desperately afraid of patients with leprosy, the scientific leprosy. The illness was terrible. It began with the defeat of minor areas of the skin and ended with the complete disintegration of tissues - the patients had not only disfigured faces, but also fell off their noses, fingers, even limbs. And there was no cure for leprosy. It was possible to get infected only by contact with a patient or objects that he used. This scourge was brought to Europe by the medieval crusaders. And since then, the only way to prevent mass infection has been isolation. People with signs of leprosy were placed in special places - leper colony, where they had to live until their death. It was these unfortunates from the hospital of St. Barbara in Greece who were moved to the tiny island of Spinalonga. As soon as rumors about ships with lepers going to him spread throughout Crete, the Turks fled from the fortress of Spinalonga and from the surrounding territory. What the guns did not do, the ships with a terrible load did.
Of course, in Crete, as in the rest of Greece, and before there were a certain number of lepers. But they lived outside the cities in secluded places or even in caves. According to Cretan Law 375, they were the first to be moved to Spinalonga. The decision of the Cretan Parliament sounded like this: resettlement is beneficial in the material sense, it does not require any investment. Lepers will occupy the homes of the former owners. However, the nomarch of Cyprus, Anognastakis, who visited Spinalonga 20 years later, described the terrible devastation, the unbearable stench and the terrible look of the unfortunates doomed to live in isolation until their death. The houses, of course, were not repaired. The streets were practically not cleaned. The drinking water was disgusting, and there was no sanitary water at all. The patients were mostly from the very bottom of society. And not only from Greece. Other European countries immediately joined the project and sent their lepers to the “equipped island”.
The first thing the lepers saw was an inscription with a quote from the "Divine Comedy" - "Leave hope, everyone who enters here." There was no hope. The state paid a meager allowance, which was barely enough to buy food from local residents. There were no doctors at all. It was forbidden to start families, but nevertheless, children were born on the island. If they were healthy, they were immediately removed from their mothers. Only in 1936, when a leper student of the Faculty of Law Epaminondas Remundakis got to the island, a community of patients was organized, which repaired houses, disinfected, planted trees, opened coffee shops, shops, a theater, a school, and even achieved the installation of an electric generator. It became cleaner and better.
And at the end of the 40s of the XX century, American doctors found a cure for leprosy. And after 7 years the leper colony was closed. Surprisingly, when examining the prisoners of Spinalonga, it turned out that some of them fell into this hell by mistake. They did not have any leprosy, only skin diseases with similar symptoms. They began to treat lepers like any other sick. And in 10 years most of them have completely recovered. Those who had the disease went too far were transferred to the very hospital of St. Barbara, from where the first transport with biological weapons against the Turks once left.
Mikhail ROMASHKO