On April 13, 1822, Ottoman forces overran Naousa in northern Greece and carried out one of the most brutal episodes of t...

On April 13, 1822, Ottoman forces overran Naousa in northern Greece and carried out one of the most brutal episodes of the Greek War of Independence. In the massacre that followed, 409 men were killed and more than 400 women and children were enslaved. Two Greek Christian women who refused to convert to Islam were subjected to particular cruelty. The wife of captain Zafeirakis was seized, smeared with honey, and left exposed to wasp stings and the abuse of passersby. She was then built into a wall up to her neck inside the church of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, where crowds gathered for days to curse her and beat her exposed head with sticks. She never renounced her faith. Her martyrdom lasted five days, and she died when a passing woman struck her with a large stone. Her body was thrown into the sea. The second woman, Maria, was placed alive inside a sack with deadly snakes after refusing conversion. French historian Pouqueville, who witnessed the aftermath firsthand, wrote that many women were put up to the neck in sacks with cats, snakes, and mice. The historian Eustathios Stougiannakis recorded that Maria prayed until her final moment, invoking God and the Virgin as the venom took her life. Her body was also cast into the sea. The Naousa massacre took place 204 years ago this month. It remains one of the documented atrocities of the Ottoman campaign to suppress the Greek uprising of 1821. The courage of these two women, who died rather than abandon their faith, was recorded by eyewitnesses and historians alike. #Naousa #GreekRevolution #NeverForgotten