ESPO
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The ESPO (Ethniko-Socialistike Patriotike Organosis) was created in the summer of 1941 in German-occupied Greece, under the leadership of Dr. Spyros Sterodimas. Its members were ultra-nationalists, national-socialists and/or fascists aiming to help the Axis occupation forces against Communism and Jewry.
One of their main actions was the ransacking the synagogue on Melidoni Street, Athens, by the ESPO's youth section.
Dr. Sterodimas, meanwhile, was recruting Greek youth to create a Greek division of the Waffen SS, but he was murdeded after the Resistance partisans blew up the ESPO's headquarters in central Athens, and the plans were abandoned. During the Day of Atonement services, on September 22, 1942, the Gestapo seized ten prominent Jews in retaliation for this explosion.
