Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
He called me one morning when my article about the bombing of the Athalassa Psychiatric Hospital was published in the POLITIS newspaper and he sounded upset… He wanted to correct something: It was very important for him to stress that no, there were no anti-aircraft guns on top of the hospital… He had been a nurse in the hospital but not any nurse, someone responsible together with his wife and he invited me to his house to speak in detail. I would get a taxi in the following days and go to his house at Aglandjia to meet Kypros Dimosthenous and his wife Elli or rather "Lilly" as they had called her…
We would sit and talk in their lovely house and he and Lilly would tell me the tragic story of the Athalassa Psychiatric Hospital – how it was bombed by Turkish war planes on the 20th of July 1974 from around 9 o'clock in the morning till about 13.30 and how 31 patients died, how others wounded, how he had to collect the pieces of bodies since a big bomb fell in one of the wards, killing everyone and tearing them to pieces and how he would bury them in the crater in the middle of the ward, created by the bomb…
Born in 1940, Kypros Dimosthenous was from Nicosia – he lived all his life in the area of Aglandjia except when he had gone to London to study… He had five sisters and himself, the only son of the family… When he graduated from high school in 1957, a pharmacist friend of his had told him to join the nursing sector since at that time the government was paying better wages than the private sector. So he chose nursing and in 1958 he would be sent to England to study in the school of nursing for three years… He would stay on some more to make some money in order to be able to come back and he would come back to Cyprus in 1962… On his return, he would be employed at the Nicosia Psychiatric Hospital. At that time this hospital was next to the Hilton Hotel and would stay there until 1964. In 1964 the Athalassa Psychiatric Hospital would be built and they would move there in August 1964.
Until 1974, the patients were from all communities: Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Armenian Cypriots, Maronite Cypriots were all being treated in the same hospital – they had around 900 patients! Until 1963, there were also Turkish Cypriot nurses working together and in one night, after the conflict of 1963 December, they would stop coming anymore… But he still remembers Djihan, Sarper, Lutfi, Baykan, Fikriye, Ayshe, Servet and Seval… These had been the nurses working with them.
Although the nurses stopped coming, the Turkish Cypriot patients remained in the hospital until 1974…
When the coup happened he had to have a pass to be able to travel since roads were dangerous at that time… His children had measles so his wife Lilly was at home and he had stayed in the hospital until Friday evening until 19.00 on the 19th of July 1974 when he went home to see his family… He would see them and return but on the 20th of July 1974 at 5 o'clock in the morning they would call him from the hospital – those on duty in the hospital had seen Turkish war planes making rounds over the hospital in the morning and had called him to come. Because he had studied in England, Kypros Dimosthenous had a high position in the hospital… At that time they had more than 500 patients… Most of their patients were old and had been staying in the hospital for a long time – they were practically living in the hospital…
"When we wanted to send them home to their villages, some of them refused that since the hospital had become their home – they were living there for many years – there were many people like that…"
Some families did not want their own patients back because they did not want to accept that such an illness had existed in their families and they did not want anyone to know that. So some patients had no place to return to… The hospital was also in a way a place of rehabilitation for them…
So Kypros Dimosthenous went back to the hospital at 5 o'clock on the 20th of July 1974. When he went there, he would see the Turkish war planes coming from the direction of Strovolos-Latsia towards the hospital and flying over the hospital.
He remembers what happened next:
"In the beginning I had told the nurses not to take the patients out of their wards… We wanted to keep them safe in their wards – but before I had given that order, since the doors had been open, some patients had wandered out to the yard of the hospital… The nurses were trying to take them back in… In the beginning the Turkish war planes started firing with machine guns… So they were firing before the bombing started. I saw one of our patients, a big guy being shot due to the gun fire from the planes – he had six or seven bullet wounds on his back… While walking in the yard, he had been shot by the planes and fell down and died… So we gathered all our patients in the wards and locked them in for their own safety. When no one was in the yard, the Turkish war planes started bombing… Ward 35 and ward 4 and 5 were targets of the bombs. These were separate buildings… Ward number 1 was completely destroyed and all our patients who died had been in that ward… More than 30 of our patients had died there… They had thrown a very big bomb in the centre of the ward and this had destroyed the ward. Ward 39 was also a target – this had been a women's ward. When the bombing started what could we do? Nothing… We were only trying to protect ourselves. I was outside in the middle of the yard – there were some bushes and I sat down there – this was around 9 o'clock. When I had gone to the hospital, I had told the nurses I would be at the Ward 35 and had told them "Don't leave the patients to go outside…" As I was sitting there one of our staff had started shouting out in the yard saying "They killed me!" – so I would get up and see what had happened… When Turkish war planes had opened fire, a piece of brick from the wall that was hit had flown and hit his leg and he was bleeding… He had thought he was hit and was shouting. I would take him on my shoulders and bring him to ward 11 which was the farthest for first aid by nurses.
When I went out, the bombing had started and I would sit down behind some bushes… I could not move left or right… I had to stay there for a couple of hours. When things quietened down and I went back to my office, I would see a big hole opened by a bomb that fell where I had been sitting! If I stayed in, I would definitely die… The bombing had stopped around 13.30… As I had told you there were no anti-aircraft guns on the roofs of the wards – they had the shape of the roofs of the houses and were of asbestos… And while building this hospital in 1964, red crosses were painted on these roofs so it would be understood that these were hospital roofs… All of the buildings of the hospital had these red crosses on their roofs. There was not much personnel either – in each ward, there was one or two nurses and they were busy keeping people inside… The Athalassa military camp at the back of the hospital was almost empty because soldiers had been sent here and there…
After the bombing stopped we sat a few hours more and at around 15.00 we went to see the damage done to the hospital. We saw that ward number one was completely destroyed. There was a huge crater in the centre of the ward, created by the bomb.
The hole was as high as a room – they would tell us that this was a big bomb of 500 libres.
We took some patients and some nurses and together, we started collecting the pieces of bodies of our patients who had been torn apart by the bomb. Almost everyone had died in this bombing and their bodies torn to pieces. We could only recognise them from their heads. It was the only way. "This head belongs to this and that head belongs to that person…" So we made a list of the people who died in the bombing. We had our own first aid section to treat the wounded. We carried the wounded patients to wards next to the road. These wards were not damaged. The war planes had bombed the wards at the back, towards the forest. There were seven wards and two blocks of offices next to the road, in the front. We also had a theatre. These were not bombed – the planes had passed over them and bombed the buildings at the back. We carried all the patients to these front wards and treated all those wounded in one ward. The only person who had died in the hospital that had been buried afterwards in Lakatamia was a nurse. We had given his body to his relatives in Lakatamia… All our patients who had died in the bombing, we buried them in the crater of the bomb outside ward number 5. I buried them myself… How did I feel? I felt sad but what could I do? For many years, I was sleeping and I was seeing these in my dreams. We could never imagine that such a thing could happen to our hospital… After this incident, I worked 23 years more in the hospital and retired in 1997. After I retired, I never went back inside this hospital. Because I did not want to remember what we lived through in there, back in 1974… We had buried them without any religious ceremony, without any priest or anything. I was collecting pieces of bodies and putting them in the crater… I would put them in sheets and would put this in the crater… It was as though we were burying animals – it was horrible – it was the summer, the smell was overwhelming, you could not even go near – we would collect, wrap them in sheets and thrown them in the crater… We had an old nurse who passed away a few years ago. He would go to Latsia and find someone with a shiro to come and put some soil over the people we had buried. It was horrible to bury people without a prayer. We had buried Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots, Armenian Cypriots together in that crater, both men and women…"
Kypros's wife, Lilly who had also studied nursing in England and who also worked in the hospital until she retired would have goose bumps when on duty at night and when she had to pass next to this burial site in the yard of the hospital…
"I would feel strange when I would pass near this burial site since I knew that people had been buried there. We told many people many times to do something but no one came and no one showed any interest. I feel very sorry that they had been buried there without any funeral and without any ceremony. My husband had planted trees around it in order to remember them…"
Kypros says, "Our patients were our second family… So many years passed since I retired but if I go to any village and if there is an old patient he would come and hug me and kiss me and would want to sit and drink or eat something. They love us because they too were our family… All our patients were like that with us… Because we loved them… Not like what it is now because now people have changed… In those times we spent more time in the hospital than at home. Just to help patients, I would work at least ten hours instead of seven… But now, I don't know, people are different now…"
I thank Kypros Dimosthenous and Lilly Dimosthenous for giving me the opportunity to put the record straight and to learn what actually happened in the Athalassa Psychiatric Hospital… Let us hope that soon there would be digging and the remains of the 31 patients – three of them Turkish Cypriots – buried in the bomb crater would be exhumed in order to have proper burials and proper graves… May they all rest in peace…
24.6.2017
Photo: With Kypros and Lilly Dimosthenis…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of July 2017, Sunday. An extended version of this interview was published on my pages entitled "Cyprus: The Untold Stories" in Turkish in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on 12, 13, 14 and 15 June, 2017 and here are the links:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kogustaki-hemen-herkes-oldurulmus-ve-bedenleri-parcalanmisti-onlari-ancak-baslarinda-10810yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/birinci-kogus-yok-edilmisti-buyuk-bir-bombaydi-cunku-birinci-kogusa-atilan-olen-butu-10816yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kogusun-tam-ortasinda-cok-buyuk-bir-krater-vardi-3-10821yy.htm
http://www.yeniduzen.com/ceset-parcalarini-toplayip-o-cukura-koyuyordum-parca-parcaydilar-4-10827yy.htm
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