The history of Spinalonga - the story of suffering and massive love

For decades after the 1957 closure of the leper colony, little was known about the island. The Greek government, anxious to erase any trace of the colony’s existence, burned all its files. And the surviving lepers refused to speak of their experiences. For years it was as if Spinalonga had never existed.

It all changed in 2005 after Victoria Hislop’s novel "The Island" was published.

I heard about the island last year when we had a chance to see the beautiful Mirabello Bay

swam in Agios Nicolaos with such a view

and visited nearby villages. Then in Plaka I bought the book signed by the author and decided to come back next year after the reading.

And my wished came true. I visited the island with my Family and Friends this year. It was just after the Greek wedding so although the heat, we were full of uplifting feelings like joy, gratitude, serenity, hope and happiness. All these helped us face with the spirits of the past inhabitants and go through the black tunnel leading to the interior of a place which used to be symbol of suffering, loneliness and death.

 Thanks to the book of Victoria Hislop, I knew that though Spinalongians lived in a frantic state of sadness and fear, there wasn't only despair and thinking of survival.

There was LIFE in the Island of Lepers.

The streets with the stones remembering the Venetians times

and the abononed houses

witnessed so much.

However, as a highly sensitive person, I had the courage to visit only one of the two churches on the island. Here is the photo from the Church of Joy...

The other one - the Church of Tears, where the funerals used to take place, left only in my imagination.

In her book Victoria Hislop writes a lot about the determination and courage of the island's dwellers. Especially, when the group of Athenians lepers were sent to Spinalonga. Among them was the lawyer Remoundakis. He formed the Brotherhood of the Sick of Spinalonga, a society dedicated to improving conditions on the island. They also fought for the right to marry and to operate businesses.

It's interesting that one of the Brotherhood’s most important rules was a ban on mirrors; no-one wished to see themselves.  

The Brotherhood made that Spinalonga started to hum with new life and energy. Its newspaper The Spinalonga Star carried digest of world news, the opinions, the reviews of latest films and important books. 

In the book Hislop mentiones that when the Cretan writer - Kazantzakis - was awarded with the World Peace Award the newspaper published his speech:

"If we do not want to allow the world to sink into chaos, we must release the love which is trapped in the heart of all humans".

I left the island with a lot of good feelings. But also with the belief that as long as people have determination to struggle every day with their weaknesses,   they prove that love is stronger than death.

In the photo you can see from the distance the Church of Tears. That's the litle building with the dome in the corner edge of the walls. Saddness and happiness, tears and laughter - that's LIFE.