"In memory of the fallen in armed struggle to defend the motherland"

Much Greek blood has been shed in the name of freedom and Karitsiotes have contributed their just dues in all the national struggles from the revolution of 1821 to more recent times.

Local folklore recounts hideous episodes of unsurpassed bravery and horror. In 1825 forays by detachments led by Imbraim Pasha were intent on annihilating and terrorising Laconian people and destroying their land.  They slaughtered, captured young men and women and torched villages and hovels in their path. 

On the morning of Friday 11 September 1825, one day before Geraki was burned and Vrondamas was engulfed in flames, only four days before the Holocaust of Paliomonastiro, a fierce battled between Imbraim's troops and Kolokotroni fighters was waged on a peak opposite Agios Yannis.  Many Turks were killed.  Since then the locals call that area "Mnimata", (meaning Graves) because the Turks are very likely to have buried their fallen there.  It is said that Karitsiotes also joined in that battle.  One of their dead was actually carried on a rigged up stretcher back to the village for burial.

Panic-stricken Karitsiotes sought refuge in the thickly wooded forest of Tsouka opposite the village from where that afternoon they watched in horror as Imbraim's forces set their houses alight.  Soon the forest around them was also in flames.  It is reported that a Georgakis Tsembelis and Irini, possibly his wife, were captured and killed in enemy hands.  It is also said that on Tsouka the Turks captured, raped and in the end killed two other young women from the Tsembelis family. Official records held to this day at the national archives, however, present a different version.  They have recorded that the wife of Georgaki Tsembelis, Irini, and the wife of Konstandi Tsembelis, her first name not known, along with nine other women and girls from Karitsa were captured by Imbraim's forces.  They were then taken to a prisoner of war camp in Messinia and from there loaded onto ships and transported to the Middle East for the slave trade.  Here we present their names, in alphabetical order, exactly as they were documented in the original records: