Lambis Englezos, a Greek-born Australian art teacher and amateur historian from Melbourne, has launched a campaign to find the graves of missing Australian soldiers in Greece from the Second World War.
Englezos became known to Australia after the discovery of the bones of 162 Australian soldiers killed on July 19, 1916 during the disastrous Battle of Fromelles of the First World War.
The Australian soldiers were buried by the Germans in mass graves in the region of Fromelles, about 16 kilometers west of Lille, in northern France, the dead’s identities lost.
Englezos’ research in 2008 resulted in discovering the largest military mass grave in Western Europe in decades. He had started to study the Battle of Fromelles and analyze details he collected in order to contribute his part in the establishment of an Association of Relatives and Friends of the Soldiers of World War I.
Now Englezos has started a research in Greece in order to locate the remains of 20 to 25 Australian soldiers who were killed in April 1941 near the village of Vevi, located in the municipal unit of Meliti in Florina regional unit, Macedonia, Greece.
The soldiers were buried by German soldiers at unknown places in the region. Englezos, after describing the regions where the Australian soldiers were lost as well as the existing information received from eyewitnesses, stated: “We are obliged to find them and bury them properly as all people deserve”.
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