Mando Dalianis

Who is Mando Dalianis?

Mando Adamandia Dalianis-Karambatzaki was born in Asia Minor in the Ottoman Empire, outside Prussa, today's Bursa, in what today is western Turkey. She fled as a two-year-old child during the Minor Asia Catastrophe in 1922 with her parents to Thessaloniki and Greece, where she grew up. She was a very diligent student both in elementary school and in high school. Mando wanted to study medicine and applied to the School of Medicine in Athens, which was the only place in Greece that had medicine at that time. Mando was admitted to the school in 1938, but due to the German occupation of 1941–1944 her studies were delayed and she finalized her studies in medicine in 1946 and became a physician. In September 1945, she married Dimitris Dalianis, also physician that she had met during her medical studies at Sotiria Hospital in Athens.

After the Second World War and during the following the Greek Civil War in 1946-1949 she was accused for illegal left wing activities and was arrested and on April 13, 1949 put in the Averoff prison in Athens. The Averoff prison was a women's prison where women were allowed to bring their children if they were below two years old.