"The cowards who betray patriots to the Huns, out of fear of death, should know that we have set a trap for them, that they are condemned, and at the first opportunity, they will be exterminated like animals." With these words, L'Humanité, the official publication of the French Communist Party (PCF), called in April 1942 for French resistance fighters to take acts of revenge. In cities occupied by the Axis, communist organizations systematically cultivated mass disobedience to the occupying authority.

In Athens and Piraeus, the rapid growth of the EAM, based on an extensive organizational network, fueled the anti-occupation sentiment of the people, leading them to a complete break with the occupation regime. The intensification of Nazi terrorism, combined with the political polarization that peaked during the last phase of the Occupation (1943-1944), led to a bloody cycle of executions, open battles, and murders in the center and neighborhoods of the capital between the Greek-speaking occupation forces (Gendarmerie, Security, Evzones Battalions) and the "urban guerrillas" of ELAS and OKLA, who were called upon to openly safeguard the EAM and party organizations, while also taking on "secret" tasks of intelligence, espionage, and extermination of members of the occupation mechanism.

The operation and actions of this "iron arm of the party" is one of the last unknown pages of occupation history and is being put under the microscope of systematic historical research for the first time. For the first time, the structure, the individuals, and the practices of OKLA, the militia of ELAS that had taken on the duty to execute collaborators of the occupier and those Greek citizens deemed traitors in the eyes of the communist party, come to light.

This case was a complex phenomenon inextricably linked to national liberation-social demands within the stifling occupation framework in which the Security Battalions also operated. It is not coincidental that it has been shrouded in a silence that continues to this day. (Manolis Pimplis, "Ta Nea", Vivliodromio, 31/3/2012)