Original subtitles

[narrator] In Alabama,

the pride of a community

that was born out of a harsh reality.

At the time when people were struggling for freedom in this country,

this building stood as a beacon of hope.

[narrator] A lavish complex in Lebanon,

embroiled in an unexpected tragedy.

You had every component of a bomb just sitting there

waiting for the spark that would ignite it.

[narrator] And in Greece, an unforgiving institution

for the country's ambitious elite.

[Rob Bell] It looks like a paradise,

but this place was designed to toughen you up.

[theme music playing]

[narrator] Decaying relics...

Ruins of lost worlds...

Sites haunted by the past...

Their secrets waiting...

to be revealed.

In Tunisia, a hostile landscape

disguises remnants of a fateful confrontation.

[Dr. Onyeka Nubia] Dug into the ground are structures

that seem at one with the landscape

until you get closer to them.

Are they medieval?

Are they modern?

Who has made them?

[Dr. Lynette Nusbacher] This facility has clearly been stripped off

everything of value.

All that's left

is the echoing space,

and the concrete structures.

[narrator] A complex, buried high on the hillside,

reveals who once occupied this site.

If you look up you will see

very clearly painted exactly who was here.

[narrator] From this subterranean outpost in Africa,

plans were hatched that could've decided the fate of Europe

and the Allied forces.

The natural advantages of this piece of terrain

mean that nobody can get through here.

[Sascha Auerbach] Overcoming this required

the invention of an entirely new type of warfare

conducted by a ragtag group of rogues who called themselves

the Pirates of the High Desert.

[narrator] Major Mohamed Mars

has served in the Tunisian Army for over 20 years.

He's spent a decade uncovering the secrets of these remote structures.

[interpreter] This building's made of reinforced concrete.

It's more than three-feet thick.

[Major Mars speaking other language]

[interpreter] The roof is camouflaged,

so it can't be detected by the enemy.

[narrator] This site's construction began in 1936

against an unexpected enemy.

[Dr. Nusbacher] In the early 20th century,

Tunisia was part of the French Empire.

[Dr. Nubia] The French were concerned

about the Italian influence in Africa.

Libya had fallen under the authoritarian power

of the dictators in Italy,

and they felt that Tunisia was next.

[narrator] The French solution was this,

the Mareth Line,

a 22-mile-long heavily-armed chain of bunkers

designed to protect Tunisia

against an Italian invasion from neighboring Libya.

[Auerbach] Bound on either side by natural obstacles

these fortifications formed an impenetrable wall.

It was the perfect place to stage a defense.

[narrator] Yet it wasn't an attack on the Mareth Line

that the French should've feared.

The real threat was closer to home.

[Auerbach] Germany's blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940

led to the installation of pro-Nazi government

in both the French North African colonies and in France itself.

[narrator] German-led Axis forces

swiftly took control of much of North Africa,

including Libya and Tunisia.

The region's strategic importance

would soon make it a key battleground

in the world's deadliest conflict.

[Dr. Nusbacher] It is a small step

across the narrowest bit of the Mediterranean Sea

to Sicily, and you're on Italian soil.

Once you can fight

the Italians and the Germans in Italy,

you can fight the Italians and Germans in Germany.

Winning the war in Tunisia

is the first step

to winning the war in Europe.

[Auerbach] In 1942 the British launched

an invasion of North Africa.

Churchill appointed Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery,

known as Monty, to lead it.

Americans landed in Morocco and Algeria to the west of Tunisia,

while British forces pushed in from Egypt to the East,

trapping the Germans in a pincer movement in Tunisia.

[narrator] But the heavily fortified Mareth Line

now stood in the way of Allied victory.

Nazi commander Erwin Rommel

was tasked with stopping them.

[Dr. Nubia] Rommel was determined

that the Mareth Line would be defended

with the belief that so long as he held the Mareth line,

then Tunisia would never fall to the Allies.

He massively reinforced the Line adding and placement

of pillbox and machine guns on either side.

He also added a five-mile-wide minefield

that ran for the entirety of its length.

[Dr. Nusbacher] Attacking this line of fortifications

would have to be done at great cost,

paying a price in blood.

[narrator] Even then, there was no guarantee

a head-on assault would succeed.

British commander Montgomery

knew the only way to defeat the Nazis

was to find a way around the Mareth Line.

[Auerbach] But to get to it he had to move

thousands of troops and vehicles

across 20 miles of treacherous mountainous terrain

and then a hundred miles of trackless desert,

that was deemed impossible to penetrate.

[narrator] It was a huge gamble,

and something no one, including the Germans thought possible.

But Montgomery already had a secret mission underway,

one he set in motion months earlier.

The solution came with this new British special forces

that were actually going to change the face of warfare.

[narrator] In Tunisia

the Nazi-controlled Mareth Line

stood in the way of Allied victory in North Africa.

But British commander Bernard Montgomery

had a secret weapon.

A covert ops team of soldiers,

called the Long Range Desert Group

originally led by maverick military engineer Ralph Bagnold.

Bagnold was a brilliant geologist,

an amateur archaeologist,

Royals Signals Officer.

He was one of the British desert lovers,

like Lawrence of Arabia.

[Auerbach] Bagnold had spent the '30s

pioneering new ways of getting around the desert,

by four-wheel-drive vehicles

that could move heavy equipment through the shifting sands.

[Dr. Nusbacher] Bagnold formed the core of the units

who know how to work with the desert

rather than to have to fight against the desert environment.

They can go places no one ever expect them to be.

[narrator] On Montgomery's orders,

they set out deep behind enemy lines

in specially modified off-road trucks

to find a route around the Mareth Line.

[Auerbach] The LRDG probed the mountains and out into the desert,

looking for a route that would allow the Allies

to avoid the Mareth Line and outflank the Germans.

[narrator] After weeks of searching,

they manage to chart a navigable course.

Armed with this vital information,

Montgomery launched a two-pronged attack.

[Dr. Nusbacher] So, the British Army pins down

Rommel's troops in the Mareth Line,

another chunk of the British Army sneak through the desert,

finds their way assisted by the Long Range Desert Group

and deliver a sharp left hook

to the German Army.

[narrator] But victory was far from certain.

Two weeks of hellish fighting followed,

before the British finally overpowered the Mareth Line,

paving the way for victory in North Africa.

Tunisia was fundamental

to the North African campaign

and the North Africa campaign was fundamental to the success

of the Second World War.

Montgomery said that without the probing of the Long Range Desert Group

then his attack would have been a leap in the dark.

[upbeat music playing]

[narrator] At the end of the battle for the Mareth Line,

its bunkers were disarmed

and decommissioned.

The now empty structures were left to decay.

[Dr. Nubia] In the 1990s, a museum opened where we can all learn

about what happened here during the Second World War.

[narrator] In Lebanon's capital city,

an elegant structure sticks out

from the high-rises that surround it.

[Prof. Michele Mitchell] Beirut can be a city of noise and commotion.

But tucked away on the center of it all is something of an oasis.

[Dr. Katherine Landdeck] When you turn on to this street,

the architecture of the space is drastically different

than everything around it.

You walk into this house and it's very elaborate,

it's very beautiful.

It has marble floors, beautiful ceilings.

These were clearly built by and for, the city's elite.

[narrator] Yet the faded opulence

hides the hallmarks of a traumatic event.

[Auerbach] Everywhere you look, you start to notice damage.

The great windows at the back of the building are missing entirely.

It's like someone has reconstructed

the whole segments of the outside wall

but never bothered to paint it.

[Dr. Landdeck] This level of devastation and destruction

doesn't happen overtime.

Something very quick and violent has happened here.

It was a normal day. The weather was fantastic,

and all of a sudden there was a huge circle,

just like a nuclear bomb over this area.

[Dr. Landdeck] People had to evacuate immediately.

The city was collapsing around them.

[Eli Khoury] I've been through wars,

I've been through civil unrest,

I've never ever seen something like that.

[upbeat music playing]

[narrator] Eli Khoury co-owns this building.

When he and his business partners

first decided to make this the headquarters

for their media company,

it had been neglected for years.

I'm the type that always wants to dream big.

When we moved in, which was in 2010,

well, it was in shambles.

Cost roughly about four to five million dollars to fix it.

Believe me, it was funny

because people didn't want to go home.

I mean, they wanted to stay here,

work late,

every Friday we used to do,

like, an in-house sort of little party.

[narrator] But this building was not always used as an office.

It began life over a century earlier,

as a glamorous private residence.

More than once, it was a victim

of the country's turbulent past.

[Prof. Mitchell] In 18th and 19th century Beirut,

the aristocracy was formed

by prominent Christian families

that held massive wealth and power in Lebanon.

[Auerbach] They built these palatial homes

in the style of European villas.

[narrator] This one is called Villa Mokbel.

[Dr. Landdeck] At one point there are about

30 of these palaces on the street.

[Auerbach] But few of these palazzos would escape the chaos

that descended on Beirut in the 1970s.

[Prof. Mitchell] Civil war broke out and some of

the heaviest fighting's took place here,

right in the heart of the city.

[Auerbach] As rival militias fought for control,

these buildings would suffer

from artillery strikes and looting.

[narrator] Villa Mokbel was one of those caught in the conflict's crossfire.

At the end of the war in 1990,

the derelict battle-scarred mansion

changed ownership a number of times,

until Eli stepped in to transform it.

But little did he know

Beirut was once again

headed for disaster.

[Khoury] Rubble on the streets,

ash, smoke,

people with blood, crying.

That day would make headlines the world over,

and headlines of the worst possible kind.

[narrator] In Beirut,

August fourth, 2020,

started like any other day for Eli Khoury

and his 40 employees.

That, would soon change.

I came here with my colleague.

We are both talking on the phone,

and just looking at the port,

looking at sky,

and then the whole thing happened.

[man] Oh, my God!

[Khoury] The scene I saw, it was incredible.

That actually went through the buildings as if they were linked.

This is when my colleague and I,

he pushed me,

so we jump on the floor.

The lady that was on that balcony

actually flew all the way to that end,

and she fell unconscious,

uh, unfortunately.

[narrator] The blast Eli witnessed destroyed 77,000 homes,

and caused $15 billion worth of damage.

The chain of events that led to this disaster,

was set in motion seven years earlier.

[Dr. Landdeck] In 2013 a Russian-owned ship

the MV Rhosus,

made an unscheduled stop in the Port of Beirut.

Port authorities inspected the ship,

and they did not like what they found.

[narrator] They discovered

that the ship's hull was leaking

and water was constantly being pumped out to keep it afloat.

They decided very quickly that this ship was unsafe to continue its journey,

and grounded them there in the Port of Beirut.

[narrator] The ship's Russian owner

refused to pay the mounting port bills

and shortly after mysteriously vanished.

The ship's cargo was unloaded,

and stuffed into a warehouse, right there, at the port.

[Auerbach] What was offloaded,

was a potentially deadly cargo,

2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate,

a volatile compound that is used in fertilizer,

but can also be employed to make explosives.

The cargo sat there in hangar 12 for years, completely neglected.

[narrator] Customs officials at the port

sent multiple letters

to government lawyers in Beirut,

pleading for the volatile payload to be removed.

Every request was ignored.

[Auerbach] In the weeks leading up to the disaster

even the prime minister and president

were warned of the potential dangers of the situation.

Despite wide knowledge of the safety risk,

nobody took any action.

[narrator] But there was an even bigger problem.

[Auerbach] The ammonium nitrate

was stored in bags that were spilling,

and it was stored with

kerosene, hydrochloric acid,

and 15 tons of fireworks.

[Dr. Landdeck] When you put

all of these materials together

you've essentially got the makings of a giant bomb.

All that was missing now was a spark.

[narrator] That spark came on August 4th,

when an unexplained fire broke out.

It was thought to have originated

at the north end of hangar 12,

and then spread quickly across the warehouse.

[Auerbach] Fireworks stored nearby discharged,

and hangar 12 goes up in a ball of flame.

Seconds later

the ammonium nitrate detonates

in a blinding enormous explosion.

[man] Oh, my God!

[indistinct shouting]

This creates a shockwave that goes across the city,

breaks out windows, knocks down buildings,

blows people over.

We went out. We start seeing people with blood all over.

It was a scene from the worst World War II movie I've ever seen.

Over 200 people died,

you know, hundreds of thousands are homeless.

[Khoury] One of the most saddening moment

was watching a lady coming down from her apartment

with a dead baby in her hands.

It was incredible.

Remarkably, we had 41 injured

but thank God no one died.

[narrator] Like many of the buildings in the blast radius,

Villa Mokbel was shattered into pieces,

and needed emergency stabilization to keep it standing.

Today, it remains in ruins,

until Eli can raise the funds to restore it.

[Khoury] If I were to fix it again,

it will cost between two to three million dollars.

If things get better we would wanna come back to this office

because it was beautiful to work out of here.

[dramatic music playing]

[Auerbach] In the aftermath of the explosion

an investigation was launched,

but any attempt to hold

particular government officials accountable

has been blocked on multiple occasions.

[narrator] For the people of Beirut,

the long wait for justice continues.

[Khoury] The country is going through, real, real tough stuff now.

It's actually, uh,

a tough job to be Lebanese.

It's not an easy job.

[narrator] In Downtown Birmingham, Alabama,

is an imposing structure that played a part

in one of America's greatest times of change.

[Jim Meigs] Standing alone like a monolith

is this very dramatic seven-story building.

It might be a former department store

or an office block.

It's just so vast, what can it be used for?

On the upper level are long corridors

with fading business signs,

for lawyers, doctors and dentists.

What I'd say it's been long since

anyone sat inside of those chairs.

It's almost as if the people left

in a great hurry.

[narrator] Further exploration reveals there's much more

to this sight that meets the eye.

The whole second floor is dominated

by this enormous ballroom,

with balconies and a stage.

This was a place for big public meetings of some sort.

[narrator] Discarded paraphernalia hints an ominous agenda.

[Prof. Mitchell] There are strange symbols,

a coffin and a throne-like seating.

It all feels sort of ritualistic.

[narrator] Yet looks can be deceiving,

and not all is what it seems.

[Dr. Nubia] It was a place where people organized

to make sure that democracy

was for all of the American citizens.

[narrator] In Downtown Birmingham, Alabama,

is a grand century-old structure.

Today, Corey Hawkins heads up the group

that was originally behind its construction.

[Corey D. Hawkins Sr.] It was the, the place,

that African Americans were proud of,

and whether they are member of the organization or not,

this was their building.

[narrator] That organization is one, often shrouded in secrecy.

[Hawkins Sr.] We have been accused of being a cult,

which is not true,

being a part of the illuminati.

I am a fourth generation mason.

[Prof. Mitchell] In simple terms,

the freemasons are a male, social

and philanthropic organization,

and its origins date back to medieval Europe,

and the guilds of stonemasons.

[Meigs] Through his career a mason would move up

from being a, an apprentice

to a joinery man to eventually a master mason.

And at each level they were taught

secret code words and handshakes.

[Prof. Mitchell] That way stonemasons made their way

across Europe to the next job.

Each man would be paid according to his skill level.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] By the mid-1700s the handshakes still remained.

But the society had evolved into a fraternity

no longer connected to the stonemasonry labor force.

Yet there were no lodges for African Americans.

That is until revolutionary war hero Prince Hall

made it his mission to change that.

[Meigs] Prince Hall was an extraordinary man.

Born, raised as a slave in Boston,

by 1770, he had earned his freedom.

[Dr. Nubia] He sought admittance to an established lodge

and was prevented because of his color.

But he wasn't daunted. He continued.

[narrator] Hall realized he had to sidestep

the American masons that denied him access.

Instead, he petitioned

the Duke of Cumberland, in England,

the home of freemasonry,

to ask permission to start his own lodge.

[Prof. Mitchell] A charter was granted

and the African Lodge No. 459 began.

Many African American Lodges including this one

have descended from Prince Hall's.

[narrator] Fast forward to the early 1900s,

and Birmingham's Prince Hall masons were determined

to build a state headquarters

worthy of their hard-fought history.

You have to remember that

this was the period of Jim Crow laws.

Meaning that segregation was enshrined in law.

[Dr. Nubia] This building therefore was to be

a beacon of hope for those communities.

[narrator] The order raised $720,000 from its members,

and in 1922, construction on the new Masonic Temple.

Two years later, it opened its doors.

[Hawkins Sr.] There's a photo from 1924,

when the masons were congregated here in this room,

uh, at the state-wide meeting.

But this building was much more

than just a headquarters for the masons.

[Dr. Nubia] It was full of excitement and creativity,

businesses, and activities,

designed to uplift the community.

[Hawkins Sr.] For African Americans that was new...

gave people a sense of pride and hope in

what the future holds for our people.

[narrator] Over the next 29 years

the Masonic Temple helped transform

the 4th Avenue District into a thriving business and cultural hub.

But the biggest test was still yet to come.

In the 1960s the long overdue fight

for civil rights was really coming to a boil,

and Birmingham is today synonymous

with the intensity of this fight.

[narrator] In January 1963, Martin Luther King

announced he wanted to lead a demonstration in Birmingham.

It was while he was in the city

to recruit non-violent protestors

for the Birmingham campaign,

that Martin Luther King came to the Masonic Temple.

And there's a photo where he's making a pool shot,

so, that let you know that he was in this building,

and we're proud of that.

King chose Birmingham because of its strong segregation laws,

and because it had officials there, like "Bull" Connor,

who was a symbol of segregation.

[narrator] But Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,

a key civil rights spokesperson in Birmingham,

didn't want to proceed with the protest,

while Connor, the city's public safety officer

and de facto police chief, was still in office.

He believed that if a desegregation accord

was reached with local businesses,

that Connor would actually reverse it

and then reinforce segregation.

[narrator] One way to remove Connor,

was if the City of Birmingham voted to change

how the local government was set up.

J. Mason Davis played a crucial role in making that happen

from his legal practice at the Masonic Temple.

[J. mason Davis] There were four, five lawyers that were in this building

and we were all working towards the same end

of getting City of Birmingham

change from a three-person city commission

to a nine-person city council.

Once the voter voted to change the form of government

that changed the attitude

of all of the people that lived in the city

toward progress by Blacks.

[Prof. Mitchell] Birmingham then held its first mayoral election.

Connor ran but lost,

and with more moderate Albert Boutwell in office

the marches could actually go forward.

On April third, 1963,

the campaign began with lunch counter sit-ins,

a march to City Hall,

and a boycott of downtown businesses.

But towards the end of April things were starting to flag.

It was hard for people to keep going into the streets

and facing that kind of abuse that they were facing.

[narrator] The civil rights campaign in Birmingham

was in danger of falling apart.

It would take a profound leap of faith

to save it.

In the spring of 1963,

the civil rights movement in Birmingham

was beginning to lose momentum.

A new approach brought fresh hope.

Some leaders came up with a pretty radical idea

which was to send the children out

to help lead these protests,

the Children's Crusade.

This is very controversial, obviously

because they were sending these kids into harm's way.

In May, the campaign was reinvigorated

by these young people's presence.

[narrator] But "Bull" Connor,

despite no longer having any real law-making power,

after being ousted by Birmingham's voters,

refused to relinquish control over the city's police force.

He was willing to use the most extreme and vicious methods

to drive these protestors off the streets.

[Dr. Nubia] Over 900 children were arrested,

and then he began to implement

even more draconian measures

involving the use of water canons

and attack dogs.

[dog barking]

I remember looking out the window

and watching the water coming out of those hoses

hitting young people and knocking them down in the street.

Often when protestors were injured,

they didn't go to the hospital,

they came to the Masonic Temple

'cause there were doctors there.

[narrator] Outside, the tide was turning in the fight for equality.

The shocking scenes were enough to spark

both national and international outrage.

[Meigs] Eventually the Attorney General Robert Kennedy

sent a representative down to Birmingham

to try to negotiate a compromise.

And indeed the result of all this was

the effective desegregation of Birmingham.

[Davis] It was very good

because... you knew that

you were making progress,

because in the next year

the Civil Rights Act was passed.

And the next year,

in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed.

[Meigs] That... that was the genius of King's movement

was to make people see for themselves

that this was unfair, that it had to change.

[upbeat music playing]

[Dr. Nubia] For a longtime after the civil rights campaign

this building continued to be popular,

useful, and a center

for this community in this city.

[narrator] But as the years passed the businesses slowly vacated

until the last occupants left in 2011.

Its legacy however is secured,

and there are multi-million dollar plans in progress

to bring it back to life.

[Meigs] As one of his last acts in office,

President Obama signed an executive order

establishing a

Civil Rights National Monument in Birmingham

and it includes protecting the Prince Hall Lodge Masonic Temple.

[narrator] On the Greek island of Spetses,

is a collection of monolithic constructions

intended to mold the country's elite.

[Meigs] Here in this town of red-roof buildings,

we see this compound, very imposing,

large white structures.

They were clearly designed to be stately and impressive

but it's kind of eerily empty.

There's an old basketball court

with the hoop just lying on the ground.

And then what seems like an old gymnasium.

You can still see the wooden climbing frames

along the sides.

It all gives a very ghost-town feel about the place.

[Dominic Selwood] Entering through a broken door

you're greeted by a vast number of chairs and desks

piled precariously on top of each other.

[Bell] Rows of old lockers with doors just hanging open.

Blackboards, I mean, it looks like a school,

but why would you have such a huge

educational facility like this stranded on a tiny island?

[narrator] This complex was built to achieve an ambitious national dream,

but for the people contained within,

it felt more like a prison.

[Bell] This was no five-star luxury resort.

This place was designed to toughen you up.

It was a world-class institution,

with a very serious purpose.

[narrator] Leontios Portokalakis and Panos Karamitsos

met here in the 1960s.

[narrator] Forging strong alliances

was central to this facility's vision.

It was conceived in an era

when Greece was still emerging

from the dark shadow of tyranny.

[Selwood] At the start of the 20th century,

Greece was relatively a young country,

having been ruled for much of the previous 500 years,

by the Ottoman Empire.

[Bell] In a bloody war of independence in the 1820s,

the Greeks had taken back Athens

and many of the surrounding areas.

But much of the mainland and the islands

were still controlled by the Turks.

That all changed when a legendary leader

hailing from Crete took power in 1910.

[Bell] Eleutherios Venizelos, was a young politician

determined to unite all Greeks into one nation.

[narrator] By 1913,

after fighting against the Turks with his Balkan neighbors,

he managed to retake former Greek land.

Then during the First World War,

after siding with the Allies,

he seized back even more.

By 1920,

Greece had doubled in size and population under his leadership.

[Meigs] Venizelos believed that

this reestablished country

with its deep cultural roots

needed a strong, elite, leadership class

who could manage the challenges

that lay ahead,

and he was very aligned

to looking at his allies in Britain

and saying, "Well, how do the British do it?"

[narrator] Venizelos used the centuries old

English boarding school named Eton College

as the blueprint for his vision.

The aim was to educate the future leaders of Greece.

By that time Eton had already produced 15 British prime ministers.

[Meigs] The Duke of Wellington

supposedly said after defeating Napolean,

that the Battle of Waterloo

was won on the playing fields of Eton.

[narrator] For Venizelos, his country's future

depended on realization of this dream.

Yet no one was willing to invest in his idea.

The grand plan looked destined to fail.

He didn't have anywhere near the money

to, to build a school.

[upbeat music playing]

[narrator] In 1920s,

Greek Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos

envisioned building a school for the country's elite.

But no one would fund its construction.

The dream looked to be over,

until an old friend offered him a lifeline.

[Selwood] Sotirios Anargyros

was the wealthiest man in Spetses,

having made a fortune trading tobacco in America.

[Bell] But he offered the cash on one condition

that the school be built on his beloved Spetses.

[narrator] In 1927,

the Anargyrios and Korgialeneios School of Spetses

opened its doors to wealthy families.

[Selwood] It featured five neo-classical buildings,

manicured gardens,

state-of-the-art sports facilities,

and even an amphitheater with breathtaking views out over the sea.

[Meigs] The school brought in noted scholars and educators

to train these young men.

But it also really sought to toughen these kids up.

These might be the spoilt children of the elite

but they wouldn't be spoilt for long.

The school adopted

the harsh discipline system of Eton,

complete with a timetable that kept the boys busy

from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

[narrator] That system included physical punishment

by the teachers

for alleged disorderly behavior.

The boys could be caned for the slightest breach,

for speaking in class to not cleaning their rooms.

[narrator] If that wasn't bad enough,

the students themselves

were forced into a brutal hierarchy.

Older boys who'd earn their rank

were free to dish out punishments

as they saw fit.

[narrator] But the daily curriculum

also included harsh activities intended to build character.

Every morning the boys had to take a plunge

into the cold sea or face punishments.

[narrator] The regime was tough,

but the school's early years

delivered on Venizelos' promise.

In the 1930s, future Greek Prime Minister,

Georgios Rallis was educated there.

[narrator] Yet Rallis would be the only prime minister produced here.

Thirteen years after the school opened,

world events forced it into a radical new era.

[Bell] Greece was devastated by conflict in the 1940s.

First under occupation by the Nazis

and then by a three-year civil war.

With the country in a state of post-war poverty,

parents were less able to afford expensive boarding schools.

[narrator] The school then began to target

a different type of student to keep its doors open.

The school became a little bit like the way some people would send away

a child off to a military academy,

to get straightened out.

[narrator] Panos was one of those children.

[Bell] Confined on this tiny island,

this was almost a school version of the Alcatraz.

[narrator] But the school was running on borrowed time.

As Greek society became more liberal,

the school's conservative approach to education

gradually became less popular.

[Selwood] Student numbers declined in the 1970s.

By 1983 there were only five pupils

attending the massive school.

[Bell] Without enough income

to maintain the extensive facilities,

it was forced to close.

[narrator] Today, Leontios and Panos help run a foundation

which is working to revitalize the facility.

Their goal is to host summer schools,

conferences and academies.

Our task is to make the whole foundation

more popular and attract more seminars.

All of us, we feel very proud,

we lived a part of this vision.

[soft music playing]