of Navarone by Alistair MacLean was contextually based on the Battle of Leros. Post-war history After the Germans evacuated the island, Leros came under British administration until 7 March 1948 when Leros, together with the other Dodecanese Islands, was united with Greece. During the post-war years, the Greek government utilized numerous buildings in Leros for various reasons. In 1959, the mental hospital of Leros was founded in Lepida. During the junta of the Colonels, the island was used as a place of internal exile for political dissenters, with old Italian barracks of the island used as an internment camp. During the dictatorship period of Greece (1967-1974), 4,000 political prisoners were exiled in the same spaces of the mental hospital which were used as a concentration camp. In 1989, Leros came to Europe-wide attention as a result of a scandal involving embezzlement of funds and the maltreatment of about 3,000 mental patients at the mental hospital on the island. Funding from the government led to a rapid and substantial improvement in conditions. A June 2009 BBC report suggests these improvements have not all been sustained. In December 2015, during the European migration crisis, the Greek Government along with the Alternate Migration Policy Minister (Ioannis Mouzalas) and the Mayor of Leros (Michalis Kolias), decided to build a refugees’ reception centre. The camp is termed a “hotspot” and is able to shelter up to 1,000 individuals. The presence of asylum-seekers on Leros is controversial. Greek locals have attacked and harassed asylum-seekers and humanitarian aid workers alike. The hotspot of Leros is located near the mental hospital which has been internationally known as “Europe's guilty secret”, as coined in an Observer article. In the same space of Lepida (after almost 15 years of implementing deinstitutionalisation programmes financed by EU), about 200 patients are still accommodated in small rehabilitation structures. Notable people Demodocus of Leros, a sixth-century BC gnomic poet Pherecydes of Leros Georgios Roussos, lawyer and politician Totis Filakouris, footballer for Panathinaikos during the years 1965–1975 Olympia Karagiorgia, poet and conservation activist Ourania Rebouli, a marathon runner at the 2016 Olympics Emmanuel Staravero (1819–1872), Greek bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople See also List of islands of Greece References Hans Peter Eisenbach (2009) Fronteinsätze eines Stuka-Fliegers, Mittelmeer und Ostfront 1943–1944. Germany Helios Verlag . 18,50 €uro. The book describes exactly the Stuka missions of I. StG 3 against Leros and Samos and against