Stavros Papoutsakis was born in Meskla (Chania) in 1925. He was active in various divisions of the resistance against national socialist tyranny. He enlisted in the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) at age 18 and participated in numerous battles against the German occupying forces and their Greek co-conspirators (for example, the notorious GFP group led by Friedrich Schubert). In February of 1944, he was arrested and deported to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, where he was put into forced labor at the camps Gusen I and II and Steyr-Münichholz. After his repatriation in September of 1945, he fought in the civil war on the side of the armed forces of the Communist Party, known as the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). Today he lives in his birthplace on Crete and is still working as a farmer at the age of 91.