On December 13, one of the most heinous war crimes of Nazi Germany took place during the occupation in Greece. The Wehrmacht forces execute all the men of Kalavrita, in retaliation for the execution of captured German soldiers by ELAS. Such extremes had increased in the last year of the occupation, in the face of concern for a possible defeat but also because of the loudest resistance action.
On October 20, 1943, the Germans will be defeated by ELAS at the battle of Kerpini. Many Germans are killed, while ELAS will hold 78 men captive. The Nazis decided to implement the "Operation Kalavrita", in order to encircle and exterminate the guerrillas in the mountainous area of Kalavrita. The mission was undertaken by the 117th Expeditionary Division led by Lieutenant General Carl von Le Zuir.
When the lieutenant general was informed of the deaths of the 78 prisoners, he ordered the harshest retaliation, even against civilians. The "Operation Kalavrita" began on December 4, with Nazi forces flocking to Kalavrita from all over the northwestern Peloponnese. In their raid, they burned monasteries and entire villages, while killing civilians and monks.
They arrived in Kalavrita five days later. After reassuring the residents that they would not be harmed and that their goal was to find the guerrillas, they started setting fire to guerrilla houses, to persuade even those who left the village to return. But on December 13, they decided to write one of the darkest pages in the history of Greece…
That morning, the Germans gathered all the men of the village outside it and locked all the women and children under 14 in the school. With bursts of gunfire, the Germans executed the assembled men, who numbered 800. Only 13 of them survived, and they did so because they were covered by the corpses of their fellow citizens. Later the Germans burned almost all the houses in the village.
The women and children were literally saved by a miracle, as an Austrian was found among the soldiers, who opened the door of the school and facilitated their removal. However, he was also punished for this act, as he was sentenced to death and executed. The total losses during the "Operation Kalavrita" reached 1.101 dead, while 1.000 houses were burned and 260.000.000 drachmas were confiscated.
No one has ever been convicted of this crime. Lieutenant General Le Zouir died 11 years later while being held captive by the Soviets. Only the occupying Greek military commander, General Helmut Felmi, was sentenced in 1948 to 15 years by the Nuremberg Tribunal for the Third Reich war crimes in Greece, but was released three years later.
In 2000, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Johannes Rau, visited Kalavrita and expressed his deep regret over the tragedy, but did not take responsibility as a German state and, of course, without talking about war reparations.
The monument of the fallen in Kalavrita
