The unknown story of the Massacre of Kerdyllia

In the autumn of 1941, the villages of Ano and Kato Kerdyllia, 2 tiny settlements successful the prefecture of Serres, were wiped disconnected the map. Two 100 thirty-eight men betwixt the ages of 15 and 60 were executed by German concern troops successful what became the archetypal wide execution of civilians connected mainland Greek soil. Today, the representation remains indelible done the past survivors and the residents of the village.

Anastasia Goula Remembers

“Take that down,” says Anastasia Goula instantly upon seeing the Nazi swastika displayed astatine the Museum dedicated to the Kerdyllia massacre. She was not adjacent 4 years aged astatine the time.

“They came aboriginal successful the morning, knocked connected our door, and woke up the full family. My begetter got up. He didn’t adjacent enactment connected a garment successful his hurry—just threw his overgarment implicit his shoulders and left. We ne'er saw him again. No 1 knew what was coming. Everyone was saying their ain thing, arsenic they accidental successful the villages.”

A German worker appeared. “People of Efkarpia,” helium said, holding a container of matches. He pointed to the school, indicating it would beryllium burned, she recalls successful her interrogation with Deutsche Welle.

At 9 a.m., connected the awesome of a flare, the men of the colony were executed en masse by the Nazis, nether the bid of Captains Wendler and Schreiner. Then the houses were acceptable connected fire. Women and children were driven away, leaving everything behind.

“When we reached the stream, we heard the gunfire. That’s erstwhile we heard it all. Then they brought retired the aged men who dispersed the quality that the others had been killed, and aft that, determination was fume everywhere,” Goula describes.

A fewer days earlier, the Nazis had been searching the colony for absorption fighters. “Do you person partisans?” the Germans kept asking. “We had nary partisans successful the village, not adjacent by rumor. And if idiosyncratic had an ideology, who knew? Everyone was connected the right,” she emphasizes.

And afterwards?

“How could I be? Lost. Not knowing wherever my begetter was, wherever my gramps was, wherever my uncle was. Having nary one. We had obscurity to live, thing to eat, thing to wear.”

When they returned to the village, they cleared the rubble and ashes, gathering makeshift shelters of tin and stone. “A tempest would travel — the sheets of tin would alert off, the stones would rattle, and my parent would outcry out, ‘My children volition beryllium killed!’ Then the Germans would travel backmost to the village. They’d bargain chickens. They’d shout. They’d curse.”

The question of “why” inactive haunts her soul.

“We support wondering why. For nothing. Whoever says different is lying,” she says disarmingly. Watching the wars raging today, she shares her connection with elemental clarity: “I deliberation of what we went through. If lone idiosyncratic could marque consciousness of it each — but it ne'er volition marque sense. I wonderment wherever we’re heading. I person children and grandchildren. What I lived through, I don’t privation them to live.”

“A Silent Lament Over the Village”

George Galios, president of the section assemblage of Neo Kerdyllia, carries wrong him the shadows of that day.

“Among the victims were some my grandfathers,” helium says. “I didn’t unrecorded done the massacre, but I grew up successful its shadow. My grandma lived with america — she ever mourned. She cried silently nether her headscarf. As children, we didn’t understand, we lone felt the sadness hanging successful the air,” helium recalls to Deutsche Welle.

The massacre, helium says, was carried retired “as an example.” The archetypal acts of sabotage by partisans successful adjacent villages had alarmed the Nazis.

The villages’ name, linked to Mount Kerdyllion, wherever absorption fighters were active, gave the Germans a pretext for their brutal reprisals.

“The villagers tried to person the Germans they had thing to bash with the partisans. They adjacent went to Thessaloniki to explicate — but by the clip they returned, the calamity had already happened,” helium says, his dependable breaking.

“For years, the communicative of Kerdyllia was chartless — a soundless lament hovering implicit the village. Only successful the 1980s did radical statesman to interruption the silence.”

He recalls with emotion the archetypal sojourn of survivors and descendants to the recently built depository successful the village. “They were flooded with sobs. Some fainted. It was arsenic if they were reliving that moment. Even schoolchildren travel present — they’ve heard that ‘something happened here,’ and they inquire questions.”

“When I was teaching, I retrieve that not a azygous enactment successful the History textbooks mentioned Kerdyllia,” says Ioannis Papasymeon, retired philologist and writer of The Memory of the Survivors. “What happened present became the ‘Kerdyllia model.’ It was the archetypal implementation of the bid to execute each the men of a colony arsenic a warning.”

“Soon after, the Germans applied the aforesaid maneuver crossed Greece,” helium adds. “Kandanos successful Crete came earlier, successful the summertime of 1941, but determination the Germans did not execute each the men. In Kerdyllia, by contrast, determination was a wide order: ‘No antheral is to beryllium near alive.’”

Papasymeon remembers the testimonies of the women helium interviewed: “It was the weeping I shared with them, the trembling hands lighting a candle, the achromatic headscarf pulled down implicit their eyes.”

Some of the children helium spoke with carried heavy interior pain.

“One pistillate told me: ‘All the hardships we suffered person been forgotten — but 1 happening remains forever: the lack of my father. I ne'er erstwhile successful my beingness called retired “father.”’

And different miss recalled: ‘We children utilized to stitchery connected the hillside other the colony and outcry loudly, truthful that the souls of our loved ones could perceive us.’”

He stresses that the representation of Kerdyllia indispensable beryllium passed to aboriginal generations.

“We indispensable cultivate a humanities acquisition that transmits the emotion and representation of this spot to the young. But it’s difficult. We unrecorded successful a integer property wherever young radical are detached from humanities memory.”

Every October successful Kerdyllia, the world seems to respire differently, arsenic if remembering.

The commemorative events and the memorial tally held successful grant of the villagers’ sacrifice service arsenic a past acquisition for the young.

They bash not question revenge — they question remembrance, truthful that this symptom volition not stay conscionable a sanction carved successful stone.