Kalavryta Page 3

The Nazi massacre in Kalavryta: A memorial on the wall of the primary school directly across from the stone rail station-in the form of a mural-- honors the sad memory of the 1436 men and boys slaughtered by Austrian Nazi soldiers on a winter day in December of 1943, followed by the burning of the village. On the mural are the words: "Kalavryta, founding member of the Union of Martyred Towns, appeals to all to fight for world peace." A trail leads off from the station to the site of the slaughter, with a shrine with the single word: Peace (Irini).

The horrific retaliation for Nazi losses to Greek resistance fighters during World War II was, as in many villages all over Greece, a revenge that was vastly out of proportion in numbers to the Nazi losses and a revenge visited upon entire communities of civilians, merely because the freedom fighters came from there, or because the villagers had sheltered, supplied, and /or hid them and/or their whereabouts.

The 1436 men and boys who were machine-gunned and pushed off cliffs in Kalavryta consisted of almost the entire male population of the town (every male over the age of 15 who could be found). The women and girls (as well as babies and male children under the age of 15) would have perished as well if someone had not opened the window from which they escaped from the church in which the Nazis had locked them before setting it on fire.

As it was, they were forced to find some way to survive the bitter cold winter without their men in the ruined houses of their burned village, and to survive for the rest of their lives the bitterness of the horrible massacre. Of those who were children during that wretched winter and who are still alive today, the memory of that trauma no doubt been a dark and unforgettable shadow during their entire lives.

It should be mentioned that since 1962 the German government has endowed schools in Kalavryta, in what seems to have been an obvious act of atonement for the Nazi atrocities committed there.

Hermann Frank Meyer, Von Wien nach Kalavryta. Die blutige Spur der 117. Jäger-Division durch Serbien und Griechenland (From Vienna to Kalavryta. The bloodstained trail of the 117th Jaeger-Division through Serbia and Greece) (Moehnesee: Bibliopolis 2002)

A well-researched book about the Kalavryta massacre. Note: the author puts the number of dead at 477, maintaining that though the massacre was undisputably the largest Nazi massacre outside of the Slavonic countries, the numbers were exaggerated to 1436. He also reports that the Austrian perpetrators were never charged with their war crimes.
Below: the artificial lake: Ladona and above Cataract of Monastery Taxiarhou.

Kalavryta railway May 18th, 20XX

Works to refurbish the country's only rack railway - covering the scenic route from Diakofto to Kalavryta in the northern Peloponnese - begin on Monday, the Hellenic Railway Organization said yesterday.The 22.6-kilometer route, built during 1889-1896, is just 75 centimeters wide, making it the narrowest railway line in Europe. The 7-million-euro reconstruction is expected to last for about a year, during which time the line will not be operating.

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