(Kalavryta station: click on the photos on this page for larger images.)

The train still runs up the scenic valley. You are let off at a pleasant stone railway station amid a small, but bustling village.

The schoolhouse where the women were terrorized is now a museum. Across the street is the statue that forms the signature piece for this section of the Plaka web site.

Signs direct you to the cemetery and place of execution.

It's tempting to try to call attention to Kalavryta by emphasizing how many were killed. But, all such massacres, whither it be that of Melos, or My Lai, seem to share something ultimate that makes a mockery of any ranking. The death of one person, the evil that produces it, and the grief of those who loved him or her cannot be exceeded or multiplied by grouping one death with others. The infinite agony of the human predicament, to love life, and to also to have the will to deny life to others, however, is more forcefully brought to our attention by mass evil. And all of these massacres are linked, connected through some higher dimension. To pay your respects at one, is to honor them all, and to be forced to contemplate the meaning of all of them.

It doesn't diminish Kalavryta that the Resistance did crimes that would lead anyone to know that a reprisal would come. Nor am I saying that the guilt of the solders is diminished in any way. The death of even one innocent exposes the absurdity of any reasoning about what is deserved, what is expected, what is justified.

But, there should be a monument to the murdered German captives as well, a different sort of monument, in a different place. If the monument at Kalavryta is a place of seeing with perfect clarity about violence, then we need a monument for the Germans captives as a testimony about the inability of humans to act on that clarity.

It helps that Kalavryta is hard to reach, at least, hard by the standards of plush touring. If it were in the middle of Athens, it would have a different meaning. It is well, I think, that we understand that such "forgotten" "remote" and - according to the world - "useless" places as this remote village have an infinite sacredness because of the human dreams that were extinguished there. It is better that we have to confront the great emptiness of our existence in the middle of nowhere. To appreciate a place like this, you need the spiritual discipline of a journey as preparation.

There is a virtue in remembering. For me at Kalavryta it was provided by Mr. Haralampous. Each massacre, each injustice, needs these keepers of memory who do it not for money or fame but out of duty, in the best meaning of that word.

In one sense he told me nothing I didn't already know from books. But this is the sort of memory that should also be transmitted voice to ear, one person to another.