Plaka: Locations: Kalavryta: Drama 5

The Drama of Kalavryta: Trapped


Back	The town is held captive.	Next


On December 9th, a cold winter day, the troops entered Kalavryta. Based there, they tried to find their captives, periodically burning a few houses and causing terror to the population. However, two days earlier, the Resistance had rounded up the captives and taken them to a remote location. They shot them and threw their bodies over a cliff.
One German prisoner had escaped from the killing and found his fellow soldiers, and led them back to the bodies of their comrades.
Twice now the Resistance had killed German prisoners.
The Germans had promised massive reprisals: 50 deaths for each death of a German. On December 10th confirming orders arrived from Tripoli and the officers planned how to do it. The Resistance was unreachable somewhere in the hills. However, the villages filed with old men, women and children were there for the taking.

"Traditionally the German people worshipped a divinity called humanism and humanistic studies. But at the moment when they most needed humanism in action, humanism said nothing."

A few German soldiers tried to communicate across the language barrier and warn individual villagers what was coming. One Greek spoke German and heard the whole story from a German who was tortured by his knowledge of what was to come and driven to confess. But the villager was known as a drunk and other villagers did not believe him. Perhaps they could not believe that such a massacre was possible.