On September 2nd 1944 the German occupiers and their "Greek" colleagues conducted one of the most gruesome crimes, killing and burning alive in the village bakery 146 residents of Chortiatis village. 109 of them were women and children.
The massacre took place on the occasion of the attack of Greek rebels of ELAS against passing Germans. Anticipating revenge of the Nazis on the basis of "collective responsibility", the rebel soldiers of ELAS convinced the vast majority of the villagers to hide in the mountains. Those who stayed in the village were killed almost in their entirety.
The Massacre of Chortiatis
The Chortiatis massacre was a World War II mass murder of 146 civilians by theWehrmacht, at the end of the occupation of Greece by the Axis powers on 2 September 1944.
After the capture of three German soldiers by the Greek People's Liberation Army(ELAS) on mount Chortiatis, the German occupation authorities decided to react immediately with a reprisal operation against the civilian population of the village Chortiatis. About twenty trucks with German soldiers and the paramilitary forceJagdkommando Schubert, named after the Wehrmacht sergeant Friedrich Schubertwho was in command, surrounded the village. They gathered all the people they found in the town square, and began to loot and burn houses down. One group of the civilians was led into the house of villager Evangelos Ntinoudis. They were locked inside and the building was set on fire. They were burnt alive. The other group was locked in the bakery. Schubert's men set up a machine gun and began to shoot them down from a small window in the door. After this they set fire to burn alive those who were not killed by the bursts of the machine gun. Apart from the people who were killed in the two groups, others were raped and killed outside their homes or even the village, while trying to escape. A total of 146 civilians residents of Chortiatis were killed that day. 109 of them were women and girls. 300 homes were burned down.
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