A child’s remembrance of
living through the Nazi atrocity against the ‘118 Spartans’ in autumn 1943
By Leonidas Petrakis
Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies
The University of Nottingham
The Thermopylae epigram of 11 August 480 BC was once more engraved in blood at Monodendri on
26 November 1943 AD
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
Introduction
It is well documented that the Nazis committed many horrific acts of violence against civilians in occupied Greece during World War II. The ferocity and brutality of the German occupiers intensified greatly as the Resistance was strengthening in 1943, and the capitulation of Italy forced them to assume sole responsibility for the Occupation. In their open warfare against the civilians they had the eager participation of Greek collaborators. Kalavryta, Kandanos, Distomo are well documented and known cases of Nazi brutality, but the atrocity against the Spartiates in the autumn of 1943, although extensively documented, is less well known.
The intent of this paper is not to retell that atrocity against the Spartiates, but rather to share my remembrances of the horrific events as I lived them as a youngster, and as I still remember them decades later. Although very young at that time, I have a very clear recollection of the associated reign of terror, the curfews, the bloka (blocking-off streets or coffee shops to sweep and pick up hostages), the night time raids with help from masked collaborators who pointed houses of potential hostages, their transportation out of Sparta after briefly being detained in the municipal prison, the execution of the 118 hostages, their burial, and the devastating effect on the entire town. These I detailed in my memoir of the period, and my recounting here is based on that publication.
The coming of the Germans and the martyrdom of the 118 Spartiates in November 1943
I was six years old when the Germans came to Greece in April 1941. Our first encounter with them was when German dive-bombers were searching out retreating British troops, who were trying to reach the coast to be evacuated. After the first air raid we left the city for nearby villages, and on our way we met and talked with British soldiers who were hiding under the plane trees by the riverside or under the bridges. The Italians, who had been held prisoners in the high school for boys, were initially responsible for the administration of occupied Sparta, but the Germans returned in 1943. The famine during the exceptionally harsh winter of 1941-2; the curfews; the incidents of the budding Resistance movement; my school (second elementary near the ruins of the ancient acropolis and theatre) being taken over by the occupiers which forced us to hold first grade classes in the basement of a building across the Menelaion hotel while they broke our desks by throwing them from the roof for use as fire wood; the periodic executions; the terror of encountering the Tagmatasfalistes, men of the Security Battalion (indistinguishable in their uniforms and weapons from the Germans as they would set out from Sparta for joint operations against the Resistance antartes, burning and looting their villages; the clandestinely received BBC news that adults would whisper to one another; the requirement that we leave unlocked our front doors so patrols could enter at will and inspect who was in a house at any particular moment (I was in my bed one midnight when a soldier lifted my blanket shining a torch into my eyes as I trembled in terror); their taking over houses and restricting the owners to part of their homes: all these formed a kaleidoscope of impressions that to this day remain vivid.
The coming of the Germans into the city in formation was particularly fear-inducing. They stopped near the Eurotas bridge, and then marched, menacing in perfect formation, to the Menelaion hotel. We used to make fun of the Carabinieri laughing behind their backs and recalling the Sophia Vembo derisive songs, but the Germans filled us with terror. And despite the successes of the allies and of the Resistance, we were numb, especially when rumours came that the Germans had set a ratio of fifty Greeks to be executed for every one German soldier who would be killed.
This is how I remembered those events.
Things had become very difficult by late summer of 1943. The more successes the Resistance had in the country and the Allies on all fronts, the harsher and more vindictive the Germans and their collaborators – now wearing German uniforms - became.
In November another disaster struck. The antartes had been setting up ambushes and conducting raids against the Germans. After an ambush near our town, the Germans announced reprisals, and set up roadblocks arresting people in the streets and in the coffee houses. They instituted an even stricter curfew. Terrified, we shut ourselves inside our houses and kept watch from behind the closed windows. Around midnight we saw soldiers and a few civilians wearing masks. There was also barba-Yiannis, the tavern-keeper, without a mask. They arrested the young pharmacist next door and the high school teacher across the street. Uncle Nikos climbed over the back yard wall and jumped in barba-Stamati’s garden, escaped and joined the Resistance.
They arrested 119 people, mostly men, but some women and at least one boy. They took many who were in the Resistance, but also people who were not, but had been falsely accused because of personal grudges. The following day many people assembled outside the prison where the hostages had been taken. They were pleading, crying, asking for information. What was to happen to the hostages? Late in the afternoon the police ordered everyone away from the prison, but relatives were allowed to bring clothing and food; and they were told that the Germans would interrogate and then decide separately for each hostage. A couple of days later the Germans took the hostages in three lorries to Tripoli (some said Athens) for ‘interrogation’. We rushed to the main road leading out of the city, to the same spot where we had seen the arrival of the German troops earlier.
Military trucks full of soldiers appeared and then the three lorries with the hostages standing like cattle on the way to the slaughterhouse. The Germans and Security Battalion recruits did not let us get close to the convoy and everyone was trying to find their loved one from far away with eyes full of tears. Late in November all hostages, except one, were massacred by the Germans in the most savage way.
That November morning I went up to the bishopric for the morning syssition. Two neighbourhood kids and I arrived early. We found Mrs. Fotini and the other women tearful and agitated. Instead of preparing the syssition, they were huddling together, saying the names of the hostages who had been executed.
The 118 were executed near the Chani at Monodentri. They were killed to teach us all a lesson, even those not active in the Resistance, for we were only Greeks after all, our lives were cheap and did not count, the only thing that counted was the new order of things, what the Führer had decreed - explosions, plunder, setting fire to churches and crops, and since many still resisted or refused to cooperate or would not inform on their compatriots, then they deserved the gallows and the execution squad, in a ratio of fifty Greeks to one German, despite the fact that they were innocent people, women and children, old people, they were not humans, just numbers, necessary only to fulfil the ratio set by the German General Command.
But for Mrs. Fotini and the other women and for all of us the martyred hostages were relatives, friends, neighbours. That was why the women were reciting the names, one by one, of all those killed—the heroic doctor and the woman teacher, the four brothers and the son of our priest and that splendid man the pharmacist next door, who played the guitar and sang beautifully during summer evenings.
On the day before the massacre, we saw additional German soldiers leaving hastily. Among them was young Willy, just out of high school, a machine gunner, he lived in the confiscated house across the street. Before leaving for the killing field he oiled his machine gun in front of us, silently, with great attention, as if he was preparing it for a mystical rite.
A few days later, young Willy told several of us kids who had gathered around him as he was again oiling his machine gun, many details about the killing. The hostages had been taken to Monodentri around midnight and they were left in the lorries until daybreak. At that time they marched them to the little meadow next to the road. They turned on the lorry headlights so that little Willy and every other butcher could see them well. The hostages started singing the National Anthem and the officer in charge gave the order and they started with the machine guns. “This drank a lot of blood again”, he told us pointing to his machine gun. He said it matter-of-factly without any emotion. The machine guns were firing, Willy told us, for several minutes. Then the officers went and shot each hostage in the back of the head, the coup-de-grace, as he called it. My two friends and I took to our heels without waiting to get our morning milk.
On the way we told anyone we ran into, --They killed the hostages by the Chani at Monodentri!
We were the first ones to hear the news, so we became the bearers of tragic news. We ran furiously with bated breath and brought the message of death. We stopped at the coffee houses and delivered it and took to our heels again. To all the passers-by we told the news as we kept on running. Some did not hear our words, but understood our message.
I got to our house and found mother beside herself with worry about where I was. She had heard the wretched news already, because it had spread like a whirlwind, like a blaze, throughout the whole city.
Suddenly we heard Mitsos shouting to Mrs. M. that they had killed the hostages including her son. Her hearing was not good, so Mrs. M. cupped her hand around her ear to hear. Mrs. K. also came out, put her finger in front of her lips biting it in an expression of disaster. She stopped Mitsos from repeating the
terrible news to the poor mother, who was unaware that she had already been touched by death. Later they told Mrs. M. that her son was not dead, but that he had been sent to a labour camp and after the war he would return to Greece. They started writing letters to her, supposedly from her son, and they read them to her and told her that the news was that he was coming back.
The day the Germans executed the hostages they issued an order prohibiting circulation from one pm until the next morning, because they were to bring the dead to have them buried.
In the afternoon the funeral convoy arrived. There were three lorries like the ones that had taken them a month earlier. I was sitting by the window numbly waiting. The three lorries passed and I saw the dead from very close up. This time they were not standing packed as when they had been taken from the
prison, but they were piled one on top of the other like slaughtered sheep, lifeless, bloody bodies, with heads smashed by the coup-de-grace shots. The Germans dug two big trenches across from my grandmother’s grave and threw in the dead bodies from the lorries.
I don’t know how we endured all these ordeals. I don’t know what more we have to suffer. Is this martyrdom of ours ever going to end?
Subsequent related experiences
In the summer of 1946 I spent a few days in Monodentri with relatives who kept their sheep and goat flocks very close to the killing field. I went with my sister from Sparta to the Chani at Monodentri by bus, and we were met there by our relatives. I was overwhelmed thinking of the events that had taken place in the shallow field nearby less than three years earlier.
In 1965 while visiting Greece from the US for the first time on our way to Sparta we stopped at the Monument directly across from the shallow killing field. We brought flowers and we read the names of the dead. The Spartiates, never forgetting their dead, had honoured the fallen heroes of 1943 by erecting a simple but imposing monument.
In 1970 we found ourselves again in Sparta, this time arriving over the Taygetos passage from Kalamata with our young children. Friends advised us, on account of the junta of the colonels, not to stop at the Monument or at least to be careful not to be seen paying our respects. Of course we stopped there, but the Monument this time had clearly been neglected. There were broken pots, but also dried flowers: Spartiates or passers-by, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the junta authorities, had obviously continued to bring flowers and to remember the sacrifice of the dead there. The Simonides couplet at Thermopylae would apply equally well at Monodentri.
References
Enepekides, P. K., 1964. Die Griechische Widerstandsbewegung 1941-1944 Auf Grund der Geheimakten der Wehrmacht in Griechenland. Athens: Hestia.
Glendis, Κ. Α., 1979. Εφτά Χρόνια στη Σπάρτη (1939-1946). Athens.
Mazower, Mark, 1993. Inside Hitler’s Greece –The Experience of Occupation 1941-44.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Petrakis, L., 1997. Τότε που το Χιόνι ‘Επεσε. New York (Library of Congress
Catalog Card number 96-93043; Published privately in Greek; Translated in
English by Angelos Sakkis for possible English publication).
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