The next stop in beautiful Kalavryta was a more sombre one. On a small hill is a cemetery with some marked and unmarked graves. There is huge white cross on the top of the hill that overlooks the whole town.

This is the place where the worst massacre in Greece was committed. It is also considered one of the worst in Europe.

On the 13th of December 1943 the ‘Massacre of Kalavryta or the ‘Holocaust of Kalavryta’ occured. The Nazis, in retaliation for the execution of sixty-eight German soldiers by the Greek resistance, burnt down the town of Kalavryta. They looted and burnt over a thousand homes, stole over 2, 000 livestock. The women and children were sent to the nearby elementary school, and the school was set ablaze.

All of the men over 14 years of age were taken to the hill to watch the school burn. Fortunately, the women and children escaped by breaking down the windows and doors. Some say an Austrian or German soldier helped them to escape.

As the men watched in horror they were machine-gunned down by the Nazis. Over 499 men were murdered that day. Thirteen men managed to escape; as they hid under the pile of bodies. A total of 677 people were killed in Kalavryta and the neighbouring villages.

The elementary school is now a museum for the Massacre in Kalavryta.

The Nazis were never punished for the war crimes. The Mayor of Kalavrita and President of the Network of Martyred Cities and Villages of Greece in the period 1940-1945, Athanasios Papadopoulos, remarked in an online conference in 2021 that, “every crime without punishment generates the conditions of recurrence”.