1. The general war situation in May 1944

May 1944, the Army Group E, which was in command of the Greek area, charged the 4^th SS Polizei Panzer-Grenadier Division with the guarding of Eastern Continental Greece. The division had suffered great casualties in the eastern front and had already been in Greece since the end of 1943 for reformation. Many veterans of the eastern front, several recruits and fanatical Nazi commanders, like colonel Karl Schümers, notorious for his cruelty to the civilians, served in the division. The 7th regiment, he was in command of, was chosen –not by chance- to fight against the partisans in Boeotia. May 30, 1944, the Regiment commanders settled in Lamia, the I Battalion with the 1st and 2nd company in Livadia, the 3rd company in Petromagoula and the 4rth in Aliartos. Two batteries covered the areas of Gravia and Amfikleia, the III Battalion spread its companies in Amfissa, Itea and Arachova. There were, immediately, bloody, nearly daily encounters with ELAS of western Boeotia. As a result, only a week after their arrival in Roumeli, the SS men grieved after 20 dead and 36 injured people. The officers’ and soldiers’ mood for revenge would soon be obvious in the cruelest way.

2. The facts that led to the massacre

Saturday, June 10, 1944. The morning of that cursed day the 2nd Company of the I/7 SS-Battalion under the command of major Kurt Ricker that used to quarter in Livadeia were ordered to “sortie” (Überholung) in the broader area of Distomo that was regarded as an “enemy zone”. To be used as a decoy, a detachment of Secret Field Police (GFP) in civvies went on tour with two commandeered Greek trucks followed by five more trucks varrying soldiers from Amfissa. The two phalanxes met in the intersection of Distomo-Arahova, continued on their way and arrested 12 people who had been reaping the fields unsuspicious. Approaching Distomo, they started shooting indiscriminately whatever moving without getting off the vehicles –they murdered six people - and arrived at the village just before noon. The 2^nd company commander, second lieutenant Fritz Lautenbach placed outposts and asked for information about the partisan actions. Sotitris Zisis, the priest, and Charalampos Kinias, the village mayor, denied having seen the partisans lately (although ELAS units were active in the area), while the terrified residents of Distomo were trying to look after the invaders, knowing the fate of their fellow-villagers. At 12:30 the commandeered trucks-decoys and three more vehicles moved towards Steiri unaware of the fact that the 11^th company of III/34 ELAS battalion under the command of the lieutenant Christoforos Tsigaridas (Gerakovounis) was close to them, near the country church of Agia Eirini. The 90 partisans in battle array with 2 heavy machine-guns, set up a successful ambush.

3. The massacre of the innocents

The uproar of the battle was heard in Distomo from where reinforcements were sent in order to repulse the partisans. Three soldiers were killed and 18 were injured (later, four of them succumbed to their injuries). At 16:00 outraged S-S men returned to Distomo. In the village of the 1800 souls only 300 residents had remained as most of them had left fearing reprisals. The Germans ordered the residents to stay at their houses, they executed in front of the primary school 12 captives who were carried in their vehicles and then they went in for indescribable massacres from house to house, murdering men, women and children of all ages in an “orgiastic” way. The savagery was unheard-of even for the terrible reputation of S-S.“They murder Euphrosini Statha and her seven month old nursing infant, cut part of mother’s breast and put it in the dead infant’s mouth. They rip open the belly of Zaka’s unbaptised infant, whereas the pregnant Diamanti Zaka was found with her belly ripped open […]They throw Char. Sfountouri alive in fire. They come to the house of Fot. Liaskou, Loukas Liaskos’s wife, they rape her and kill her by smashing her head, they rip open infant’s belly, while it is sleeping in the cot. They rip open Georg. Michas’s belly and wrap up his neck with his intestines and smash Iraclis Michas head. The family of Milt. Nikolaou was executed while they were praying on their knees underneath the holy icons· Nitsa, the daughter survived by a miracle […] Anast. Stathas’s two children, 5 and 8 years old, jumped off the window of the house where their parents were being executed, and they were pursued and murdered, while they were running away”. About thirty houses-cemeteries were put in flames, 70 mules and horses were killed, chattels, valuables and domestic animals were stolen. “Massacre, fire, rape, robbery. The tetralogy of the brutality, in honor of the race of the Aryans” (Newspaper Eleutheria, 10.6.1945). 233 people were reported murdered –including 10 innocents who were executed in cold-blood on their way back home- and around 20 survived as they were saved hiding underneath relatives’ and fellow villagers’ dead bodies. The fact that in the German official reports mentions of a battle were made, and victims were baptized as gang members and gang supporters, was the last straw of this horror.

4. The massacre at Kalami – Second Distomo

Few know that a second Distomo followed: The following day, a commandeered truck of the Aliartos German guard was attacked by partisans near Coronea. Two soldiers were injured and a car was plundered. A little after 18.00, a platoon of the 4^th Company I/7 battalion with two trucks set out from Aliartos ordered to exterminate whoever and whatever was alive on the public road of Aliartos-Livadia, on their way to the ambush point. The cars were not lucky. It was Sunday and the Greeks weren’t working in the fields […] Just at a crossing towards Ai-Giorgis did they meet two of them. Giorgis Katis, 45 years old from Ai-Giorgis and a traveler trader fromKokkinia,Giannis Pavlidakis. They took it out on them, emptying their rifles into them. Three more trucks and two motorcycles set out at the same time from Livadia and arrived late at night in Kalami, a small settlement, holding three passersby as hostages. No one was excluded from the following manhunt, not even the infants. The only three male residents were separated from women and children, and were executed at the entrance of the village with the hostages. The scenes that followed were characterized by an unheard-of fierceness: the women and children now realize that their end is coming. They start crying with yells. The mothers holding their children in their arms fall on the murderers’ feet and implore them to let their children go and kill them instead […] Evagelia Slatinopoulou holds her two children tight in her arms. They both cry, without knowing what comes next. One of the murderers draws his bayonet and cruelly lances their neck, one after the other. The unexpected scene and the infants’ hot blood make mother Slatinopoulou go off her head, she screams holding her two half dead children tight in her arms. Another murderer shoots [her] in the head. Machine-guns drowned the other women’s screams. That night, six men and 16 women and children were murdered and their bodies were incinerated with the help of incendiary dust.

5. Distomo: Place of remembrance and compensation demands

For decades the martyric Distomo has been a concerning issue nationally and internationally functioning as a battering ram in the German compensation demands. Even for those unaware of that period, it is a real and symbolic memorial site for one of the most famous tragedies of the War and of the Occupation in Greece. It is rather moving that just five months after the massacre, in liberated Greece, some survivors were already thinking of building a mausoleum in the covered in blood village which will be appointed the lighthouse that will be illuminating and trumpeting the sacrilege of fascism forever.