The Kalamata blockade
On the occasion of the bloody events in Kalamata on February 1944 and the execution of dozens of city residents by the Nazis (153 civilians have been identified to date), the Voice of Greece brings to light a journalistic and historical investigation of ERT journalists Ilias Maravas and Thomas Sideris with important oral testimonies.
Kalamata, Saturday, February 6th, 1944. The Germans carry out a blockade, ordered by the German commander Egholm, on the Kalamata Vegetable Market and together with armed groups of their Greek collaborators, which acted before the Security Battalions were officially established (February 18, 1944), under the direction of the Nazi-appointed Prefect Messiah They are making mass arrests. The blockade unfolded mainly in the districts of Agiannis, Ypapanti, Fruit market, Meat market, March 23rd Square and in the northern part of Nedontos street.
The occupation forces and their collaborators transport the prisoners to the old “Papaflessa” camp of the 9th Infantry Regiment. These arrests are made on the occasion of the death of ten German soldiers in a battle that took place between the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and a German military force near the village of Agios Floros. In those days, the villages of Agios Floros and Skala are burned in reprisals, and executions are carried out there as well.
The Nazis point their machine guns at the detainees. Before dawn, they transport them in trucks and bury them in a mass grave at the site of the old municipal slaughterhouses. The execution would later be described by dying Mimis Gouzoulis, who escaped when he managed to escape through the darkness, despite the gunshots, the bursts of automata and the flares.
Forgotten Villages” is the new 20-episode radio documentary series by ERT journalist Thomas Sideris.
Small villages perched on the roots of rocks, but also head villages and towns that were full of life and became places of martyrdom and death during the fascist and Nazi era.
People caught in the maelstrom of history, unable to define their present and future, who lived through the horror and absurdity of war. Those who managed to survive, orphans and happy parents, relatives of the thousands of victims, lived the rest of their lives in endless silence.
Thomas Sideris opens the precious archive of the show “Unguarded Passage” and through his years of research he brings to light older and newer oral testimonies and narratives, which communicate with each other composing a dense canvas of parallel narrative axes about the massacres and holocausts that took place throughout Greece during World War II.
From the martyrdom of Distomo, Kalavryta, Mousiotitsa and Kommeno, to Viano, Anogia, Mesovouni and Domeniko, the “Forgotten villages” come alive again through the oblivion of time and tell us about all these and about all those who must never be forgotten.
Research – Presented by: Thomas Sideris
Historical consultant: Dimitris Vlachopanos, philologist-writer
Research Assistant: Lena Anagnostopoulou, philologist
General Scientific Advisor: Sotiris Livas