The calendar shows October 17th, 1941. Friday at dawn. At six o’clock in the morning two fully armed companies of German Nazis, together with the prisoners at Stavros of Kerdyllia, go up to the position of Stovolos and Livadia and encircle Ano Kerdylia and Kato Kerdylia. Two hours later, the Nazi soldiers forcibly gather all the inhabitants, men and women, sick and infirm elderly, of the upper and lower village at Alonia and Koutres respectively, at a distance of five hundred meters from each other but without visual contact.
In the areas of the gatherings, the residents are facing the machine guns and the lined-up soldiers. Throwing a red flare signals the start of the execution. Machine guns mow down the assembled residents and the neighboring hillsides shake with the crack of machine guns.
On the radio documentary about the massacre in Kerdyllia, Serres, we listen to:
Vasilis Tzanakaris, writer-journalist; Giorgos Galios, president of the local community and founder of a local Holocaust museum; Giannis Papasymeon, philologist-author of a book about the Kerdyllia massacre; Kostas Psarras, a descendant of a victim and member of the National Council for the Claim of Germany’s debts to Greece.
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”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