HISTORY

Kalami, the sad story of the martyred village.

In May 1944, a German truck started every day from Aliartos towards the Pontza riverfront, from the side of the village of Agios Georgios. The Germans were loading materials for the construction of works in Aliarto and had hired six Greeks as workers. There were two Germans in the truck, the driver and one of his assistants. The route was constant everyday and attracted the interest of the rebels who wanted to intercept the truck. On Sunday, June 11, the german soldiers were sitting under a tree watching over the workers when a group of eight insurgents attacked, slightly injuring the Germans. Then they ordered the greek workers to go to Aliartos to report the incident, took the truck and disappeared. The Greek workers arrive at Alalkomenes with the wounded soldiers and hand them over to the Germans. The Commander of Aliartos, Orts Mayers, as soon as he was informed, was outraged and called on Major L. Rickert, the butcher of Distomos, to immediately impose severe retaliation.

At 18:00, two trucks with armed Germans set off from Aliarto with Rickert’s order to kill any Greek they meet on the way to Ponza. At the intersection of Agios Georgios did they find two people, and executed them. Around the same time, three trucks, two motorcycles and a small car with the head of the mission left Livadia. After half an hour or so the group arrived in Kalami. The SS soldiers rushed into the houses, started looting and stormed the watermill of Spyros Nakos. They forced him to follow them with his family, while the 11-year-old managed to take with him the family’s donkey carrying his 7-year-old sister, who could not walk. They gathered all the families of the village, a total of 23 people. The leader ordered the six men to be separated from the women and children and they were taken back to the grocery store of Apostolos Slatinopoulos, where they were executed. The troops dispatch leads the women and children out of the last house towards Livadia, which belonged to Vasiliki Kyritsis, and in the side orchard they set up the machine guns. The signal was given and the machine guns began to fire. Sixteen women and children were murdered, except for Spyros Nakos’s 11-year-old son who was lucky enough to witness what happened in Kalami. The Germans decide to burn their victims, because they don’t want to leave any traces of the mass executions of the inhabitants. So, they collected the bodies, threw incendiary powder on them and set them on fire. They set fire to the few houses in the village. The holocaust was complete. 

The next day, trucks of the International Red Cross were coming from Athens carrying aid in the direction of Distomo. Arriving at Kalami they saw the fires smoking and a Swedish doctor believed that they had reached Distomo. There he was informed that he was in Kalami and the dead who had been executed the previous day were being burned.

Source: dimoslevadeon.gr