On September 14, 1944, Giannitsa became a place of martyrdom. 112 people were brutally killed by the Nazis and Battalions. An open wound, 82 years later. DW reports. Just a few weeks before the Occupation of Fritz Subert’s Nazis and the bailiffs of George Poulos commit one of the most horrible Nazi war crimes in Greece in Giannitsa. The sacrifice of the victims to this day is a silent cry against violence, fascism and war.

“In the events of 1944 I was 4.5 years old. On September 12, as we returned to the evening from the field we noticed that many people were leaving Giannitsa. A man from the market said to my father, “Thanasis do not go in, arrests have begun and arrests are made.” Then my father handed us over to a piggy bank and returned to the field in the swamp of Giannitsa.

In the morning my mother gets half a homemade bread, me and my sister to the neighborhood of my father’s father. We hid in some bushes. The Nazis and the Battalions were returning to the city and gathered the men and their boys to the 1st school and the women and girls in the park today in Saint George. In the evening we entered the church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary and sat all night under the supervision of the candlestick.

At 12 o’clock the door knocked on and a spy of EAM entered us. He was grabbed by two bailiffs and after a while we heard a bam. After a while his corpse was found. We left dawn to Pentaplatanos, and then to the lime. We stayed in a hut and saved.

We had a view of all Giannitsa, where I saw fires. I used to say to my mother “burning our home” and she was reassuring that the smoke was from bakery baked bread, “the survivor of the slaughter of Giannitsa, Mr. Christakis Ioannides, describes cinema in Deutsche Welle.

The timing of the horror

The Giannitsa area was one of the main centers of the National Resistance in Central Macedonia. The reactions grow in the spring and summer of 1943, to the Germans’ recruitment policy for their mission to the Eastern Front. In September, protests are organized against the German planning to grant Central Macedonia to the Bulgarians, which led to the arrest of 100 Giannitsiots.

“In the spring of 1944, Subbert had demanded by the Mayor of Giannitsa Thomas Magriotis to tell him which of the citizens cooperated with the 30th ELAS Constitution. He refused to give him the slightest something that angered Subbert, “says Deutsche Welle by Christakis Ioannidis, survivor of the Giannitsa slaughter. The Austrian Otmar Dorne’s self -esteem in ELAS forces on Mount Paiko was the reason for the horrible sequel.

“The Germans and Battalions of Poulos put new people dig a very large pit and began to shout various names that, in their view and betrayal of the Battalions, had relations with the EAM resistance to the mountain. They put them in a corridor, hit them with subcutaneous, and fell either hit or sphere. This pit was the tomb of young and old. With the sunset, they gave up the pit. “

The survivor of the Giannitsa massacre always remembers the story told by the violinist Fotis Tsilis. “He was hit by the Battalions with the Sub-people and fell into the pit over and over. When he recovered by the sunset, he began to push the corpses above him and came to the surface. He saw that there was no one in the around, swam in the stream and escaped. “

Four days later, part of the city was burned by the Germans and the Battalions. The memory of 85 -year -old today Mr. Ioannides remains alive. “I remember the facts like I live today. Every morning in the church I commemorate those slaughtered by the occupation forces who left the day of the Holy Cross, “he says.

Local memory against oblivion

The victims of September 1944 are not only the executed. They are also the living, men, witnesses to torture and executions of their friends and relatives, as well as the women of the city who were waiting for the anxiety of their relatives, who went through the memory of these tragic events.

“The Mnemonic Power is greater, excluding what was preceded or followed by the group execution. Personalized responsibility mainly to the Battalions and Fritz Subert. At the same time he adorned the period 1941-1943 as a relatively ‘quiet’ without ‘violent events’, “archaeologist Maria Triantafyllidou tells DW

“In the slaughter of Giannitsa, the enemy was not just the German army. They were also the Greek bailiffs. The public debate of events and the recognition of the enemy in post -colonial conditions was not a simple matter. It caused embarrassment, fear and silence, “he says. In the publications in the local press, the enemy was usually indefinitely defined as a “bloody conqueror” and forgiveness may have been a way to repulsive the traumatic experience. “Many witnesses of the events refused to refer to them even to family tables,” he says.

“Many bailiffs were not from Giannitsa and we had no tangible evidence. They were discussed that some have benefited from the looting of shops and houses and presented property. Some said for others that they took pounds that the British threw into the rebels, “says Christakis Ioannides.

“By 45 I was watching my sleeping Germans chasing me”

Anniversary events do not have the mass of the past. In 2021, however, a multi -talented pharmacist in the area, who unfortunately left early, Anna Mikropoulou wrote a collection of short stories entitled “Wolves in the City”. “They raised the issues of the victim and the victim for the first time in the local community, the selective memory of the events, the role of the German army, as well as the management of collective trauma,” Triantafyllidou points out.

Mr. Christakis Ioannidis still remembers an Austrian soldier who hugged him and called him because he reminded him of his child in Austria. “I don’t hate my fellow humans. But when I hear a German, my heart tightens. Me, when I was 4.5 years old how can anyone make me compensate me that until my 45 I was watching my sleeping Germans chasing me? ” wonders.