Greek PM Tsipras attending memorial services in Komeno village commemorating massacre by Nazi forces (video+photos)

Whole village wiped out by Nazi forces in 1943

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will attend the memorial event commemorating the victims of the massacre by Nazi occupying forces on August 16, 1943 at the village of Komeno in Arta, western Greece, Tuesday. It is the first time a Greek PM is taking part in the event at the village and is considered a profoundly symbolic move. Spokesperson Olga Gerovasili received Tsipras at Komeno, a small village located on the shores of the Amvrakia gulf in western Greece. On occasion of the memorial services and the visit by the Greek PM, Gerovasili made reference to the plans to rebuild the productive and economic capacity of the wider Arta region. The Nazi brutality in the small village is widely unknown, as the holocausts of Kalavryta and Distomo have been the main focus of historical and political research and struggles for reparations by the official German state. Komeno, however, saw 317 villagers, babies, women, elderly and men murdered by the barbaric forces of the Nazi military. According to British historians and archival material of the era, nearly 100 soldiers of the first platoon of the 98th German battalion stormed the village and killed 317 people on August 16 on false information it had fallen under the control of partisan anti-nazi fighters. During the mass murder over 30 people were killed during a wedding.

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