The country's only Holocaust museum, this is a powerful tribute to the residents of Kalavryta who perished in the 13 December 1943 slaughter perpetrated by the Nazis. It’s a dignified, understated, yet extremely evocative account of the struggle between the occupying forces and partisan fighters in the area, and the events running up to the massacre – an atrocity reported to be partly put in motion by the partisans’ execution of a group of German prisoners.
Located inside the rebuilt old schoolhouse that was set on fire with women, children and the elderly inside, the museum depicts the history of 19th- and 20th-century Kalavryta, the advent of the rack-and-pinion railway and the region's suffering during WWII through evocative photographs and personal effects.
ELAS, the Greek resistance movement, was very active in the Kalavryta region during WWII. On 17 October 1943 partisans captured a German batallion. Negotiations stalled when the Nazis launched 'Operation Kalavryta', designed to crush the resistance. The partisans killed the German prisoners and in retaliation, on 13 December 1943, the Nazis herded 468 men and boys over the age of thirteen to the nearby Kappi Ridge and gunned them down. The women and children who managed to break out of the burning schoolhouse were left with the task of gathering and burying the dead, as commemorated by the statues behind the schoolhouse.
Whatever you do, don’t pass by the videos on continuous loop dotted throughout the exhibition. These are the accounts of surviving townspeople who escaped death, some of whom were children at the time. The walls covered with pictures of the dead Kalavryta villagers and the names of the dead is an especially stark memorial.
