I'd said to the missus that I wanted to visit this monument in Kefalonia, which was, in fact, only ten or twelve minutes away from our hotel. I was surprised that it was reasonably popular. Some people were walking along the road towards it, and when we arrived, there were a few people already there.
I was under the misapprehension that the victims of the executions by the German forces in September 1943 were buried here; however, I learned that, in fact, some of the 3000 Italian soldiers murdered by their former allies, the Germans were recovered and buried in Bari, Italy.
Greece was occupied in late April 1941 with around 11,500 troops stationed in Kefalonia under the command of General Antonio Gandin. In September 1943, the Italians signed an armistice with the Allies, which, of course, put them in a dangerous position with their former allies, the Germans.
General Gandin received instructions or, more correctly, advice from the Italian High Command that the Germans should be seen as hostile and that attempts by the Germans to disarm Italians should be resisted with force if necessary. Lt Colonel Johannes Barge, who had arrived with 2000 German troops, gave General Gandin an ultimatum.
- 1. Continue fighting on the German side.
- 2. Fight against the Germans.
- 3. Hand over arms peacefully.
General Gandin canvassed his men with fairly similar three options that he had been presented with.
- 1. Join the Germans.
- 2. Surrender and be repatriated.
- 3. Resist the German forces.
His troops pretty much unanimously voted for option three, with the Germans promptly bombing the Italian positions with Stuka dive-bombers.
On 22 September 1943, the Italians finally surrendered, and the Germans began disarming and rounding them up. The German High Command had issued an order:
"Because of the perfidious and treacherous behaviour of the Italians on Cephalonia, no prisoners are to be taken."
And promptly started shooting them in batches of four and ten. The Germans had a policy of not burying adversaries, and so they either burnt them or dumped the bodies in ravines and in the sea. General Gandin and 137 of his senior officers were court-martialled and executed, and their bodies were sailed out to sea on a raft by Italian sailors. The Germans had rigged the raft with explosives and promptly blew it up with the sailors still onboard.
We also visited the Museum Acqui Division in Argostoli. It's not huge by any means; it's a pretty small room tacked onto a shop. If you have the time and are interested in that sort of thing, the walls are adorned with numerous pictures of members of the Acqui Division who perished on the island. There's a [very] small collection of artefacts, mostly canteens and ammo boxes. Clearly, the Germans nicked as much Italian equipment as possible.
I was slightly disappointed to find out that the main square in Agostoli was nothing like in the film Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I was hoping we could reenact the Greek Surrender scene.
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