October 23, 1959
KALAVRYTA: From a speech by Panayiotis Kanellopoulos in Parliament: «…The atrocities committed in [Nazi-occupied] Kalavryta, Distomo or parts of Crete and elsewhere were truly barbarous. But in the case of Kalavryta these incidents would never have happened if an equally terrible event had not taken place beforehand. The communists, who were fighting in the mountains, had seized a group of German soldiers, butchered them and thrown the body parts in a well, if I am not mistaken… No army should ever carry out such a barbarous act which no Greeks, if they had not been communists, would have committed. No army should have then done what the Germans did in Kalavryta. But I am obliged to stress that the tragedy in Kalavryta would not have occurred if Greeks had not slaughtered German prisoners… I hope that today’s communists are ashamed of what their comrades of the past did at the time… When the enemy commits a barbarous act, that is indeed terrible. But when Greeks ignore their traditions, their thousands of years of civilization, the principles established in ancient Greece and not only kill Greek patriots but prisoners, then those Greeks are guilty of a worse crime.»
