Lyngiades massacre victims remembered

Over the weekend, the 77th anniversary of the Lyngiades massacre was remembered.

The Lyngiades massacre, which took place on October 3, 1943, was a Nazi German war crime perpetrated by members of the 1st Mountain Division of the Wehrmacht Heer during the Axis occupation of Greece. The village of Lyngiades, near Ioannina in northwestern Greece, was arbitrarily chosen as a target for reprisals by the Wehrmacht due to the killing of a German officer by members of the Greek Resistance. The vast majority of the victims were children, women and elderly.

The memorial event was attended by Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany Ernst Reichel, survivor Panagiotis Babouskas who was orphaned when the German Wehrmacht killed both his parents, Regional Governor of Epirus Alexandros Kachrimanis and Member Of Parliament (Ioannina) Meropi Tzoufi, amongst others.

The keynote speech was delivered by Ioannina Mayor Moses Elisaf, who noted that the day of October 3, 1943, was not a skyscraper event. "It was the black consequence of an even darker cause. In other words, it was preceded by a system in which the egg of this snake was incubated."

"Today, when the chaos of the abyss is almost in front of us, ready to devour us completely, today the debt to remember is more than ever more imperative", he added, referring to the importance of memory.