The Kalavryta Massacre is forever embedded in the minds of Greek people across the world as one of the darkest moments in modern Greek history.
The massacre saw the near-extermination of the male population and the total destruction of the Greek town of Kalavryta by the Nazi forces during World War Two on December 13, 1943.
Almost 80 years later, this event played an influential role in the decision of Greek Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Wollongong and the Illawarra, Peter Poulos MLC, to take a lead role in the NSW Government’s push to ban the public display of Nazi symbols without a reasonable excuse across the state.
Speaking before the NSW Legislative Council earlier this month, Mr Poulos detailed how his dad witnessed “some of the most reprehensible acts on display by the Nazi regime” at Kalavryta during WWII.
“There were a number of villages in close proximity to that town [Kalavryta]. My dad as a little boy witnessed Nazi soldiers entering the village looking for males to round up. In his set of circumstances, they were unsuccessful,” Mr Poulos explained.
“To be able to reflect on the meaning of the symbol, to know someone so close to me personally who recognised what it signified and to identify that in a town nearby occurred one of the worst episodes within occupied Greece of the extermination of practically an entire male population, is noted but not forgotten.”
Read the article by Andriana Simos in The Greek Herald.