The Women in Black

Two foreigners, a man and his wife, traveled out of ancient Corinth one day last month along the twisting roads that lead toward the rugged interior of the Peloponnesian peninsula. In a tranquil mountain valley, they came to the village of Kalavryta. When the villagers learned that the visitors were Germans, there were sullen mutterings in the village square. A white-haired woman in widow's weeds glared at the man. "He is one of them," she said. "He must go."

The mayor, Petrds Georgacopoulis, was more receptive. At the visitors' request, he summoned the village leaders to Kalavryta's new hotel to listen to the man and woman. While this meeting was going on, black-dressed women gathered in the lobby. They said and did nothing, but the bitterness in their eyes told a story.

Under the Cross. One day late in 1943, Communist-led guerrillas of the ELAS captured 80 German soldiers in a brief battle with Nazi occupying troops near Kalavryta. They fled into the hills, pausing only to leave behind three seriously wounded Germans. The Greek doctor in the village hospital treated the wounded men. and the townspeople saw to it that they were fed and made comfortable. Later the ELAS swooped in again, and made off with the wounded prisoners. Close to the village, the guerrillas killed the three, mutilated their bodies, and threw them into a deep well. The villagers, terrified of Nazi retribution, recovered the bodies and buried them under a white cross in the village cemetery.

When the Germans came back, they found the graves and demanded to know who had killed their men. Most of the people of Kalavryta did not like the ELAS Communists, but they would not betray fellow Greeks. Infuriated, the Germans burned down the houses of five men known to have joined the guerrillas. Then for good measure they burned the hotel.

That might have been all, but then another fearsome piece of news came to occupation headquarters. Up in the mountains, three German soldiers had been found wandering in a bloody daze. They said that they, with 74 fellow prisoners, had been taken up one of the highest mountains in the vicinity to die. There the guerrillas stripped them, then pushed them off a crag. Only these three survived.

Up the Hill. The local Nazi commander called in the mayor and told him to ring the church bell at 7 o'clock the next morning--the signal for all villagers to gather.

It was wintry dark and the mud of Kalavryta's streets was frozen, when the bells tolled that morning--Dec. 13, 1943 --and the 2,400 men, women & children of Kalavryta gathered obediently at the grey stone schoolhouse. A few mothers who had left their babies sleeping at home were ordered to return and get them. "You may be gone for some time," an officer explained. Women and girls, boys under 13 and men over 80 were sorted out and locked in the schoolhouse.

The other men were marched up the hill, past the small, walled cemetery to a grassy ledge overhanging the town. For hours they were kept there. Finally, at 3:30 in the afternoon (the time was verified later from several smashed watches), two red flares arched skyward from the village below. At that signal, concealed machine guns opened up. A few minutes later, 1.200 men and boys lay on the sod in grotesque, moaning clumps. Soldiers moved professionally among them, silencing the moans with machine pistols. Some how, five pretended death successfully. All the rest -- the mayor, the priest, the doctor, all the able hands and strong backs of the village, were dead.

The Bolt on the Door. In the village schoolhouse, the chatter of the burp guns could not be heard. But as babies wailed and the women took worried counsel of each other, they sensed trouble. Soon they smelled it, then saw it. The Nazis had set torches to the village. Smoke seeped through cracks in the schoolhouse floor. In panic, the women crashed at the bolted door. It would not give. But their screaming and beating was too much for the lone soldier guarding the door. Moved by pity, he pulled the bolt, and the village women rushed out. Before them, with a machine gun in firing position, were three Germans. They waved empty wine bottles and laughed drunkenly. but they did not fire. The women glanced for one terrified instant at their town--almost every house and building and stable in it was ablaze --then ran for the hills, dragging their children behind them.

An old woman laboring up the hill beyond the cemetery found the men. Wailing, she shambled back to the others: "Come! Come! I have found them!" Before they got to the scene, the women passed red rivulets in the gully that led to the grassy ledge, and they knew. When they reached the bodies, the women were no longer screaming. They ran among them, recognizing a husband here, a son there. In the dusk they dragged the bodies down to the black cypress grove. With only their hands, they clawed at the muddy earth to make graves. When they went back to the village, the Germans were gone.

Governments Forget. Months went by before real help came. The embattled Greek government sent relief money. Greek-Americans who came from the area sent $20,000 for a new school; the Near East Foundation set up a feeding station for the 300 young children. Eventually, Marshall Plan money came to complete a new hospital and hotel, and to raise new houses and shops. Gradually, men from other parts trickled into the women's town and made their homes there; occasionally, there was even a pathetic wedding, with all the guests in black.

The Communist guerrillas came back to Kalavryta too in 1948, during Greece's bitter civil war and for a month held and looted the village. Again there were cries for help. The King and Queen came; so did General Van Fleet. Athens granted $40-a-month pensions to the widows in black. But soon Athens forgot; three years ago the pensions were stopped, and important officials no longer thought to come. "It is the'way of governments to forget," said a widow of Kalavryta.

Last year Frau Ehrengard Schramm, a German historian, arrived in Greece to write a war history. She wanted to visit Kalavryta, but was warned not to; she went anyway. She met hostility but no harm. "They were simple in their sorrow," she said, "not fanatical. They had no self-pity, but their faces expressed so much sorrow my breath stopped." She talked with one woman whose husband and three sons had been killed. "Her figure," she said, "seemed to have turned to stone."

Frau Schramm returned to Germany determined to arouse German women to the plight of Kalavryta, and to raise funds to buy machinery for some simple industry. "This is a matter for women," she said. "We must not let it get into the hands of men, who would spoil it."

But in spite of Frau Schramm--or perhaps because of her--the men of the West German government began to take an interest in Kalavryta. The German who, with his wife beside him, met with the village leaders was Alexander Post, commercial counselor of the German embassy in Athens. Under the reproachful eyes of the black-draped widows, he asked about what might be done as a measure of atonement: some looms, perhaps, to establish a small tapestry-weaving business, with equipment, dyes and technical assistance to come from Germany; 10,000 poplar trees to provide wood for the crates Greece needs to ship its fruit crops, livestock to increase the village's pitiful herd of 100 cows to 1,000 or more; a training program which would send 30 Kalavryta youths to Bavaria each year to learn good farming methods.

Old Mayor Georgacopoulis tried to explain the purpose of the visit to his people. "His people want to make up for their crime," he said. "We must be courteous to him and try to forget the past." The women said little, but that night, as always, they left their jobs in stores, or their work in the meadows and orchards to trudge up the hill to the graves, there to lay fresh flowers, to kneel for prayers, or to light a candle in a little glass and tin box fastened to one of the small white crosses, all inscribed with the same date--Dec. 13, 1943-

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