The Lingiades massacre, on 3 October 1943, was a
Nazi German
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
war crime committed by members of the
1st Mountain Division of the
''Wehrmacht Heer'' during the
Axis occupation of Greece. The village of Lingiades ( el, Λιγκιάδες), near
Ioannina in northwestern
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...
, was arbitrarily chosen as a target for
reprisal
A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Since the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP 1), reprisals in the laws of war are extreme ...
s 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.
Background
Greek resistance groups were active in northwestern Greece (
Epirus
sq, Epiri rup, Epiru
, native_name_lang =
, settlement_type = Historical region
, image_map = Epirus antiquus tabula.jpg
, map_alt =
, map_caption = Map of ancient Epirus by Heinri ...
) during World War II. On 1 October 1943, a unit of the
National Republican Greek League
The National Republican Greek League ( el, Εθνικός Δημοκρατικός Ελληνικός Σύνδεσμος (ΕΔΕΣ), ''Ethnikós Dimokratikós Ellinikós Sýndesmos'' (EDES)) was one of the major resistance groups formed during t ...
(EDES) ambushed a German convoy near
Preveza
Preveza ( el, Πρέβεζα, ) is a city in the region of Epirus, northwestern Greece, located on the northern peninsula at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf. It is the capital of the regional unit of Preveza, which is part of the region of Epiru ...
. In the firefight, the commander of Mountaineering Regiment 98, Lieutenant-Colonel
Josef Salminger, was killed by Greek partisans.
Salminger, an ardent Nazi, was notorious for conducting attacks against civilians, such as the
massacre of Kommeno which resulted in the murder of 317 villagers.
[Hermann, 2008, p. 423]
Salminger's death prompted General
Hubert Lanz
Karl Hubert Lanz (22 May 1896 – 15 August 1982) was a German general during the Second World War, in which he led units in the Eastern Front and in the Balkans. After the war, he was tried for war crimes and convicted in the Southeast Case, s ...
, commander of the 1st Mountain Division, to order reprisals within a 20 km radius of the ambush. Lingiades, a tiny mountain village 13 kilometres northwest of Ioannina, overlooks Ioannina Lake and Ioannina from an elevation about 940 m above.
The village could not be linked to resistance activity by German intelligence. It may have been chosen as a target due to its visibility from Ioannina. Its nearby destruction would likely spread terror among the local populace.
The attack
On Sunday, 3 October, elements of the German 79th Field Battalion commanded by Major Hans Mayr arrived in Lingiades. Of the town's 287 inhabitants, most village adults were in an neighbouring town for the walnut harvest.
[ Villagers who could not run away were dragged by German soldiers to the central square of the village. After dwellings were searched and looted, all civilians were divided into small groups and driven into the cellars of various dwellings. There they were shot down by machine guns. Apart from the church and the village school, all buildings in the village were set on fire. The majority of the 92 victims were children, infants, women, and the aged. Thirty-two of the dead were aged between six months and 11 years.][ They feigned death among the corpses and then escaped from the burning buildings by ascending via the fireplace.][
]
Investigation
No one was ever held accountable for the atrocity in Lingiades.
Memory
On 7 March 2014, German President Joachim Gauck
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (; born 24 January 1940) is a German politician and civil rights activist who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in E ...
visited Lingiades together with his Greek counterpart, Karolos Papoulias
Karolos Papoulias ( el, Κάρολος Παπούλιας ; 4 June 1929 – 26 December 2021) was a Greek politician who served as the president of Greece from 2005 to 2015.
A member of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), he previously ...
. Gauck was the first German official to visit the site. He expressed his apologies for the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht, saying, "With shame and pain I ask in the name of Germany the families of the victims for forgiveness ... I bow in front of the victims for this monstrous crime."
References
Sources
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{{Greece during World War II, state=collapsed
1943 in Greece
Massacres in 1943
Epirus in World War II
Massacres in Greece during World War II
Mass murder in 1943
Nazi war crimes in Greece
October 1943 events
War crimes of the Wehrmacht