in detail
The memorial plaque is about 70 metres to the right of the monument on the village main street.
On Saturday, 2 September 1944, in the early hours of the morning, resistance fighters shot a German lance corporal and a private in a German Wehrmacht vehicle a few hundred metres from the village limits. The driver of the vehicle escaped and informed the Wehrmacht posts in Panorama and Thessaloniki. In the afternoon, a unit with 32 vehicles was sent to Chortiatis under the command of the notorious lance corporal Fritz Schubert. In reprisal for the attack, the German soldiers locked all the residents who were in the village at the time in the Gouramanis bakery and a neighbouring house, and set the bakery on fire. A total of 149 people were killed in the blaze, among them 36 children and 15 teenagers. Afterwards all the buildings in the village were laid waste and burned to the ground.
Today a small church stands on the site of the crime. A charnel house with the plaque commemorating the victims is in front of it.
On 2 September 1944, in reprisal for a partisan attack, German soldiers set the village of Chortiatis, not far from Thessaloniki, on fire. A total of 149 people, including children and teenagers, were burned alive in the bakery. A church has been built on the site where the bakery stood. In front of it is a charnel house with the plaque commemorating the victims.
2 September 1944
149 villagers burned alive in the Gouramanis bakery
2 September 1960
Monument unveiled on the village main street
1988
Association of survivors of the massacre founded
1998
Chortiatis recognized officially as a ‘martyr village’ by presidential decree (Decree No. 399, official government announcement No. 277, from 16 December 1998)
Chortiatis, 2004, church with charnel house and plaque commemorat-ing those murdered on 2 Sept. 1944, Alexios-Nikolaos Menexiadis.
Chortiatis, 2004, plaque with the names of some of those burned alive, Alexios-Nikolaos Menexiadis.
