The Holocaust of Hortiatis

Greece entered WWII on 28 October 1940, when the Italian army invaded from Albania. By spring 1941, the Italian invasion was failing. The German troops attacked Greece from the country’s northern borders (Operation Marita). Despite the Greek Army’s resistance and the assisting Commonwealth Forces, the German army’s advance was rapid. Soon after the invasion, Greek civilians begun to form the first resistance groups in the mountains of Northern Greece. Mount Hortiatis became one of the centres of resistance, a refuge, and a stop on the escape route.

​The resistance fighters organised an escape network for the remaining Allied soldiers, prisoners of war, and patriots who had been sentenced to death. The escapees were led to the ports of Halkidiki, from where they were taken to the Middle East by boat.

​In the summer of 1944, the actions of the resistance fighters became known, and the Nazis increased their presence in the area, intensifying their reprisals. In July, they executed twenty men in Asvestohori village.

​On 2 September, 1944, a group of resistance fighters ambushed the water company vehicles on the road to Kamara, the Roman aqueduct that supplied water to the city of Thessaloniki. During the clash, a Greek employee of the water company and a German sergeant were killed. ​At noon of the same day, 32 German vehicles arrived in the village of Hortiatis. Some residents ran to the mountain, but most of them stayed at home. The Nazis forced them to gather in two buildings, then closed the doors and set them on fire. Almost all were burned alive or were shot while trying to escape.

​​The toll of the Hortiatis Holocaust is 149 dead, 36 of them under ten years old, including even unbaptized infants. In 1988, Hortiatis was recognised as a “Martyred Village” and joined the Greek Network of “Martyred Villages and Towns”.