Pappas Post — The answer: The complete annihilation of a village and the massacre of 180 of its citizens.
The Razing of Kandanos on 3 June 1941 remains in the national memory as one of the most atrocious war crimes committed during the occupation of Crete by Nazi German forces in World War II.
The complete destruction of the village in Western Crete and the killing of about 180 of its inhabitants was ordered on June 3, 1941 by Nazi commander Kurt Student in reprisal for the participation of the local population in the Battle of Crete that had held advancing German soldiers for two days.
Nearby villages Floria and Kakopetro met a similar fate.
After its destruction, Kandanos was declared a ‘dead zone’ and its surviving population was forbidden to return to the village and rebuild it. Finally, several signs in German and Greek were erected on each entry of the village. One read: Here stood Kandanos, destroyed in retribution for the murder of 25 German soldiers, never to be rebuilt again.
The Battle of Crete began on 20 May 1941 with a large-scale airborne invasion planned to capture the island’s strategic locations. Kandanos is located on the road from Chania on the north coast to Paleochora in the south.
