317 Wedding Guests in Greece Massacred – Their Nazi Killers Executed

Narrator: Marchand Steenkamp.
About the story: On the morning of August 16, 1943, in the quiet village of Kommeno in Epirus, Greece, a brutal massacre unfolded. Just days earlier, a small group of partisans had briefly passed through the village, collecting food and supplies. Though the villagers did not engage in any combat, this short encounter would serve as the pretext for one of the most horrific Nazi atrocities committed in occupied Greece. At dawn, around 120 heavily armed soldiers from the 12th Company of the 98th Mountain Regiment, part of the infamous 1st Mountain Division, entered Kommeno under the command of Oberleutnant Willibald Röser. Without warning, they attacked. Grenades were thrown into homes, machine guns cut down fleeing civilians, and entire families were massacred. Men were shot, women were raped and executed, and infants were torn from their mothers’ arms and murdered. The local priest was among the first to die, executed as he begged for mercy. The attack had been deliberately timed. Villagers were celebrating a wedding and the Feast of the Assumption. Guests from neighboring villages had gathered, making Kommeno especially crowded. The massacre lasted for six hours. By the end, 317 civilians were dead—172 women, 97 children, two priests, and the newlyweds. Nearly every house was burned to the ground.
In the days that followed, German authorities issued false reports, claiming they had fought a battle against armed resistance. The truth was buried—literally and politically. Yet some justice came. The officer who ordered the attack, Josef Salminger, was ambushed and killed by partisans weeks later. His superior, General Walter Stettner, vanished in 1944, presumed executed by Yugoslav forces.
Today, the Kommeno massacre stands as a solemn symbol of Nazi terror in Greece—remembered each year on August 16 by those who survived and the generations that followed.

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