Tag: greece

Nazi Atrocities

Today in History, June 10, 1944:

Oradour-sur-Glane, France. Elements of the Nazi SS, acting on belief that one of their officers had been captured by members of the French Resistance, rounded up every citizen of the town and 6 hapless passersby. They locked all of the women and children in a church, then took all of the men to barns, where machine gun nests were already set up. The men were intentionally shot in the legs so that they would die more slowly…once they were all unable to move, the Nazis poured gasoline over them and set the barns afire.

They then returned to the church, where they set off an incendiary device inside. As the church burned, women and children tried to climb out of windows…where they were machine-gunned. 642 innocent civilians were slaughtered.

1944 – Distomo, Greece. In retaliation for a partisan attack, German SS troops go house to house in the village (whose residents had nothing to do with the attack), killing every man woman and child, totaling 218 dead in the end. They disemboweled one infant in front of his family and committed numerous other atrocities before burning the village.

The Olympics Return

Today in History, March 6: 1896 – The first modern Olympics are held in Athens, Greece. The ancient Olympic games were held in Olympia (thus Olympics) Greece for hundreds of years. When the 1896 games were held, one of the first events was a run to retrace the route a Greek soldier had taken from Marathon to Athens in 490 B. C., bringing news that the invading Persians had been defeated (Thus the term Marathon). In 1896 there were 280 participants (some of them passing tourists); in the most recent Olympics, approximately 11,000 athletes were involved. As an aside…the athletes in the ancient Olympics were reputedly all nude. I imagine that would affect the number of viewers….