Seeking answers to family questions

By Katherine Bales

SMU senior Alexandra Lahiri stands at the Rogoi Memorial and Execution Site in Kalavryta, Greece, pondering the Nazi attack that devastated her own family and hundreds of other Greeks. The place feels oddly calm considering the chaos that ensued decades ago.

Lahiri’s great-great-papou, (the Greek word for “grandfather”) Christos Chrysafidis, was one of 700 Greek men and adolescent boys killed by Nazi soldiers in the Kalavryta Massacre of 1943. Lahiri first heard the story from her yiayia (“grandmother” in Greek) Anna Chryssafidou Lahiri, who survived the massacre as a child with the rest of her family. With countless questions left unanswered years later, Lahiri set out in May to research what happened in Kalavryta.

“These stories need to be told,” says Lahiri, who is pursuing SMU dual degrees in international studies and music, and is on the pre-law track.

She learned about the massacre in high school when working on a project about Greece’s involvement in World War II. While scanning the Municipality Museum of the Kalavritan Holocaust’s list of victims, she found her great-great-papou’s name. Upon further investigation of the event, she found little documentation of the Kalavryta Massacre compared to other World War II events, especially in the English language.

Lahiri spent three weeks in May in Greece researching the massacre as a recipient of the Richter International Research Fellowship, which funds independent research for students in SMU’s University Honors Program.

Nazis massacre residents of Greek village

On Dec. 13, 1943, Nazi soldiers marched through the Greek village of Kalavryta, located on a mountaintop in the country’s southernmost region, the Peloponnese. They rounded up all the residents of the town and forced them into a schoolhouse, then took the men and boys ages around 12 years and older to Kapi Hill, which overlooked the village. On that hillside, the Nazis killed 700 (696 according to the Nazi report) men. Only 13 men survived, some of whom have given accounts of their horrific experiences.

“The men would have seen their whole village in ruins as the Nazis had burned many of the buildings and the main church,” she says.

The men were targeted because the Nazis believed they were  resistance fighters attacking their troops and rejecting their occupation.

While the men were led up to the hillside, the Nazis set fire to the school that imprisoned the women and children.

Lahiri’s grandmother, who was locked in the burning schoolhouse, lived to tell the tale. She and others broke windows to escape.

Memories of terror

“I remember her telling me that she was very afraid of the sound of the Nazi soldiers’ stomping feet,” Lahiri says. “She remembered the walls being consumed with fire.”

Lahiri had visited Greece before, but most of her family lives outside of Athens, by the sea in the northern area of the Peloponnese. She visited the massacre site in May for the first time since she was 3 years old.

“It was very different from when I had usually gone to Greece as I enjoy visiting the islands almost ever summer,” she says.

A vivid experience

Seeing the site in person gave Lahiri a better understanding of how the massacre unfolded.

“Standing inside the Municipal Museum of the Kalavritan Holocaust, which was rebuilt from the burned schoolhouse, was overwhelming,” she said.

One hallway included the door where everyone in the village entered the school,  and opposite, the door in which the men and young boys were forced out.

“I thought, ‘My grandmother went through that door with her family, with her sister and her mother and perhaps even her father,’” she says. “It was a very vivid experience, just being right in the middle of that hallway beside those doors.”

Doing the research

Lahiri’s initial research started before she embarked on her international fellowship. In February 2024, she interviewed Konstantinos Velis, a 97-year-old survivor from Trechlo, a village near Kalavryta.

After conducting the interview in both English and Greek with the help of Velis’ family members, she published in the University Honors Program’s Hilltopics.

Over a year later in Greece, Lahiri discovered that some of the massacre’s victims, including her own relative, were killed in a different location.

“I didn’t know that my great-great-grandfather was murdered in Rogoi, not on Kapi Hill,” she says.

While in Kalavryta, she visited the Municipal Museum of the Kalavritan Holocaust, where deep in the museum she again saw her great-great-grandfather’s name on the list of victims, which are shown with photographs of many of their faces.

A family mystery remains. Lahiri’s great-grandfather, Demetrios Chrysafidis, may have survived the massacre, yet he was an adult by that time, married with children.

“Currently, there are no records found showing he was there with my grandmother and her family,” she says. “My grandmother told me that he was also there, but instead of being forced to go with all the other men, he was kept with the women and children — which was odd because he would have been much older than 12.”

He was blinded at a young age when a doctor mistakenly put acid instead of medication in his eyes.

“The Nazis discriminated against people with disabilities,” she says. “He wasn’t grouped with the men and the older boys.”

In Kalavryta, museum curator and historian Dimos Grestas told Lahiri that if her great-grandfather had survived, he would have been the 14^th survivor.

“Now, in my research, I’m trying to find any documentation of him being there,” she says. “It would be beneficial to interview someone in Kalavryta who might have remembered him.”

Alexandra Lahiri and her father, Demetrios Lahiri, share historical photos of family and information about the massacre.

As a result of Lahiri’s research, her family now knows more about the massacre as well.

"I am very proud that my daughter is pursuing a course of research regarding the massacre at Kalavryta,” says Demetrios T. Lahiri (MBA ’90), Alexandra’s father. “While I knew of the stories of my grandfather being killed during the Kalavryta Massacre, I did not know some of the details that Alexandra’s research has uncovered. We must never forget the tragedy of this Nazi massacre. It is only by solidifying and documenting this history that we can also ensure that this does not happen again.”

Earning a research scholarship

Brandon Miller, assistant dean for honors and scholars and director of the University Honors Program, has seen Lahiri’s research develop since the beginning of her Richter Fellowship application.

“Alexandra’s commitment to her ongoing research on the Kalavryta Massacre shows a level of drive and focus unusual for undergraduate students,” Miller says. “She now is hard at work transforming this project into a senior thesis.”

To secure the Richter opportunity, Lahiri wrote a 30-page research proposal and presented it to the University Honors Program. Months later, she conducted the research in Greece and published in the Hilltopics Summer Online Exclusive.

The Richter Fellowship is available at only a dozen universities nationwide. At SMU, the fellowship enables undergraduate honors students to conduct independent research on international topics under faculty guidance.

“Is is imperative that these stories be kept alive and regularly shared to expose the crimes of the Nazis who murdered Greek citizens and to ensure that future generations never forget,” Lahiri says.