The Resistance Memorial in Zakynthos, with the stone to Bishop Chrysostom on the left, and that to Lukas Karrer on the right.
IT was in December 1943 that the anxious mayor of Zakynthos, Lukas Karrer, came to ask Bishop Chrysostom’s advice. The Nazi commandant had given him seventy-two hours to compile a list of all the Jews of the island, a distasteful task as Karrer guessed that they would go to the Polish concentration camps.*
Karrer was fingering a list of 275 names, but Chrysostom told him to burn it at once. Instead, the two men went to the commandant, and with a cold ‘Here is the list of Jews you required’, handed over a scrap of paper with two names scribbled on it. One read ‘Karrer’. The other read ‘Chrysostom’.
While the commandant fumed, the bishop hastily made plans for hiding the Jews in the island’s rural villages. By the time a small German force came for them in August 1944, rounding them up was wholly impracticable, and their ordeal ended on October 14th when British Marines liberated the island.
That is to say, German camps in occupied Poland. See also The Girl in the Barn.
Précis
During the Second World War, the Nazis took control of the Greek island of Zakynthos, and demanded a list of Jews for deportation to the concentration camps. The mayor and the bishop of Zakynthos handed in a list, but the only names on it were their own; meanwhile the island’s Jews were hidden among the islanders, and survived the war. (60 / 60 words)
