On this day in 1943, in the third year of the occupation of Crete, German units began a three-day operation in the provinces of east Viannos and west Ierapetra. Around twenty villages were affected: Amiras, Ano Viannos, Kato Symi, Pefkos, Vachos, Agios Vasileios, Myrtos and others whose names are still read aloud each September. More than five hundred civilians were killed between the fourteenth and the sixteenth, most of them men. Most of the villages were burned, the houses looted, the harvest destroyed with them.

It was not improvised. A written order came down from the divisional commander, Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, and the units carried it out over three days.

What I keep returning to is what happened afterward, which was neither dramatic nor quick. The people who survived came back to the same slopes, to olive terraces that had been fired and vines that had to be started again, and they rebuilt there rather than anywhere else. The villages on the map today are the villages on that list. That is the whole of it, and it is enough.