The morning of 16 August 1943 began the way summer mornings in Kommeno always began. Farmers and their families were in their homes along the east bank of the Arachthos River in northwestern Greece. Some had been awake through the night — a wedding had taken place the evening before, and guests from the village and surrounding area were still gathered, still celebrating. The date was the day after the Dormition of the Mother of God, one of the most important feast days in the Orthodox calendar. Then, at dawn, lorries carrying 120 soldiers of the 12th Company of the 98th Regiment of the German 1st Mountain Division arrived at the edge of the village.
Kommeno in 1940 was home to 776 people. They farmed the flat land near the Arachthos and fished its waters, living in the manner of generations before them. The village sat north of the Gulf of Ambracia, tucked into the agricultural lowlands of Epirus — a quiet place, notable for nothing in particular, known to no one beyond its neighbors.
By the summer of 1943, the German occupation of Greece had transformed life throughout the country. Greek partisan organizations, including ELAS and EDES, were mounting armed resistance, and the Wehrmacht had adopted a policy of collective reprisals against civilian communities to suppress them. The people of Kommeno were farmers, not fighters. On 12 August, a small partisan food-requisitioning detachment came through the village. A two-man Wehrmacht reconnaissance team drove in, spotted them, turned around, and left. The villagers, frightened of what might follow, spent that night in the fields. They sent a delegation to the Italian commander in nearby Arta to explain what had happened. He reassured them: there would be no consequences. They went home.
On the evening of 15 August, Colonel Josef Salminger, commanding officer of the 98th Regiment, ordered the 12th Company to attack Kommeno the following morning. The company was led by Oberleutnant Willibald Röser, who was known among his men by the nickname "Nero of 12/98." Salminger told the troops they were going to destroy a partisan stronghold and ordered them to spare no one.
Most of the men had served on the Eastern Front. Three weeks before Kommeno, the same unit had killed 136 civilians at Mousiotitsa. They arrived in Kommeno before sunrise, surrounding the village from three directions. The only exit they left open led to the Arachthos River.
The soldiers attacked the houses with grenades. As families woke and tried to run, they were shot. The village priest came out and begged Röser to spare his people. Röser killed him on the spot. Men, women, children, and the elderly were killed indiscriminately. Eyewitness accounts described additional atrocities: women assaulted, people beaten, the dead treated with contempt. The approximately forty wedding guests still awake from the night before were among those murdered.
Many villagers ran toward the river. Some swam across. Others found small boats. Almost half the population of Kommeno managed to escape that way, carried by the current or by desperate strokes across the Arachthos while the village burned behind them. After killing as many as they could reach, the soldiers seized livestock, looted valuables, and set the village ablaze.
The official German military report that followed falsely described the village as a partisan stronghold that had opened fire on German forces, and claimed 150 "partisans" had been killed. As the report traveled up the command chain, the word "civilians" was changed to "enemy."
The official casualty count is 317 dead. Among them were 73 children under the age of ten. Twenty entire families were wiped out. The newlyweds from the previous evening's celebration were killed. No reparations were ever paid to the families of the victims.
Salminger was killed by partisans on 1 October 1943. The 1st Mountain Division carried out another massacre — at Lyngiades — two days later, in reprisal. Röser died in November 1944 during an Allied airstrike on Freiburg. The divisional commander, Generalleutnant Walter Stettner, went missing near Belgrade in October 1944.
In the main square of what remained of Kommeno, a marble monument was erected listing the names and ages of those who died on 16 August 1943. It stands there still. The Cultural Association of Kommeno, founded in 1976 by students and farmers from the village, has worked for decades to ensure that those names — and the lives attached to them — are not forgotten. Through music festivals, arts programs, and international partnerships, the village has chosen to answer what was done to it with memory, and with life.
Kommeno lies at approximately 39.047°N, 21.031°E, on the east bank of the Arachthos River in the Arta regional unit of Epirus. The nearest airport is LGPZ (Aktion National Airport) near Preveza, roughly 55 km to the southwest at 38.952°N, 20.765°E. The village is visible from low altitude — the Arachthos curves clearly through the flat agricultural plain, and the Gulf of Ambracia opens to the south. At 2,000–3,000 feet heading east from the coast, the river bend near Kommeno is a recognizable landmark.