Malevizi: memorial for the 23 executed at Goniano

A memorial event for 23 residents of the wider Malevizi area who were executed by the German occupation forces in August 1944 was held on Sunday 16 August 2026 at Kamaraki, in the Heraklion area. The ceremony took place at the monument that stands at the entrance to the Goniano gorge, at the site of Porofarango, and was co-organised by the Municipality of Malevizi and the Kamaraki Cultural Association. Local authorities, relatives of the victims and residents of the surrounding settlements attended.

Of the 23 people executed, seventeen came from Kamaraki, while the other six came from Gonies, Sisarcha, Anogeia, Astyraki and Kamarioti. The geographical spread of the victims shows that the event concerned not a single settlement but the whole mountainous complex between Malevizi and Psiloritis, an area that was among the hardest hit in Crete during the Occupation. In August 1944, as German forces were withdrawing from the interior, reprisals against civilians intensified in many villages of the Heraklion prefecture.

In his address, the mayor of Malevizi, Menelaos Bokeas, spoke of the circumstances of the execution and of the importance of keeping the memory alive for younger generations. «Crete may have bled, but it did not kneel», he said, linking the local event with the island’s overall experience in the period from 1941 to 1945. Annual ceremonies of this kind are an important element of local memory in the mountain villages of Heraklion, where the number of victims was often disproportionately large in relation to the population of the communities.

The Goniano gorge, also known as Porofarango, connects the Gonies area with the Psiloritis plateau and is today a hiking route. The presence of the monument at its entrance serves as a point of reference for visitors who do not know the history of the area. The cultural associations of the settlements, working with the municipalities, keep these events alive, often combining them with the recording of testimonies and the documentation of the victims’ names. Similar initiatives to highlight local sites of memory and nature have also been recorded recently elsewhere in Crete, such as the designation of the «Platanos» springs at Armenoi as a historical site.