Paramythia executions

The Paramythia executions, also known as the Paramythia massacre (19–29 September 1943) was a combined Nazi and Cham Albanian war crime perpetrated by members of the 1st Mountain Division and the Muslim Cham militia in the town of Paramythia and its surrounding region, during the Axis occupation of Greece, in World War II. In this, 201 Greek villagers were murdered and 19 municipalities in the region of Paramythia were destroyed. The years after the end of the war and the defeat of the Axis Powers, a series a war crime trials condemned these actions, however not a single defendant was ever arrested and brought to trial, as they already had fled into Albania. At the Hostages Trial in Nuremberg (1948), the American judges reached the decision that the executions of Paramythia were "plain murders". Axis-Cham Albanian collaboration The town of Paramythia was the administrative center of the Prefecture of Thesprotia before World War II. When the war broke out it had a mixed population of 3,000 Christian Greeks and 3,000 Muslim Cham Albanians. Fascist Italian propaganda had adopted a pro-Albanian approach, promising that the region would become part of Great Albania when the war ended. As a result, the Muslim Cham community collaborated in large parts with the occupying Italian and later the German troops of the Axis Powers, committing a number of crimes against the unarmed local Greek population. The occupation forces installed a local Cham administration in the town of Paramythia, with Xhemil Dino as local administrator of Thesprotia and as a representative of the Albanian government. Apart from the local Cham administration (Këshilla) and militia, a paramilitary organization named 'Kosla' was operating from July 1942. Due to increased guerilla activity in the surrounding region, in September 1943, German Lt Colonel Josef Remold ordered the initiation of several scouting missions consisting of combined German-Cham Albanian groups. On September 18, a group of 60 villagers was stopped by a patrol and were interrogated.