Kefalonia and World War II

I am not a historian, and am out of my depth trying to portray the complex history of Greece, so I won't try here. However, I can pose some questions.  The photo above is a memorial to the Italian soldiers who were massacred by the Nazis.  There is a Greek flag, an Italian flag at the center, and then an EU flag flying above this memorial.  But the Italians were an invading force, who occupied parts of Greece for much of the war including Kefalonia (1941-1943).  Why on earth are they memorialized? After the Italian armistice, the Italians were marooned in Greece, which was controlled by the Nazis.  There was uncertainty about their fate, but in Kefalonia, they fought against the Germans and then when they lost, they were massacred.  In Kefalonia, there were stories about how the Greek population rescued some of the Italians who survived the massacre and smuggled them out, risking their own lives for their former occupiers. But this isn't the movie Captain Corelli's Mandolin or Mediterraneo, where the occupying force was portrayed as the good guys.

The memorial was placed here in 1978, so the official recognition on Greek soil of this massacre came in the run up to Greece's entry into the EU in 1981.  So the timing suggests that the official nature of this may have to do with larger concerns about intra-European ties at this important moment in Greece's history.

In Jacksonville, Florida, we are having a brou-ha-ha about our confederate monuments, all of which were built between 1898 and1926, so clearly motivated by some current issues at the time rather than just memorializing the recent dead.  In Jacksonville, we are debating whether we want to destroy them, remove them, move them to a park, contextualize them, or leave them where they are and as is.  The issue has struck a nerve and there are passionate responses on many sides. The questions of memory and shifting views of history are legion.