After the liberation, the callous treatment and frequent reprisals that the conquerors had inflicted on the population during the occupation created the need for a systematic record of all associated losses and destruction. With particular regard to Crete, in June 1945 the government decided on the formation of the Central Committee for the Verification of Atrocities on Crete, consisting of Ioannis Kalitsounakis, Ioannis Kakridis, Nikos Kazantzakis and Konstantinos Koutoulakis.

From 29^th June to 6^th August 1945 the committee toured rural Crete, drawing on archive material and oral accounts to record countless cases of brutality that the occupation forces and their collaborators had meted out on the Cretan people.