High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Massacre of the Acqui Division also known as the Cephalonia Massacre was the mass execution of the men of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division by the Germans in the island of Kefalonia, Greece, following the Italian armistice during the Second World War. About 5000 soldiers were massacred and others drowned or otherwise exterminated. The massacre provided the historical background to the novel Captain Corelli s Mandolin, which later became a Hollywood film. It was one of the largest prisoner of war massacres of the war, along with the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Poles, and one of the largest-scale German atrocities to be committed by Wehrmacht troops instead of the SS.