Greece will claim a World War II photo trove posted for sale online believed to show for the first time one of Nazi Germany’s worst atrocities in the country, the culture ministry said Wednesday.
The ministry said the photographs appeared to show “the last moments” of 200 Greek Communists executed by the Nazis on May 1, 1944.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said an “entire collection” of photographs apparently taken by a German army lieutenant serving in wartime Greece had been declared a national monument “due to its particular historical value”.
“They allow us to frame the drama of occupied Greece also through the eyes of the occupier,” she said in a statement.
“With today’s declaration of the collection as a monument, the Ministry of Culture acquires the legal basis to claim it and acquire it on behalf of the Greek state,” Mendoni said.
She added that the ministry wanted to look at the entire collection of photographs taken by Wehrmacht officer Hermann Heuer, who had also served in Belgium and France.
The revelation has caused strong emotions in Greece, especially among relatives of the victims.
Greek Communist party lawmaker Giorgos Lambroulis on Wednesday said the party had so far identified four men in the photographs.
Twelve of the photographs had originally appeared on the Ebay site Crain’s Militaria on Saturday before being taken down on Monday.
The 200 Communists were executed in retaliation for the killing of a German general and his staff by Communist guerrillas a few days earlier.
The execution at the Kaisariani shooting range in Athens was a seminal event of the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation of Greece, which was marked by several atrocities, mostly against Greek villagers.
Greece’s Jewish community was also decimated during this period.
The mayor of Kaisariani, Ilias Stamelos, on Wednesday called the find “astonishing”.
“These are the first documents to come to light (regarding this event),” he told state TV ERT.
Most of the men had been arrested years earlier during anti-Communist raids by the police of Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas.
Until now, the only testimony of the 200 victims’ final moments were from the handwritten notes they threw out of the trucks taking them to execution.
One of the pictures shows groups of the men marching through a field. Several others show them standing against a wall at the shooting range.
One photo appears to show the men being marched into the shooting range, after discarding their overcoats outside.
Mendoni said that ministry experts on Friday would visit the collector in Evergem, Belgium, to examine the photographs.
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