In December 1943, the German Army's 117th Jaeger Division led by General Karl von Le Suire ordered harsh and massive reprisal operations across the region for Resistance activity. He personally ordered killing of the entire male population of Kalavryta on 10 December 1943. Wehrmacht 'Kampfgruppe Ebersberger' troops burnt villages and monasteries and shot civilians on their way to Kalavryta.
When they reached the town, they locked all women and children in the school and marched all males 12 and older to a hill just overlooking the town. There, the German troops machine-gunned them all down. There were only 13 male survivors. Over 500 died at Kalavryta. The survivors told their story of survival, saying that after the Germans machine-gunned the crowd, some falling bodies were covered by the dead. This way, when the Germans went through again to finish off those still alive, the few lucky ones escaped the coup-de-grace. The women and children managed to free themselves from the school and the town was set ablaze.
The following day the Nazi troops burnt down the Monastery of Agia Lavra, a landmark of the Greek War of Independence. In total, nearly 700 civilians were killed during the reprisals during Operation Kalavryta. Twenty-eight communities - towns, villages, monasteries and settlements were destroyed. In Kalavryta itself about 1,000 houses were looted and burned and more than 2,000 livestock were seized by the Germans.
Despite the
fact that the Federal Republic of Germany has publicly acknowledged the Nazi
atrocity at Kalavryta, war reparations have not been paid. On 18 April 2000,
the then-president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Johannes Rau, visited
the town of Kalavryta to express his feelings of shame and deep sorrow for the
tragedy; however, he didn't accept responsibility on behalf of the German state
and did not refer to the issue of reparations. As reparations, the federal
Government of Germany has only offered free school books and scholarships for
orphans of this particular massacre and they have also built a senior citizens
home. To this day, Germany has yet to compensate the few survivors. Also, no German
commanders, (e.g. Major Ebersberger who supervised the massacre and the
destruction of Kalavryta and others like Hauptmann Dohnert who led the firing
party), were ever brought to justice .
The Distomo Massacre:
On June 10, 1944, the Waffen-SS troops of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division under the command of SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Fritz Lautenbach went to Distomo, a small Greek town near Delphi to punish the Greek civilians for supporting the Resistance. For over two hours they went door to door and massacred Greek civilians. A total of 214 men, women and children were killed in Distomo. According to the testimony of survivors the SS forces "bayoneted babies in their cribs, stabbed pregnant women, and beheaded the village priest."
In the case of Distomo, four relatives took the German Government to court in Livadeia, Greece. The court found in their favour on October 30, 1997 and awarded damages of 28 million Euros. In May 2000, the Greek High Court confirmed this decision which was being appealed by the Germans, but the plaintiffs could not enforce the judgement in Greece. They went to the German courts for enforcement.
The plaintiffs brought the case to court in Germany, demanding the aforementioned damages be paid to them. The claim was rejected at all levels of the German judicial system, citing the 1961 bilateral agreement concerning enforcement and recognition of judgments between Germany and Greece, and Section 328 of the German Code of Civil Procedure. Both required that Greece have jurisdiction, which it does not as the actions in question were sovereign acts by a state. According to the fundamental principles of international law, each country is immune from another state's jurisdiction.
In November 2008, an Italian court ruled that the plaintiffs could take German property in Italy as compensation that was awarded by the Greek courts. The plaintiffs were awarded a villa in Menaggio, near Lake Como, which was owned by a German state non-profit organization, as part of the restitution. In December 2008, the German government filed a claim at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against this action. The German claim was that the Italian courts should have dismissed the case under the international law of sovereign immunity.
In January 2011, the Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, announced that the Greek Government would be represented at the International Court of Justice in relation to the claim for reparations by relatives of victims. In its 2012 final judgment, the court ruled that Italy had violated Germany's state immunity, and directed that the judgment by the Italian courts be retracted. In the end no reparation was ever paid.
Despite these massacres the Germans have not only not paid the reparations due but have fought in all the courts in Europe to absolve itself of any liability for it vicious and barbarous behaviour. During the German occupation of Greece more than 460 villages were completely destroyed and approximately 60,000 civilian men, women and children were massacred. Germany has refused to pay them the reparations it was adjudged to have owed these people.
The Ultimate Hypocrisy:
In addition to the Germans' refusal to pay any reparations for its actions in Greece the Germans have placed the cost of their occupation of Greece on the Greek people. During the war the Nazi Government forced the Greeks to make a loan to the Reichsbank to pay for the costs of occupation; about 500 million Reichsmarks.
After the Allied invasion and the collapse of the Nazi regime, the first thing the occupation authorities did was to block all kinds of claims by and against the German government, under the legal fiction that that the German government and the German state didn't exist anymore. Moreover, any country wishing to receive Marshall Aid from the Americans under the Marshall Plan had to sign a waiver waiving all kinds of financial claims against Germany from World War II against Marshall Aid. This means that it would not be entirely blocked, but it would have to [be] put on hold until post-war Germany had paid off its Marshall Aid from the United States. In technical terms, what that did was to make reparation and credit claims against Germany from World War II junior, second rank, lower in rank to Marshall Assistance to Germany. And since everybody wanted to get Marshall Aid from America, everybody grudgingly signed these waivers. So the situation during the Marshall Plan period was that all these debts still existed on paper, but they were worthless in the sense that the debt was blocked.
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