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Greece to claim Nazi atrocity photos found on Ebay: minister / Photo: Angelos TZORTZINIS - AFP
Greece to claim Nazi atrocity photos found on Ebay: minister
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.
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.
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 ministry says the photographs appeared to show "the last moments" of 200 Greek Communists.
They were executed on May 1, 1944 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.
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.
B.Nagel--BlnAP
