De En El Fr

Justice for Greece

GREECE SHOULD STOP PAYING ITS DEBT TO GERMANY UNTIL GERMANY STARTS REPAYING ITS DEBT TO GREECE

Our aim is not-only to serve the rights of the Greeks but also to restore justice in Europe

Eighty years have passed since Hitler’s Germany invaded Greece, and still Germany refuses to pay its debts arising from the crimes committed by its troops against the Greek State and the Greek People during the Occupation between 1941 and 1944 in WW2.

Historical background:

Germans reassured Greeks in 1941 that they came to strengthen the Greek economy, and instead, they printed fake currency resulting to enormous hyperinflation. For example, 1 kgr of bread was worth 10 drachmas in 1941 and 153 million drachmas in 1944.

The German occupiers looted all industrial and agricultural production of Greece. For example, they confiscated and transported to Germany thousands of tons of chrome, bauxite, nickel, molybdenum, pyrite, tobacco, silver, copper, petroleum, charcoal, raisins, olive oil, cotton, sugar, rice, silk-cocoons, 12 tons of gold, thousands of cultural treasures etc. Mussolini said sarcastically that “the Germans took from the Greeks even the laces of their shoes”.

This led to THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1941.

As a result of all this savage looting, the Greek population went hungry, losing 300,000 persons during the winter of 1941-42, and 600,000 in total from lack of food malnutrition and diseases. At the end of the war, 75% of the children were suffering from disease.

In addition to the famine, GERMANS CAUSED MANY MASSACRES in Greece (violations of the Hague-Conference of 1907). The total reduction of the population of Greece during WW2 was 13.5%. Some of the communities that suffered from German’s atrocities were Alikianos, Anogeia, Damasta, Distomo, Giannitsa, Hortiatis, Kaisariani, Kandanos, Kerdyllia, Kleisoura, Kommeno, Kontomari, Ligkiades, Mesobouno, Mousiotitsa, Paramythia, Pirgoi, the villages of the Viannos region, Ypati… The Germans destroyed about 1770 towns and villages, with 131 holocausts recognized until now. Examples:

HOLOCAUST OF KALAVRITA (December 13, 1943): The Germans slaughtered 1460 civilians and demolished the town. After exterminating all men between 12 and 90 years old, the Germans forced women and children into the school and set it on fire.

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/hQXBvtpmfOhVLA

HOLOCAUST OF DISTOMO (June 10, 1944): The Germans exterminated 117 women, 111 men, and 53 children. Houses were burning; hundreds of dead bodies on the ground; women strangled with their own guts; infants with their throats cut. The Swedish professor Sture Linner participated in the Red Cross delegation in Greece, and witnessed the results of the German atrocity. He drove a truck filled with food to Distomo. It was June 14, 1944. He describes that “he entered a village in flames, empty of life, utterly destroyed. … Genitals cut and put into the mouth of the corpses. Women with cut breasts and crushed genitals… The picture could have matched Dante’s inferno”

HOLOCAUST OF VIANNOS (14-16 Sept 1943): The Germans killed 461 inhabitants, burned 10 villages, and blew up 980 houses. In 1945, Nikos Kazantzakis, a member of the Committee for the “Verification of Cruelty in Crete”, formed by United Nations, described the atrocities of the Wehrmacht. He writes that «Germans arrested children and tortured them to testify against the guerrillas; slashed their cheeks with the bayonet; pulled out their teeth, and finally slaughtered them; then hanged their heads on the wall…. In Krevatas, the German execution-detachments of Vahos, Amiros and Kefalovrysos, drunken, danced on the corpses of the dead to the tune of a phonograph». In the Annex of this Report it is mentioned that from the warehouses of Phaistos the Germans grabbed almost all the vessels. Remnants of Minoan cities were wiped off the map once and for all. https://tvxs.gr/news/taksidia-sto-xrono/i-xameni-ekthesi-toy-kazantzakigia-ta-nazistika-egklimata-stin-kriti

HOLOCAUST OF KOMMENOS (August 16, 1943): The German army butchered 317 unarmed residents, among them 97 infants and children, 119 women. “Two babies of 7-months old, were found suffocated: The Germans filled their mouths with cotton (soaked in gasoline) and set fire to it. The priest of the village was found killed with a knife and his eyes gouged out. A full-term woman was found dead with her abdomen torn and the fetus lying dead next to her.” Holocaust in Kommeno of Arta. When the Nazi beasts raped women, undressed pregnant women, even killed babies children … “to make fun of them”. (August 16, 1943) | DEEP RED (tsak-giorgis.blogspot.com).

Mark Mazower in his book “Inside Hitler’s Greece” refers to the German atrocities in Kommeno: “…a war of unparalleled brutality. Soldiers admitted that what especially shocked them at Komeno were the signs of wanton cruelty, such as the deliberate mutilation of bodies…”

HOLAUCOST OF KANDANOS (June 3, 1941): Germans razed to the ground the village of Kandanos and executed 300 Cretans. Germans printed their CRIME in three signs. One of them states: “For the brutal murder of German paratroopers, mountain commandos and engineers, by armed men, women, children and priests, and for resisting the great Reich, Kandanos was leveled on June 3, 1941, NEVER TO BE REBUILT.” Another one states: “Here was Kandanos. It was destroyed to atone the murder of 25 German soldiers.”

HOLOCAUST OF ANOGIA (August 13, 1944): The order of Friedrich-Wilhelm Muller is a short version of the role of Anogia in WW2:

«Because Anogia is the center of English espionage, because Anogians murdered Sergeant GeniGave, because they carried out the sabotage of Damasta, and because they helped in the abduction of General-Kreipe, we order the LEVELING of the city and the execution of every male Anogian found inside it». There were 940 houses in Anogia, not one was left intact. For 22 days and nights, the Germans were looting and blowing up houses, they butchered 24 elderly and disabled.

OUT OF 120,000 GREEKS SENT TO CONCENTRATION/ EXTERMINATION CAMPS ONLY 15,000 SURVIVED

Merten (the butcher of the Greek-Jews of Salonica) stripped the Greek Jews of Thessaloniki of their gold, and then sent them to extermination camps. Of the 69,000 Greek-Jews sent to extermination camps, only 2,000 returned. 67,000 were victims of the Nazi killing program. Mothers and children, who were, neither useful for the inhuman experiments of Mengele, nor strong enough to work, were killed in gas chambers. Men were forced to work to exhaustion, often in factories installed in camps. Ninidakis from Koxare Rethymnou survived Mauthausen and brought back a bar-of-soap. When he explained that the soap was made of the burned human bodies, his mother dug a hole, buried the bar of soap and sprinkled it with incense. The play writer Kambanellis, a survivor of Mauthausen, wrote the homonymous book, a literary masterpiece.

Overall, during the World War 2, GREECE LOST AS MANY SOULS (mainly noncombatants, men-women-and-children) AS THE USA AND ENGLAND TOGETHER

This is the 1st kind of German Debt to Greece:

The «Compensation of Victims of War Crimes»

The Cross-party-Committee of the Greek-Parliament in 2016 determined that Germany owes to its Greek victims 107 billion Euro plus interest.

In addition, the German army DESTROYED:

• the road and rail network, • telecommunications and irrigation network, • ports,

• the civil aviation,

• the Corinth canal,

• 74% of the cargo and 95% of the passenger ships,

• ¼ of the buildings,

• mines

The German army led to the REDUCTION OF:

• agricultural production by 75%,

• livestock by 80%,

• forests by 25%.

That was the most serious financial disaster of the Modern Greek Era. The repercussions are felt even today. In 1938 the Greek drachma was 50 times stronger than the drachma of 2001.

This is the 2nd kind of German Debt to Greece, a debt towards the state for wrecking its economic infrastructure: «War Reparations»

The 1946 Paris Peace Conference obliged Germany to pay war reparations to Greece in the amount of 7.1 billion USD (1938 market value) in compensation for wrecking its Economic infrastructure. This amount corresponds to 108 billion Euro not counting interest. It should be noted that “war crimes and the obligations arising from them do not lapse.”

Moreover, the GERMANS LOOTED MUSEUMS, monuments and archaeological treasures. The 3rd Reich was an army of antiquity thieves. The official catalogue of thefts and looting, perpetrated by Germans during the war, was published by the Greek state in 1946 and includes 8,500 archeological treasures stolen from museums and excavations, as well as 460 paintings. Also, Germans pillaged 87 archeological sites in Greece. These artifacts have never been returned and they appear in certain museums, auctions and in private collections.

This is the 3^rd kind of German debt to Greece, a debt towards the state: «Return of the looted Archaeological Treasures»

If one wanted to put a market value on the artifacts stolen by Germans, it would come to 15.8 billion USD (in 1938 prices) or 1.5 trillion euro in today’s currency (with 3% interest).

But, we want these ARTIFACTS REPATRIATED.

Furthermore, Germany FORCED GREECE TO PAY A LOAN of 3.5 billion dollars 1938, corresponding to current value of 54 billion Euros plus interest (according to the parliamentary committee of 2012). This loan started out as compulsory, however, because its terms were modified in agreement with the Greek government, it was converted to a conventional one. Therefore, as a Transnational Loan Agreement, this loan is imprescriptible in perpetuity, at interest and overdue. Interestingly, this loan was recalculated by economists and historians to amount today to 100 billion euro according to Kellerhoff, 370 billion euro according to Gouskos, or 500 billion euro according to Koukounas, depending on indexation adjustment and charged interest.

This is the 4th kind of German Debt to Greece, a debt towards the state:

«Occupational Loan»

GREECE SHOULD STOP PAYING ITS LOAN TO GERMANY UNTIL GERANY STARTS REPAYING ITS LOAN TO GREECE.

While Italy and Bulgaria paid their debt to Greece, Germany has not repaid its debt and has been constantly rejecting Greek requests to start negotiations between the two sides, using various excuses. Most recently Germany has been invoking the 2+4 Treaty (Moscow 1990) claiming that

this treaty has settled all the issues of reparations in a comprehensive and total manner. However the Scientific Committee of the Federal Parliament, in a report that was published in 2019, admits that Greece never resigned from its demands to Germany. Regarding the 2+4 Treaty, the Scientific Committee writes: “Reparations are not mentioned in the text of the treaty. Greece, as a third country that did not participate in the formulation of the Treaty, should have agreed explicitly to the disadvantages that concerned it”.

In summary, WHAT GERMANY OWES TO GREECE:

Besides its Cultural Debt dating back to Antiquity,

And besides the fact that Germany is not under Nazi rule today, in part because of the fight that Greece put up in the WW2, at an extraordinary cost,

GERMANY also OWES TO GREECE:

(1) The WAR REPARATIONS awarded by the Paris Conference, which are enforceable (note that, Germans caused 130 Holocausts and burned 1770 Greek villages),

(2) COMPENSATION to VICTIMS of war crimes (note that Greece lost 13% of its population),

(3) The repayment of the OCCUPATION LOAN (which is imprescriptible and long overdue), and

(4) The return of the ARCHEOLOGICAL TREASURES looted by Germans from Greek museums and digs.

In monetary terms, Germany’s debt to Greece is ONE ORDER of magnitude higher than the Greek debt to Germany.

Greece demanded repayment of the German debt in 1945, 1946, 1947, 1964, 1965, 1974, 1987, and submitted 3 Verbal Notes to Germany, in 1966, 1995 and 2019. Actually, if Germany fulfills its obligations to Greece, Greece will be able to repay its debt to European countries, which are also in financial trouble, and Euro zone MAY survive.

Interestingly, Germany enriches itself at the expense of Greece, as the HALE Institute describes: Halle Institute for Economic Research: “Germany Benefited Substantially from the Greek Crisis” https://www.iwh-halle.de/nc/en/press/press-releases/detail/germany-benefited-substantially-from-the-greek-crisis

Germany gained 2.9 billion euro between 2010 and 2017 from the Greek bonds via the Securities Market program. Also in the last 10 years, Germany gained more than 200 billion, because the debt crisis in Greece resulted in a reduction in German bond rates of about 300 basic points.

Today, Greece is a DEBT-COLONY because of the austerity policy demanded by Germany. The children and grandchildren of the Germans who filled Greece with blood and ruins, use all means at their disposal to extract monies from the children and grandchildren of the Greeks they murdered…

One wonders if Germany deserves to be the core state of a unified Europe today.

Two Nobel prized economists describe how THE GERMAN SAGA CONTINUES IN OUR DAYS:

Paul Krugman argues that:

“…German demands over Greece today are vindictive.… Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions again?”

Joseph Stiglitz argues that:

“…Germany has done so well in the propaganda game, selling an image of a long-failed state (Greece)…… The facts prove otherwise…. Greeks have been CRUSHED for the second-time-in a century by Germany…”

GERMANY SHOULD REPAY ITS DEBT TO GREECE, NOT ONLY BECAUSE GREECE IS IN A FINANCIAL CRISIS, BUT ALSO BECAUSE GERMANS SHOULD LEARN THEIR HISTORY, REPENT FOR THEIR ANCESTORS’ ATROCITIES, AND MAKE SURE THEY DON’T REPEAT THEM.

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INTERNATIONAL HELLENIC ASSOCIATION