NEWS

Backing for WWII reparations

Germany must offer monetary compensation to victims – or their relatives – for atrocities carried out by German World War II occupation forces in Greece as a moral gesture, President Costis Stephanopoulos insisted during a memorial service for villagers killed in a 1944 massacre in northern Greece. «The question of reparations is most properly brought up,» Stephanopoulos told villagers and local authorities during a ceremony at the village of Chortiatis, where 149 men, women and children were slaughtered by German troops on September 2, 1944, in reprisal for the killing of one German soldier by resistance fighters. «Nobody is seeking reparations to make money,» the president said. «The monetary part is a means of expressing the moral duty burdening those who belong to the same race, the same nation, the same social continuity with those who did not hesitate to execute human beings.» In a lawsuit that has bruised Greek-German relations, the relatives of victims of the 1944 Distomo massacre are seeking compensation from Berlin, which says it has already paid enough.

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