HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Katerina Selin* 

This is the concluding part in a three-part series. Part one was published on WSW on 11 September 2015; Part two was published September 12. And on Human Wrongs Watch here and here, respectively. 

Silence after the war

14 September 2015 (WSWS)* – During the withdrawal of the German army in October 1944, the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), the military organisation of the National Liberation Front (EAM), controlled almost the whole of Greece.

**The three occupation zones. Blue indicates the Italian, red the German and green the territory annexed by Bulgaria. The Italian zone was taken over by the Germans in September 1943. | Author: Cplakidas | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimeia Commons

Human Wrongs Watch

By Katerina Selin*

This is the second in a three-part series. Part one was published on WSWS on 11 September 2015 and on Human Wrongs Watch here.

Destructive Terror against the Population

12 September 2015 (WSWS)* – The Nazis’ response to the resistance of the Greek people was horrific. They imposed a bloody regime of terror, which, in its brutality, resembled the ruthless National Socialist (NS) wave of extermination in the Soviet Union. National Socialist jargon declared it necessary to establish “order” in Greece and decisively “crack down” on “the formation of gangs,” i.e., partisans. Hitler stated in September 1944, “There are areas, like Greece, that are absolutely incapable of maintaining order by themselves.” (12)

Shooting in Kondomari on Crete in 1941 [Federal Archives / Weixler, Franz Peter / CC-BY-SA] | Source: WSWS

And this was what “order” looked like: In Greece at least 100 villages were destroyed and 30,000 fell victim to acts of revenge by the Wehrmacht. Thousands of partisans died in at least 26 hostage and prison camps located on Greek territory.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Katerina Selin* 

This is the first in a three-part series. 

11 September 2015 (WSWS)* – One can “no longer indulge the stubborn and fickle Greeks.” This remark could have come from the pen of a hack journalist, or from German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, for whom no austerity package for the impoverished Greek population goes far enough.

Deaths from hunger in Athens, 1941 (Athens National Museum) | Source: WSWS

These words were in fact spoken by Dr. Otto Kielmeyer, a German linguist who assumed the role of director of the Deutsche Akademie, the predecessor to the Goethe Institute, following the occupation of Thessaloniki on April 9, 1941.