Those who escaped the massacre are suing Germany for a crime

Those who escaped the massacre are suing Germany for a crime
DINA KYRIAKIDOU

DISTOMO (GREECE), JULY 23: An old man points at a small human skull and says: "This is my two-year-old sister."

He moves along a wall with holes full of skulls and bones, searching for the remains of his mother, grandfather, friends and relatives killed by the Nazis 56 years ago in one of the most savage civilian massacres of World War II.

The ossuary sits on a hill overlooking the tranquil village of Distomo near Delphi in central Greece. It was here, on June 10, 1944, that SS soldiers burned, looted, raped and killed 218 people in reprisals against Greek resistance fighters.

"I walked into a house and saw a woman, stripped naked and covered in blood. Her breast had been sliced off. Her baby was dead nearby, the cut-off nipple still in its mouth," said 74-year-old Yannis Basdekis.

Survivors recall vividly a hot afternoon four days after Allied forces landed in Normandy, when German soldiers stormed the village and ordered all residents indoors.

They went on a two-hour, door-to-door rampage -- bayoneting babies in their cribs, tearing foetuses from pregnant women and beheading the village priest.

Only those who escaped to the mountains survived and they are now taking Germany to court, to pay for a crime they say was never properly acknowledged.

"The whole village was dressed in black for years, it never really recovered from the massacre," said Distomo Mayor Lukas Papachristou, raising his voice above the noisy cicadas. "First and foremost, we want a moral victory."

Greece's Supreme Court has awarded survivors and relatives of the victims damages of 9.5 billion drachmas ($26.9 million) and permitted the confiscation of German state property in Greece if Berlin refuses to pay up.

But Germany, which paid Greece $67 million in the 1960s for victims of the Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1944, rejects the ruling. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has made clear his country should not have to pay any new compensation.

Concerned that Distomo could prompt a flood of similar cases, Germany argues that no national court has jurisdiction to try individual claims stemming from World War II.

It won an injunction to stop confiscation of its property in Greece, such as the Goethe Institute in Athens, and, unless this is lifted, Greek courts are expected to review the case on September 1.

Former European Parliament deputy and Distomo survivor Yannis Stamoulis, who has personally championed the case through the courts, said a suit was also filed at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg earlier this month.

"We have a very good case and I think we will win," he said.

The Greek government is hesitant to back the claims, uneasy about straining relations with a powerful EU partner. Greek officials said they would seek a political compromise, possibly with Germany making a goodwill gesture to the village.

The villagers made clear this would not be enough.

"Germany has yet to accept the fact that these crimes against humanity did not happen during war, but during a time of occupation, of relative peace," Papachristou said.

Some survivors said Germany should pay, if only as an example to others contemplating similar crimes.

"I don't care about the money, they could build something in memory of the dead but they must be condemned so all war criminals will know that no matter how many years go by, their actions will be punished," Basdekis said.

Maria Badiska, whose beautiful crying face in a Life magazine photograph in November 1944 personified the pain and loss of the whole village, is now old and ill.

"I lost my mother, my brothers, my aunt. I was 18 years old when that picture was taken, crying at the graves in our yard. We didn't have time to give everyone a funeral," she said.

Her husband made clear any German reparation money would go to helping Maria's health.

Fellow-survivor Giorgos Koutriaris, 68, recalled the massacre vividly.

"I have eight grandchildren but my wound still does not heal," he said. "I can't forgive the Germans for what they did."

Koutriaris, then 12, discovered the corpses of his mother, two brothers and three sisters.

"I can still see my mother on the staircase, disembowelled, holding my seven-month-old sister dead, with swastikas carved on her little cheeks," he said, sobbing. "What kind of people could do such atrocities? What kind of mothers gave birth to them?"

Until the 1950s, villagers used to stone buses carrying German tourists. Today, few bear grudges against contemporary Germans.

They say it is more of a debt to the dead, whose serious, black and white portraits taken at country fairs cover the walls of Distomo town hall.

"My generation was marked by the massacre. I don't know how my children will feel, but I will never forget the victims," said Vassilis Gamvrilis, 57, who lost his uncle, pregnant aunt and four young cousins.

"They bore the brunt of German cruelty so that we would be alive today," he said. "They are true heroes and I know they are in the garden of heaven, held in the arms of angels."