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| FILE - In this Sunday, March 15, 2015 file photo, Mina Beneroubi, a survivor of the Holocaust, right, places flowers on rails at the old train station in the northern Greek town of Thessaloniki on the 72nd anniversary of the roundup and deportation of its Jews to Nazi extermination camps during World War II. It was 1943 and the Nazis were deporting Greece’s Jews to Poland’s death camps. Hitler’s genocidal accountants reserved a chilling twist: The Jews had to pay their train fare. The total bill for 58,585 Jews sent to Auschwitz and other camps came to over 2 million Reichsmark - more than 25 million ($27 million) euros in today’s money. The Jewish community of Thessaloniki, Greece’s biggest, says it is examining the possibility of reclaiming the rail fares from Germany - and with seven decades of interest the amount would be enormous. |
BERLIN (AP)
-- It was 1943 and the Nazis were deporting Greece's Jews to death camps
in Poland. Hitler's genocidal accountants reserved a chilling twist:
The Jews had to pay their train fare.
The bill
for 58,585 Jews sent to Auschwitz and other camps exceeded 2 million
Reichsmark - more than 25 million euros ($27 million) in today's money.
For
decades, this was a forgotten footnote among all of the greater horrors
of the Holocaust. Today it is returning to the fore amid the
increasingly bitter row between Athens and Berlin over the Greek
financial bailout.
Jewish leaders in
Thessaloniki, home to Greece's largest Jewish community, say they are
considering how to reclaim the rail fares from Germany - with seven
decades of interest.
"We will study the law and do our best to claim," the community's president, David Saltiel, told The Associated Press.
Such
a move would suit the new government in Athens, which is trying to
shift the public focus from Greece's current debt crisis to Germany's
World War II debts ahead of Monday's first visit to Berlin by Greece's
new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
While war
reparations have been a staple demand of previous Greek governments,
Tsipras' radical left government has made the issue a central part of
the bailout negotiations with Germany. The Germans have dismissed such
demands, saying compensation issues were settled decades ago in post-war
accords.
Billions of euros in rescue loans
from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund have
saved Greece from bankruptcy since 2010. Germany, the largest
contributor to the bailout, has been vocal in pressing Greece to cut
back on government spending to bring its finances under control.
But
the Greeks point out that, following its wartime defeat, Germany
received one of the biggest bailouts in modern history within a decade
of laying waste to much of Europe. Greece was among 22 countries that
agreed to halve Germany's foreign debt at a 1953 conference in London.
Even
some German politicians have called for a change of heart on the
reparations issue. They argue that if Germany doesn't confront its World
War II guilt, it cannot expect other countries to repay their more
recent debts. The point has particular resonance in Germany because, in
German, guilt and debt are the same word: Schuld.
Among the claims that Greece, or individual Greeks, might bring against Germany:
-
Tens, possibly hundreds, of billions of euros (dollars) in present-day
money as compensation for destroyed infrastructure and goods, including
archaeological treasures, looted by the Nazis from 1941 to 1944.
- Compensation for the estimated 300,000 people who died from famine during the winter of 1941-1942.
-
Compensation for the slaughter of civilians as reprisals for partisan
attacks. One of the most infamous massacres took place in the Greek
village of Distomo on June 10, 1944, when Waffen-SS soldiers killed more
than 200 women, children and elderly residents. Another in Kalavryta in
December 1943 involved German troops killing more than 500 civilians,
including virtually all of the town's males aged 14 or over.
-
Repayment of some 1.9 billion drachmas, around 50 million euros ($55
million) today, that the Jewish community paid as ransom to occupying
authorities in 1942 in return for 10,000 Jewish men being held as slave
laborers. The men were released only to be sent to concentration camps
the following year.
- Repayment of an
interest-free loan of 568 million Reichsmark (7.1 billion euros or $7.7
billion) that the Nazis forced Greece to make to Germany in 1942.
-
Returning the train fares that the Reichsbahn received for transporting
Jews to their deaths. Historians disagree on whether the tickets were
bought directly by Jews or paid by a special Nazi fund established with
money stolen from Jews. They broadly agree that the money came from
Holocaust victims.
Previous efforts to bring claims against Germany have ended in legal quagmires.
In
2011 the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a lawsuit brought by
four survivors of the Distomo massacre. The judges in Strasbourg,
France, concluded that a German court hadn't discriminated against the
plaintiffs when it rejected their claim on the basis that states can't
be sued by individuals.
Germany insists that
the 1942 loan should be considered part of the overall reparations
issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert,
says that liability has been "comprehensively and conclusively
resolved."
But a confidential legal assessment
provided to the German parliament concluded that Berlin's liability
wasn't so clear-cut. A Munich historian, Hans Guenter Hockerts, says the
Greeks shouldn't be confident of winning any of their claims, but are
on firmest ground in demanding repayment of the 1942 loan.
Even
the Nazis felt bound by terms of that loan and paid back two
installments before their occupation of Greece ended. The unpaid 476
million Reichsmark would be equivalent to at least 6 billion euros ($6.5
billion) today.
That figure dwarfs the war reparations actually paid by Germany since 1945, which include:
- $25 million in goods shortly after the war; Greece says the proper sum should have been nearer $14 billion.
-
115 million Deutschmarks - equivalent to about $330 million today - as
part of a 1960 treaty with Greece meant to compensate victims of Nazi
atrocities, including Greek Jews.
- 13.5
million euros (about $15 million) paid to former slave laborers from a
fund established in 2000 by German companies and the government.
-
1 million euros ($1.1 million) paid annually for a "German-Greek future
foundation" meant to fund remembrance and historical research projects.
Gesine
Schwan, who twice ran for president as the candidate of Germany's
center-left Social Democrats, says the government's stance on new
reparations payments is damaging Germany's image in Europe.
"It's
embarrassing if rich Germany demands that poor Greece ... pay back
debt," Schwan wrote in a newspaper column, "but isn't prepared even to
discuss repayment of a forced loan that Nazi Germany took from Greece
during the war."
