Greece has signed an agreement with a Belgian collector to acquire the only photographic evidence of the execution of 200 Greeks by a Nazi firing squad.
Tim de Craene had put the 12 Second World War pictures up for auction on eBay last week, causing outcry on Greek social media. They show the final moments of communist political prisoners before a mass execution on May 1 1944.
The Kaisariani Massacre, named after the suburb of Athens where it took place, was one of the worst atrocities of the Nazi occupation of Greece.
The images show men being led through a gateway and down a path before being lined up in front of a wall. In some of the images, they look directly at the camera as they walk, their heads held high.
Some of the photos had received bids of more than £1,500 before they were taken down amid public outrage that the seller was trying to make money from them.
Some of the victims of the Nazi mass killing in an Athens suburb have been identified, say experts
Sokratis Famellos, who is president of Greece’s Left-wing Syriza party, said: “These documents are not a commodity. They are our history.”
Lina Mendoni, the culture minister, said an agreement had been reached between Greek authorities and Mr de Craene after experts visited him to check the photos were genuine.
They found the photos were part of a collection of 262 images taken by Hermann Heuer, a Wehrmacht (Nazi armed forces) lieutenant, while he was in Greece as part of the occupation in 1943 and 1944.
Ms Mendoni, who described the pictures as “extremely important documents of modern Greek history”, did not specify the nature of the agreement or how her country would obtain them.
One picture put on eBay by Tim de Craene shows Greek men lined up against a wall to be shot
Mr de Craene runs a business called Crain’s Militaria, which sells items from Nazi Germany, including pictures of murdered civilians and soldiers, and pins and armbands featuring swastikas.
In a statement to Belgian media, he said he was glad the images would “benefit the Greek people and their collective remembrance of a dark episode in their history”.
The Kaisariani Massacre is deeply ingrained in the Greek consciousness, but the newly discovered photographs are the only images documenting the atrocity, historians have said.
Polymeris Voglis, a social history professor at the University of Thessaly, told France24: “Until now, we knew what happened [in Kaisariani only] through narratives. The political prisoners marched to the firing squad proud and defiant.”
A sculpture in memory of the men killed in the Kaisariani Massacre in Athens on May 1, 1944 – AFP
Several of the men from the photos have already been identified.
Guillaume Pollack, a French historian, said: “They wanted to erase these men from humanity. Every time we put a name to a face, it thwarts that project a little bit.”
Not long after the images were listed for sale, a plaque commemorating victims of the massacre at the site in Kaisariani was smashed.
The Kaisariani municipality said it would repair the monument, adding: “Historical memory will not be erased, no matter how much it bothers some people.”