Over the weekend, a set of stark black-and-white images was put up for sale by a collector in Belgium on eBay. The photos are of 200 Greek communists being shot by a Nazi firing squad on May 1, 1944, in the suburb of Kaisariani in Athens. And Greece will attempt to get hold of the photos.
The Ministry stated on Monday that there is a high probability that the photographs are real, and it will be seeking them as historical archives.
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Experts from Ghent, Belgium, where the collector is based, will check the images. If they pass verification, the Ministry will declare the pictures as part of the Greek heritage.
They are the first visual account of the event in 70 years. The Culture Ministry decried the sale, saying it is a ‘threat to national memory.’
The executions were part of a larger Nazi campaign to break communist resistance. The wounds of that time are still reverberating in Greek politics. After the war, there was a brutal civil war between forces supported by the government and backed by the West and the communist fighters.
The scars never fully healed. If the images are genuine, they will place that history in sharp focus.
What are the legal labyrinths to explore?
‘The Culture Ministry said there were ‘quite a few legal complications’ to claim the pictures,’ the ministry said.
It added that experts would look at both ‘the authenticity and legality of origin.’ The photographs have to be established as legal before the Ministry can purchase them. A committee will meet on Wednesday to determine if the images should be classified as heritage.
Soon after the photos came out, a memorial at the Kaisariani site was vandalised. Plaques with the names of the 200 were smashed.
‘Historical memory will not be erased, despite the fact that some people are bothered by it,’ the Kaisariani municipality said in a statement on its Facebook Page. The statement added that it would be repairing the monument.
The photos, it said, had caused ‘a chill of emotion for the heroic, valiant stance of the 200 communist heroes who stood up against the firing squad.’ The vandalism was condemned by local officials and historians alike.
‘Historical memory will not be erased no matter how much it bothers some people,’ Kaisariani’s statement read.
The verbal promise of the Ministry was the same sentiment. ‘In case the images are proven to be authentic but legally acquired, the Culture Ministry will immediately conclude the measures for their acquisition through the appropriate legal means,’ it said.
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The intent of the collector is not clear
The Ministry is in negotiation on a purchase, but the price and provenance are not yet released. Greek archivists have their fingers crossed for seeing the images in a museum.
They want them on display so that future generations face the past. The photographs are a bridge between history and memory because they remind people of the past does not disappear just because it is inconvenient.
These images will be more than documentation, they will give voice to those silenced by war. They will remind Athens of the price of resistance and occupation. They will stand at the crossroads of remembrance and denial, a living testament to the fact that Greece will not easily erase its painful chapters.
Greece’s decision to seek return of the photographs is a sign of refusal to let history pass. The country has entered into a legal battle to protect the memory of the 200.
With the commitment of the Ministry and the determination of the community, perhaps in the near future, the archives will contain the last, poignant moments of those who faced a firing squad, so that their story will never fade away.