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| Walking the span between the towers pre 9-11 |
What a week in politics! I have lost track of where it all started. The German complaints about the Greek Finance minister and their request that he is replaced, mostly due to his popularity and public support. Then there was that insulting interview mr. Schuable gave wherein he called his Greek counterpart naive. The entire Greek media system spent the week attacking its own government, I can't blame them as the government is passing legislation that will require private t.v. stations to pay a broadcasting license fee. In the midst of all this turmoil our new Minister of Justice agrees to sign the supreme court decision on Distomo making it an act of law. In laymen terms that means that after nearly two decades of waiting for the court decision to be implied, no previews minister would sign it, survivors of the Nazi massacre at Distomo can finally expect compensation. This will mean, as a first phase, the confiscation of German non diplomatic property in Greece, namely the Goethe institute building in downtown Athens. Then the Greek parliament reinstated the committee on war reparations that the Germans had begun paying in the fifties. When Germany asked Greece, for humanitarian reasons, to give her some time to get on her feet before making payment, Greece accepted making her the only country in Europe to not have been paid said reparations. What a mouthful. Then there is the matter of the war loan that Nazi Germany forced on Greece taking all her gold and anything else promising to pay her back. Then there is a chest of over 400000 Nazi documents of the occupation of Greece that were acquired from the US in 2006. Amongst these documents are Nazi accounts, detailed lists in fact, of the plundering of ancient sights and artifacts, of illegal Nazi excavations both of minerals and of ancient artifacts, and of the general looting of an entire nation. These are to be part of new claims against Germany under international law that clearly states how crimes against humanity do not simply erase after the passage of time but must be reinstated. Justice is to be served even by the next generation. Germans want to forget and move on but Greece wont let them. Can't let them. We need closure and recognition of the hideous Nazi war crimes against Greece. We still live in the aftermath and there are still those amongst our population that would willingly support another Nazi occupation today.
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| This lovely German couple visiting Greece decided to pay their share of the German occupational loan that amounts to 958 euros. |
