Distomo massacre

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Distomo memorial, excerpt from the memorial relief
Distomo village and surroundings

In the massacre of Distomo ( Greek Σφαγή του Διστόμου Sfagi tou Distomou ), a village in central Greece at the foot of the Parnassus Mountains, members of a regiment of the 4th SS Police Panzer Grenadier Division murdered on June 10, 1944 as part of a “retaliation “218 of the approx. 1,800 villagers in the village of Distomo who were not involved in partisan fighting and burned the village down.

The victims were mainly old people and women as well as 34 children and four infants.

The massacre took place on the same day as the massacre of Oradour in occupied France, which was also perpetrated by the Waffen-SS , and for a long time much better known .

The same SS unit, together with the Bulgarian militia, shot 280 men, women and children in the Klissoura bloodbath on April 5, 1944 in order to avenge partisan attacks on two German soldiers.

Course of events

The cause of the bloodbath was the shooting of three German soldiers by partisans . A German unit was ambushed on its return from an unsuccessful alleged persecution of resistance members in a neighboring village (meaning Livadia) .

According to the official combat report of the 2nd Company of the SS Police Grenadier Regiment of the 4th SS Police Panzer Grenadier Division from June 10, 1944, grenade launchers , machine guns and rifles were fired at German soldiers. Company commander Fritz Lautenbach reported:

“I then ordered the opening of fire and an attack on Distomon with all available weapons. After the village was cleared, a total of 250 to 300 dead gang members and gang suspects were counted. "

Historical research, however, comes to a different conclusion; the Bonn Regional Court wrote (judgment of June 23, 1997):

“During the morning of June 10, 1944, the troops coming from Lewadia reached Distomo, stayed there for several hours and interrogated the mayor and the priest about the whereabouts or passage of partisans. The day before, about thirty partisans from Desfina had arrived and moved on to Stiri. As a result, a motorized column moved out towards Stiri. The column was attacked shortly before Stiri and withdrew with losses. After returning to Distomo, initially twelve prisoners and then the entire population remaining in the village were killed regardless of age and gender, the houses were systematically searched and then burned down. A total of about 218 people were murdered. "

According to eyewitness reports, the action led to sadistic excesses:

“Men and children were shot at random, women raped and slaughtered, many soldiers cut off the breasts. Pregnant women were slashed, and some victims were bayoneted. Others have had their heads cut off or their eyes gouged out. "

“In the cot opposite Panajotis found his little brother Nikolaos, who was not even two years old. The soldiers hadn't shot him. It had been slashed, apparently with the bayonet, from top to bottom. "When I tried to pick it up, it really fell apart," says Sfontouris, now 59 and owner of a gas station. "We could only bring him out of the house wrapped in a blanket."

The Swedish diplomat Sture Linnér , who was chairing the Red Cross in occupied Greece at the time of the massacre , was informed about the massacre on his wedding day and immediately went to Distomo with his wife. In his book "Min Odysse" ("My Odyssey") he wrote an eyewitness report in which he described the situation in Distomo three days after the massacre and the like. a. writes

“Human bodies, fastened with bayonets, hung from every tree next to the road and at a distance of many hundreds of meters. Some were still alive. "

“The smell was unbearable. In the village itself, fires still burned in the rest of the burned houses. Hundreds of people of all ages lay scattered on the earth, from old people to babies. The soldiers cut the stomach of many women with bayonets and tore their chests out. Others lay strangled, their bowels wrapped around their necks. "

During the retaliation, members of the Secret Field Police Group 510 were in Distomo and later wrote a similar report on the incident.

The Distomo case

Before Greek courts

In response to the lawsuit brought by children of the Distomo victims, the Livadia Regional Court sentenced the Federal Republic of Germany in a first-instance default judgment to pay 37.5 million euros. An appeal by the Federal Republic of Germany was rejected in May 2000 by Areopagus , the highest Greek court. The foreclosure , which was carried out in assets of the Federal Republic of Germany, which was located in Greece (including the seizure of the Goethe Institute in Athens), could be averted at the last moment by legal remedies. The Greek government refused to give the consent required by Greek law for the foreclosure. The application submitted by the plaintiffs to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was rejected (decision of December 12, 2002, 59021/00 - Kalogeropulou u. A. V. Greece and Germany).

Before German courts

The civil law action brought by the plaintiffs in Germany remained before the LG Bonn, OLG Cologne and finally before the Federal Court of Justice (judgment of June 26, 2003, AZ: III ZR 245/98) as well as before the Federal Constitutional Court (decision of non-acceptance of February 15, 2006, AZ: 2 BvR 1476/03) unsuccessful.

Immediately after the massacre, a criminal court martial was initiated against the company commander and his representative for disregarding the instructions of the Commander-in-Chief South-East, according to which only senior troop leaders were allowed to order retaliatory measures in agreement with the responsible field command. The company commander and his representative died a few months later at the front; the investigation was then discontinued.

Before civil courts in Italy

The highest Italian civil court, the Roman Court of Cassation , ruled in 2008 that the survivors of the Distomo massacre can enforce the judgments won in Greece in Italy. The plaintiffs' lawyer obtained the registration of a mortgage on the German cultural institute Villa Vigoni , which was then threatened with a foreclosure sale .

Before the International Court of Justice

Since the legal dispute affects the question of state immunity , according to which states are in principle exempt from the jurisdiction of other states, the German and Italian governments agreed to bring about a decision by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In January 2012, the ICJ upheld the German lawsuit that, due to the principle of international law par in parem non habet imperium (state immunity), Italy should not have allowed lawsuits by private individuals against the Federal Republic of Germany.

The proceedings brought about a fundamental decision under international law and had therefore been followed with tension by many states. Lawyers pointed out that a different judgment would have raised major problems, because in the event of a conflict between two states, for example, this would have opened up the possibility of the courts of one state sentencing the other state to pay damages.

Others

Nikos Paraskevopoulos , who had been appointed Minister of Justice of Greece in the Tsipras I cabinet a few weeks earlier , expressed his willingness on March 10, 2015 to consent to the confiscation of German assets in Greece in order to collect the amounts awarded to the bereaved. Paraskevopoulos stated that he wanted to make his final decision dependent on the “complexity of the case” and wider “national issues”. Tsipras also gave a speech on the subject of reparations, in which he mentioned the massacres of Distomo, Kesariani , Kalavryta and Viannos as well as the German forced loan in Greece .

The debate about compensation for the war crime also got a lot of attention from the ZDF cabaret show Die Anstalt , in which Argyris Sfountouris , who had lost his parents as a boy in the massacre, appeared.

Memorial at Distomo

In the 1980s, a memorial was built on a hill above Distomo to commemorate the Distomo massacre. A small chapel with an ossuary, in which the skulls of the victims are kept, is integrated into the memorial site. The names and ages of the victims are listed on a marble wall. A memorial service is held here every year on June 10th.

Movies

The incident was taken up by Stefan Haupt in A Song for Argyris .

See also

literature

  • Petros Antaios et al. a. (Ed.): Black Book of the Occupation , 2nd edition Athens 2006 (Greek / German), PDF .
  • Sigrid Boysen : War crimes in the discourse of national courts . In: AVR 44, 2006, 363 ff., DOI: doi: 10.1628 / 000389206783402972
  • Hagen Fleischer : "Final Solution" to the War Criminal Question. That prevented the prosecution of German war crimes in Greece . In: Norbert Frei (Hrsg.): Transnational Politics of the Past - Dealing with German war crimes in Europe after the Second World War . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-89244-940-6 , pp. 474-535.
  • Dieter Begemann: Distomo 1944 . In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II . Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 30-36.
  • Kaiti Manolopoulou: "June without harvest (Distomo 1944)", Verlag der Demokratie Zeitung, Athens 2016, ISBN 978-3-99021-014-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Military History Research Office (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War , Vol. 5/2: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power , Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-06499-7 , p. 162.
  2. ↑ a b Bloodbath in the mountain town. In: Der Spiegel , 1998 / No. 1, p. 43.
  3. ↑ Hagen Fleischer in an interview on the Gerda Henkel Foundation website
  4. ↑ Report on Distomo by the chairman of the Red Cross in Greece ( Memento of the original from April 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the municipality of Distomo; Excerpt from: Sture Linnér, Min Odyssé (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1982) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.distomo-griechenland.de
  5. ^ Gernot Biehler: External violence. Effects of Foreign Interests in Domestic Law . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2005, p. 311, ISBN 3-16-148447-9 (= Jus Publicum ).
  6. ↑ Germany is threatened with lawsuits involving millions. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 7, 2008.
  7. ^ Court: Distomo judgment effective New compensation decision in Italy. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 27, 2008 (fee required).
  8. ^ Paul Kreiner: Symbolically compensated. In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 19, 2008.
  9. ↑ IGH, judgment of February 3, 2012, Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece intervening) , online (English; PDF, 481 kB, accessed on February 3, 2020).
  10. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Schlamp: Legal peace takes precedence over human rights. In: Spiegel Online , February 3, 2012.
  11. ↑ spiegel.de March 11, 2015: Compensation for war crimes: Greece wants to confiscate German property
  12. ↑ spiegel.de Wednesday, March 11, 2015: Athens threatens to seize German property: are they allowed to do that?
  13. ↑ FAZ.net March 11, 2015: The speech of Alexis Tsipras
  14. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Compensation for German war crimes. "I am Argyris Sfountouris, the little boy who in 1944 ..." April 1, 2015, accessed February 25, 2019 .
  15. ^ Foundation Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe: Memorial portal to places of remembrance in Europe: Memorial of Distomo. Retrieved February 25, 2019 .
  16. ↑ A song for Argyris (PDF; 505 kB) Switzerland, 2006, 105 min.


Coordinates: 38 ° 26 '  N , 22 ° 40'  E