Posted on 03/21/2015 7:01:04 PM PDT by Lorianne
Loukas Zisis, the deputy mayor of Distomo, a village nestled in the hills about a two hour drive from Athens, says he thinks about the Germans every day. On June 10, 1944, the Germans massacred 218 people in Distomo, including dozens of children. Zisis, who is just 48 years old, wasn't yet born at the time of the attack.
"We can't forget the Germans," Zisis says. They came to Distomo 71 years ago with their guns. "Today they are exerting power over our village with their banks and policies," he adds. He's standing in the wind on a rocky ledge, a small man in a leather jacket, and looking out over the town. Two-thousand people live here.
The massacre, which continues to shape the place today, was one of the most brutal crimes committed by the Nazis in Greece, with the carnage lasting several hours. For decades, a trial over the massacre wound its way through the courts at all levels in Greece and Germany. Greece's highest court, the Areopag, ruled in 2000 that Germany must pay damages to Distomo's bereaved.
"But we are still waiting," says Zisis. "There has been no compensation."
Last week in Greek parliament, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras demanded German reparations payments, indirectly linking them to the current situation in Greece. "After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved," Tsipras said. "But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay. And I wonder, because there is a lot of talk at the European level these days about moral issues: Is this stance moral?"
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
I imagine Zisis looks like a Greek Al Sharpton.
Wah! We overspent and borrowed money, now we don’t want to make cuts or pay it back! Wah!
To be fair, the banks making the loans were perfectly happy to do so, despite knowing the Greeks were the very definition of a bad risk.
Too big to fail and all that, ya know. And the German and other governments let them do it.
Plenty of blame to spread around.
Quite. And the people selling what they knew were bad mortgages, often conspiring with the buyers fraudulently, and then selling the paper off to bundlers, who were happy to sell the bundled bad mortgages as valuable securities, etc., etc., etc.
Like I said, easy to stand back and denounce the borrowers. Very few people will turn down easy money.
The two issues are not even close to being related.
The Germans should give reparations if they were directed to by the courts.
They should also kick the Greeks out of the EU.
One has nothing to do with the others.
Yup. Nobody is innocent in these situations.
That is not healthy.
You don't let things go for the other guy, you learn to let things go for your own sake. Stewing and brooding over past wrongs with leave you twisted and bitter.
As for the rest... more Greeks were killed in the Greek civil war that followed then were killed by the Nazis. I don't recall many, if any, war crimes tribunals for those people.
Actually the article says that the forced loans were the loans the Germans forced Greek banks to make to Germany during the occupation in WW II.
But the Greeks still have idiots like this one:
Loukas Zisis, the deputy mayor, silently leaves the house as the woman finishes telling her story. He needs a break and heads over to the tavern, where he orders a glass of wine. "I admire Germany: Marx, Engels, Nietzsche," he says.Marx, Engels and Nietzche? Not Beethoven or Bach. Not Gauss, Leibniz or Einstein. Not Goethe. Instead he picks Marx, Engels and Nietzsche as his admirable Germans. Feh on him.
“Wah! We overspent and borrowed money, now we don’t want to make cuts or pay it back! Wah!”
No, the German Nazis invaded Greece occupied the country and robbed the central bank.
If that is a debt, it Germany cannot default.
The central question in the report is that of forced loans the Nazi occupiers extorted from the Greek central bank beginning in 1941.
I believe that one gripe the Greeks May be making is that after ww ii the German debt was forgiven under the Marshall plan while the Greeks did not receive equivalent treatment. So from this perspective it may be analogous to running a race in which some runners receive a head start while other runners started and remain hobbled.
Well it’s awful suspicious that it’s coming out after all this time, when the Greek welfare state is on the verge of collapse.
I guess the Greeks are complaining about the equivalent of not receiving 40 acres and a mule.
I guess they haven’t figured out yet that they’re are going to have to buckle down and get PRODUCTIVELY to work or descend into impoverishment. It’s THEIR choice and it appears to me that they are choosing poverty and perpetual whining.
The Germans protected the Greeks from the communists until the Brits could take over in 1944; the Brits then passed that responsibility to the Americans who managed to keep the lid on things until 1974.
If it is debt, the Germans owe it to Greece.
Sort of like protecting a family from a snake in their house by burning down their house.
It’s an epic book waiting to be written.
Nazis come...demand a loan (they could have stolen the money)...write up the paperwork...insert ‘zero’ percent interest so today...it’s still 14-billion Euro (not that 100-billion Euro that the Greeks talk about).
The Greeks? They had a nice small economy all the way through the 1950s. Nothing to hand out because there’s nothing much coming in. Then, tourism arrives.
1960s and 1970s...French, Germans, Brits and Americans arrive. Hotels get built. Airports enlarge. Cash flow within Greece (all islands) is great. Tax revenue is looking fantastic.
By late 1970s...political parties are promising fringe benefits from the tax revenue (schools, universities, nation-wide healthcare, pensions for government workers expanding, social security expanding). At some point, they are spending more than they take in...thus requiring the help of the Greek national bank structure. Loans occur and the interest starts to rise.
1980s are great because more infrastructure occurs...bridges and better roads...all dependent on tax revenue and more bank loans to carry the government.
1990s are fantastic...more resorts built...pay-raises kick in for gov’t workers....Greek gov’t departments expand out...and all dependent on tax revenue and more bank loans to carry the government. The EU is talk about this new currency deal...but only for legit countries. To get into the EURO...the Greeks can’t pass the test unless they use a fraudulent finance picture. The Greeks decide to sign up for the Olympics and the European National Soccer championship...costing the central gov’t billions...all structured around more loans.
After 2000, the Cyprus folks get into the Greek banking structure. Cyprus has figured out a way for Russian billionaires to enter into Cyprus and hide their money. After a while, there’s no profitable deals left for the Russian money sitting there...so they get the idea to buy into Greek bonds. Billions floated into the system. All a money-laundering deal but the EU won’t step up and say it in public.
2008 arrives and the Greek bank is unable to sustain this loan process...nor is Greece able to pay on the interest now. For forty years, the Greek have been forward-spending and never understood where the money came from. Even today, they don’t understand how they got to this point.
As for the 14-billion Euro of the Nazi loan? Here’s the curious thing...the Greeks rebuilt the national bank decades ago, and they limited Greek gov’t ownership to 35-percent. The vast majority of the Greek National Bank is privately held. So, EVEN if the Germans pay them the 14-billion...the government or the public can only lay claim to roughly five billion Euro (enough to sustain the country for about a week or two). The rest of the 14-billion belongs to the bank and it’s private owners. No one in the Greek media talks of this situation and the naive nature of the Greeks makes them look foolish.
You can feel sorry for the Greeks...they shouldn’t be in this position. But they were manipulated by political parties for decades and simply can’t believe they were royally screwed...even more so by elements of democracy.
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