Greece's culture ministry said Monday that a trove of photographs that appear to capture one of Nazi Germany's worst atrocities in the country appear to be authentic.
The ministry said it was sending experts to Ghent, Belgium to examine the photos and to talk to a collector of Third Reich memorabilia who had put them on sale on Ebay on Saturday.
"It is highly likely that these are authentic photographs," the ministry said.
It said the 12 photographs appear to show "the last moments" of 200 Greek Communists who were executed on May 1, 1944 in retaliation for the killing of a German general and his staff by Communist guerrillas a few days earlier.
The Communist-led Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) was among the most active resistance organisations in occupied Europe.
The execution of the 200 men at the Kaisariani shooting range in Athens is a seminal event of the Nazi occupation of Greece, which was marked by several atrocities, mostly against Greek villagers.
Greece's Jewish community was also decimated during this period.
Some of the pictures show groups of the men marching through a field, and standing against a wall at the shooting range.
Until now, the only testimony of the 200 victims' final moments were from handwritten notes they had thrown out of the trucks taking them to execution.
"My death should not sadden you but steel you even more for the struggle you are waging," one of the men, lawyer Mitsos Remboutsikas, had written to his family.
The Greek Communist KKE party, which called the trove "priceless" on Monday said it had tentatively identified at least two of the men in the photographs.
The Greek culture ministry said it was "highly likely" that the photographs were taken by Gunther Heysing, a journalist attached to Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels's propaganda unit.
"If the authenticity and lawful provenance of the collection are documented, the Ministry of Culture will immediately finalise... measures for its acquisition," it said.
AFP
