On Greece and World War II Reparations from Germany

To the Editor: Upon lighting candles this morning, June 10, 2024, for the souls of the innocent victims that suffered the most heinous acts – the 218 deaths by bludgeoning of peaceful citizens from toddlers to the village priest in Distomo, Boeotia, in Central Greece – of the gruesome invading German Nazi military on June 10, 1944, I recalled the year 1967 and the shock I experienced during my trip there, of the eerie feelings of death frozen in time. My father, Giorgios, who had battled on the Albanian Front in the winter of 1940, had taken our family to bear witness to the tragedy and to pay our respects to the victims, and their beloveds who lost them, and the enormous psychological burden put on the survivors without any resolution – many feeling they were without reasons to live out their remaining tenure on Earth due to this ugly, historic catastrophe. June 10, is the 80th anniversary of this unnecessary inhumane German Reprisal. Last year was the 80th anniversary of the Kalavryta Reprisal on December 13, 1943, and prior to that, on August 29, 1943, another reprisal took place in the village of my birth, Domvraina, and nearby Thisbe...