{"id":1181,"date":"2017-05-26T21:20:45","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T18:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/?page_id=1181"},"modified":"2017-07-20T13:45:18","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T10:45:18","slug":"the-execution-of-the-german-debts-requires-the-permission-of-the-greek-minister-of-justice","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/the-execution-of-the-german-debts-requires-the-permission-of-the-greek-minister-of-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"The execution of the German debts requires the permission of the Greek Minister of Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

1<\/em>6<\/em>h issue In-On<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision considering the inhabitants of Distomon cannot be enforced in Italy, after the decision of the Supreme Court in Hague (February 3rd 2012) thus it has to be executed in Greece. However, in order for this decision to be executed in Greece, the Minister of Justice should give his permission, because there is a statutory provision in our civil procedure according to which in order for a decision to be enforced against a foreign government, the Minister of Justice should give his permission.\u00a0 The decision of the plenum of the Supreme Court regarding the payment of the inhabitants of Distomon (as far as mental suffering and not material damages are concerned) is considered irreversible and its execution is not affected by the decision of the Supreme Court of Hague. Therefore, there is no excuse for the Minster of Justice to refuse to approve the execution of this decision\u201d, underlined to \u201cIn-On\u201d magazine, the founding member of the National Council Mr. Evangelos Macheras.
\nHe also underlined that \u201cAfter 16 years of struggle by the National Council of Claim of Debts of Germany to Greece and also despite the terrible economic crisis that has plagued the country not a single Greek government is willing to claim from\u00a0 Germany on the one hand the compensation that was awarded in 1946 by the International Conference of Paris reaching the amount of 7,100 billion dollars, at the purchasing power of 1938 and on the other hand the occupation loan of 3,500 billion dollars at the purchasing power of 1938. The total amount is 162.000. 000.000\u00a0 Euros\u201d.
\nThe above amount does not cover all claims\u2013he continued- since the Germans had confiscated the 51% of all Greek businesses along with the metal coins of the Bank of Greece. The value of the metal coins taken from the safety deposits of the Bank of Greece reaches the amount of 26.000 gold pounds. Additionally, they owe to return our archaeological treasures which they literally grabbed from our museums and archaeological sites where they realized illegal excavations. The Greek Archaeological Society has registered the looted archaeological treasures.
\nThe National Council -he underlined- was founded in January 1996 when we realized that the government of that time did not want to proceed to the claims of the German debts. Today, due to the economic crisis, the claims of the German debts will attribute to Greece its National Pride.
\nMore particularly, he referred that \u201cthe triple occupation caused huge loses to animate and inanimate sources. Apart from Greece\u2019s partition as in the case of the inclusion of the Ionian islands to Italy, of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace to Bulgaria, of Thesprotia and Northern Epirus to Albania as well as the establishment of the Kingdom of Pindos for the sake of the Romanizer Koutsovlach minority all three occupiers competed in the plundering of the National Wealth of the country. They started from plundering the food supplies to even the factories whose warehouses they devastated by removing equipment\u00a0\u00a0 and later by emptying shops using specially issued banknotes with no real value.
\nA result of this looting the famine of 1941-1942 struck and the losses regarding the human recourses of our country reached 1.106.922 people namely the 11% of pre-war population.
\nIn many cases the losses regarding the population are combined with the total devastation of cities and villages as in the case of Kandanos in Chania, Vianno in Herakleion and Ierapetra in Crete as well as Kosmas in Kynouria in Peloponnese, Kalavrita, Kleisoura, Distomo etc ; in fact a holocaust took place in almost 100 villages.
\nIt has to be noted here that the Germans claim that all our requirements were satisfied in 1950 when the following incident took place: While a German general war criminal was on trial in a court in our country, another war criminal called Merten came to Athens to be examined as a defense witness, the very person who had organized the extermination of the Jews in Thessaloniki.
\nAndreas Toussis the investigator of that time recognized him and ordered his arrest in order to be tried as well for his own crimes and indeed he was sentenced\u00a0 20 years in prison (jail: chained in prison for 20 years).
\nThe Germans offered everything in order to make the Greek government release him. Finally, they offered 115.000.000 Deutche marks as a compensation of the Greek victims of the National Socialism Ethics namely those murdered or martyred in the German camps because of their religion like the Jews or because of other social discriminations as in the case of the gypsies\u00a0 who were considered b class citizens by the Germans. The government of Constantine Karamanlis of that time for this near zero amount not only released Merten but also transferred the files of all the German war criminals to the German courts of law in order to be found not guilty. In this way Greece “punished” by collective expulsion, the German war criminals that exterminated almost a million Greek people. And even though the Greek Ambassador in Berlin managed to add in the relative contract the line that “Greece does not give up from any other requirement”, Germany claims that it has paid off its debts.
\nAccording to the allies\u2019 treaty that took place in London in 1953, Germany was given the right to suspend the payment of the compensation until the final \u00abPeace Treaty\u00bb which was signed in Moscow in 1990 under special provision. At the same time another five-year suspension was suggested which was endorsed.\u00a0 Thus, in 1996 the legal right of Greece to claim the German debts was activated.
\nHowever, Germany systematically refuses to pay off Greece\u2019s claims that stem from the occupation loan and the war reparations as well. In 1964, the German Chancellor Erhard promised the payment of the loan after the Unification of Germany that was realized in 1990. The German economics historian Dr. Albrecht Ritschl recommended Germany to follow a more moderate policy regarding the euro-crisis of 2008-2011, since there is a possibility that Germany will face legitimate claims for the World War II war reparations (Der Spiegel, June 21, 2011, guardian.co.uk, June 21, 2011)\u201d.<\/p>\n

Curriculum Vitae<\/strong>
\nEvangelos Macheras is a lawyer and founding member of the National Council of Claim of Debts of Germany to Greece.\u00a0 In 1936, as a student at the Law School, he established the Anti- Dictatorial Union of the students of Arcadia. During World War II, he fought in the Greek-Albanian Front and was wounded in Tepeleni and on December 18th 1940, he got into the Agricultural Hospital of Ioannina wounded. He returned in the Front and took part in the repulse of the spring attack of Mussolini. In 1943, he participated in the Resistance and on May 5th 1944, he got injured with a bright chest trauma, however, he participated in the battles the Resistance gave against the Germans.
\nIn 1946, he established the Democratic Association of Arcadia, but due to the uneven developments in the political life, he was forced to request his transfer to the Athens Bar Association. At the end of 1947, he was deported to Ikaria and in the beginning of 1949 he was transferred to Makronissos. On March 1949, he was imprisoned in Tripolis in order to be judged by the special Military Court. He was finally rescued after international mobilization.<\/p>\n

Back in the 16th issue In-On<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16h issue In-On \u201cThe decision considering the inhabitants of Distomon cannot be enforced in Italy, after the decision of the Supreme Court in Hague (February 3rd 2012) thus it has to be executed in Greece. However, in order for this decision to be executed in Greece, the Minister of Justice should give his permission, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1160,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1181","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3397,"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1181\/revisions\/3397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-inon.gr\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}