“The photographs shocked me,” Polymeris Voglis, a professor in social history at the University of Thessaly in Greece, said. “Although the execution of 200 resistance fighters is a well-known historical event, until now there has been no photographic evidence of it.”
“Some of the photographs show the faces of the men, reflecting their determination as they walk proudly towards the firing squad,” he added.
The discovery of the photos have sparked strong reaction in Greece, with virtually all media outlets reporting on their discovery on the auction website. The sale was organised by Tim de Craen, a Belgian collector who runs a commercial platform focused on WWII documents and coins. Some of the photographs had received bids worth more than $2,000 before he took them down after facing public anger. “I fully understand that these photographs are of a particularly sensitive historical nature,” he told Greek newspaper I Kathimerini.
Historic massacre
The massacre in Kaisariani was one of the worst atrocities the Nazis committed in Greece during the war.
Spyridon Tsoutsoumpis, a specialist in the Greek resistance movement at the University of Manchester, said the executions were carried out to avenge an April 27, 1944, attack by the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) on a German convoy escorting Wehrmacht Lieutenant General Franz Krech. Krech died in the attack, along with several of the people accompanying him.
“The Wehrmacht responded with mass reprisals,” Tsoutsoumpis said, noting some 200 Greek Communist Party members and resistance fighters became their first target. “Many of these men had been arrested by the dictatorial regime of Ioannis Metaxas, which came to power in 1936, and had remained imprisoned since the pre-war period. They were handed over to the Axis authorities after Greece’s capitulation. Others were arrested later during the occupation.”
The massacre is still deeply inscribed in Greece’s collective memory today. “There are many songs, poems, engravings, and books about this historical event,” Tsoutsoumpis said. In 2017 there was also a film made about it. “For the Greek left, the Kaisariani shooting range is a “lieu de mémoire”: it is not a coincidence that when the left took power in 2015, the very first day in his office as prime minister, Alexis Tsipras visited the Kaisariani shooting range to pay tribute to those who were executed by the Germans.”
As far as historians are aware, the newly discovered photographs are the only images depicting the historic massacre.
“There are a few photographs of German reprisals in Greece, and even fewer photographs of executions,” Voglis said, referring to the depiction of the German execution of civilians on the island of Crete in June, 1941, as “the exception”.
“Until now,” he said, “we knew what happened [in Kaisariani only] through narratives”.
The images also confirm the myths surrounding the executions: “The political prisoners marched to the firing squad proud and defiant,” he said.
Tsoutsoumpis said they constitute an important discovery. “They provide a rare view of those at the receiving end of Nazi violence. They are also significant because of their lack of staging and their immediacy.”
They also help restore the victims’ dignities. “While we often know the names and motivations of the perpetrators, those who suffered at their hands remain anonymous. These photos restore agency, individuality, and dignity to the victims of fascist violence,” he said. “They convey an image of defiance and deep humanity, showing that even in their final moments they retained their courage. They help us better understand the mindset, motivations, and ideals of those who laid down their lives in the struggle against fascism.”
According to the English-language news site Greek Reporter, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has, with the help of local researchers, begun to identify the men on the pictures. Two of them have already been identified: political activist Thrasyvoulos Kalafatakis, and trade union leader Dimitris Papadopoulos.
Snapped by the executioners
According to Greek authorities, the photographs were almost certainly taken by Gunther Heysing, a journalist working for Adolph Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Some Greek media have also speculated they could have been taken by Hermann Heller, a German lieutenant who was stationed in Greece at the time.
Guillaume Pollack, a French historian specialised in the resistance movement at the Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, said that regardless of who stood behind the camera, the photos have clearly been taken “from the executioner’s point of view”.
“Photographs of arrests and executions are generally taken by the repressive forces. They’re carefully composed and haven’t been taken on the fly. The framing is deliberate. They may have been taken by a soldier as a war trophy, or to be able to show their superiors that they had done a good job, or by photographers attached to the German companies who accompanied the troops wherever they went.”
Other cases
Although these types of photos are extremely rare, this is not the first time Nazi execution photos have been found several decades after they were taken and been made public.
In France, there have been several cases, including the execution of fisherman Émile Masson in Amiens on November 12, 1940, who had been caught sabotaging telephone lines. The photo was taken by a German witness and developed by a local photographer who made a duplicate that he handed to the French resistance movement. The photo was then sent to London, and was spread around the world.
Other photos were discovered when France was liberated in 1945. One of them is a picture of four French Nazi collaborators who stand by the corpses of the 18 resistance fighters and paratroopers of the French Free forces they killed in the July 12, 1944, Kérihuel massacre in the village of Plumelec in Brittany. The picture was taken by a German soldier and was handed over to French authorities by a British soldier.
In 2009, famed Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld identified photographs depicting the February 21, 1944, execution of French resistance fighters on the Mont-Valérien, the main execution site in France by the German army during WWII, near Paris. The photos had been taken in secret by a German soldier, Clemens Ruther, who kept them out of view for some 40 years. Shortly before his death, he confided his secret to a friend who convinced him to give them to the Franz Stock Committee for Germany, a memorial foundation for the Catholic Priest who ministered to French Resistance prisoners before their execution.
How did they end up on eBay?
Tsoutsoumpis said that these types of images were widely circulated among Wehrmacht veterans after the war. “It is likely that they ended up on eBay through someone with access to these networks, perhaps a descendant of a veteran or a collector. However, we cannot know this with certainty.”
Pollack is convinced that more will resurface with time.
“There are plenty of things lying around in attics. German soldiers sent photos home to their families, even of themselves executing a Jew or a resistance fighter. It can be hard to make this kind of discovery about your grandfather, but you don’t have to sell it on eBay,” he said, and lamented the “morbid fascination” with such photos.
“People need to understand that they have to report them to institutions so that they can be preserved.”
Greece, for example, has sent experts to Belgium to examine the Kaisariani massacre photos and to meet with the collector who tried to sell them.
“The photos must be acquired by the Greek State, provided they are authentic. In that case, they constitute unique documents, inextricably linked to a specific tragic event in Greek history and thus part of the cultural heritage of the Greek people,” government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said Monday.
Pollack said the discovery of the photographs will not only serve as evidence of the crime committed, but also to give the victims some justice. “They wanted to erase these men from humanity. Every time we put a name to a face, it thwarts that project a little bit.”
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