Today marks the seventieth anniversary of the Distomo massacre, a Nazi war crime perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo, in Voiotia Central Greece, during the Axis occupation of the country in World War II.
On June 10, 1944, for over two hours, Waffen-SS troops of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Lautenbach went door to door and massacred Greek civilians as part of a ‘retaliation measure’ for a partisan attack upon the unit. A total of 218 men, women, children and babies were killed in Distomo, a small village near Delphi.
The massacre became known to the international community through a BBC broadcast, while a representative of the International Red Cross, George Wehrly, who visited to Distomo a few days after the massacre mentioned that in the wider area the occupying forces massacred as many as 600 people in total.
Following the massacre, a Secret Field Police agent accompanying the German forces informed the authorities that, contrary to Lautenbach’s official report, the German troops had come under attack several miles from Distomo and had not been fired upon “with mortars, machine-guns and rifles from the direction of Distomo”. An inquiry was convened. Lautenbach admitted that he had gone beyond standing orders, but the tribunal found in his favour, holding that he had been motivated, not by negligence or ignorance, but by a sense of responsibility towards his men.
Decades after the massacre four relatives of victims brought legal proceedings against the German government to court in Livadeia, Greece, demanding reparations. On October 30, 1997, the court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs and awarded damages of 28 million euros. Eventually in May 2000, Areos Pagos, the Greek High court, confirmed this ruling. The judgment, however could not be enforced in Greece, because under Greek law, the execution of a judgment against a sovereign State is subject to the prior consent of the Minister of Justice, and this consent was not given.
The plaintiffs brought the case to court in Germany, demanding the aforementioned damages be paid to them. The claim was rejected at all levels of German court, citing a 1961 bilateral agreement concerning enforcement and recognition of judgments between Germany and Greece, and Section 328 of the German Code of Civil Procedure. Both required that Greece have jurisdiction, which it does not, as the actions in question were sovereign acts by a state. According to the fundamental principles of international law, each country is immune from another state’s jurisdiction.
In November 2008, an Italian court ruled that the plaintiffs could take German property in Italy as compensation that was awarded by the Greek courts. The plaintiffs were awarded a villa in Menaggio, near Lake Como, which is owned by a German state non-profit organization, as part of the restitution.
In December 2008, the German government filed a claim at the International Court of Justice in Hague . The aim was to establish that this kind of lawsuit does not fall under the competence of the Italian courts, that their rulings constitute an infringement of international law and that they constitute an infringement of Germany’ sovereignty rights.
In its 2012 final judgment, the court ruled that Italy had violated Germany’s state immunity, and directed that the judgment by the Italian courts be retracted.
Source: tvxs.gr