Steinmeier asks for forgiveness in Greece
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier made a three-day trip to Greece and apologised for Nazi crimes. "I ask you, the survivors and descendants, for forgiveness for the heinous crimes perpetrated here by Germans," he said during a visit to the village of Kandanos on Crete, which was completely wiped out by the Wehrmacht in 1941. However, he maintained that Germany considered the issue of reparations to be closed under international law.
Words are not enough
Athens is not undertaking any serious efforts to secure reparations, News247 complains:
“Eight decades have passed since the end of the Second World War. Defeated Germany was rebuilt and became an economic superpower, but the responsibility it bears for the destruction it caused in the occupied countries has never been properly dealt with. Germany believes that a kind of statute of limitations has come into effect. ... Greek governments have 'brought up the issue' over the years. Now, the president and the prime minister have done this once again - more as a formal obligation and not because they hope that something will change. They are aware of Germany's categorical rejection and content themselves with words.”
We're not begging, we're making demands
Germany must finally pay up, demands Paraskevas Perakis, editor-in-chief of the local daily Haniotika Nea:
“Of course, Steinmeier's visit to the martyred village of Kandanos is a symbolic gesture, but it is not enough to close the open wound between the two nations. ... If Germany does not stop claiming that it was 'relieved' of the duty to make reparations to Greece by the 1953 London Agreement, and if it fails to pay up promptly, then it is mocking us. ... We are not begging, we are making demands – in memory of our ancestors, in the name of the generations who fought to rebuild Greece from the ruins and the countless rifts left by the 'Third Reich'.”
Move on and forget about settling old scores
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung argues that disputes over reparations have no place in a united Europe:
“Anyone who still thinks in terms of demands for reparations for historical injustices would also have to live with counterclaims. No, we shouldn't compare. But crimes against Germans also remain crimes. The expulsion and murder of millions, the bombings that targeted the civilian population, the mistreatment of prisoners of war and the loss of a quarter of the country's territory - you can't put a figure on all that either. European unification does not draw a line under all this. But it does stand for a shared new beginning that does not consist of a constant settling of old scores.”