On 10th June, 1944, in an act of retaliation, the SS rounded up the inhabitants of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in the Limousin district of West Central France, and slaughtered them, 642 people, including 205 children. It turned out later they had got the wrong village, intending the retaliation for Oradour-sur-Vayres. The gutted village is left as a memorial and is one of the worst things I have ever seen.
On the same day, 2500 km away in the village of Distomo near Delphi in Greece, the Waffen-SS were up to the same thing, massacring 218 people in retaliation for some resistance activity in the area.
Now the Greeks want compensation. The amount they have determined is €165 million and have gone to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to obtain the money from the modern German State.
Let us leave aside for the moment that Greece is in the unattractive position of a mendicant holding out his hand in expectation of largesse, telling the story of his pregnant wife and six starving children. The lion’s share of the handout will be paid by Germany. And let us leave aside the fact that the Germans say they paid up in 1960, and it is hardly their fault if the Greek government at the time didn’t give any money to the villagers. And let us gloss over, if we can, that at least fifteen similar outrages were committed across Europe.
What is disturbing here is the timeline. The villagers of Distomo went to their local court only in 1997, 53 years after the massacre, and just as the last German was released from life imprisonment for the crime. Even an 18 year old recruit at Distomo would now be 85.
And the rest of the political landscape is different. Germany became a different country after the war and was reunited in 1990. Greece, meanwhile, has been ruled by the army, deposed its king, developed a new constitution and joined the European Union.
Distomo and Oradour were eight years before the birth of Prime Minister Papandreou, ten years before Angela Merkel was born, 11 before Sarkozy and 22 years before David Cameron. Everything is different now, not least Germany, and it is time to stop fighting the battles our fathers and grandfathers fought.
The ICJ should have declared a statute of limitations on World War II crimes years ago.
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