“I ask you, the survivors and descendants, for forgiveness for the serious crimes that Germans committed here,” Steinmeier said during his visit to Kandanos on the island of Crete, where he laid a wreath at a memorial for victims and spoke with survivors.
Steinmeier is the first German head of state to visit Kandanos, which was razed on June 3, 1941, days after German troops captured the island.
The operation was carried out as a reprisal against the Greek resistance for the death of 25 German paratroopers and mountain troops.
Residents who were unable to flee were brutally killed, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 23 to 189 victims.
Kandanos was later rebuilt and now has around 1,000 residents. It is one of 120 “martyr villages” across Greece.
“It is a difficult path for a German president to come to this place and speak, but I cannot be here in Crete without visiting this place of German shame,” Steinmeier said.
“The brutality, the cruelty, the inhumanity of the German occupiers, they take my breath away, especially today,” he continued.
“And yet you offered us the hand of reconciliation, and for that I am grateful to you,” Steinmeier told the audience, on the final day of his three-day visit to Greece.
The president also apologized for the fact that Germany “dragged its heels for decades when it came to punishing the crimes” and that post-war governments “looked the other way and remained silent.”
More demands for reparations
In Kandanos, Steinmeier was again confronted with demands for German reparation payments, with survivors holding up a banner calling for “justice and compensation.”
The demands came after Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou on Wednesday reminded Steinmeier of the damage suffered by her country during the war and a forced loan that Greece paid to Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
The issue of war reparations and the forced loan is still “very important” for the Greek people, said Sakellaropoulou.
Earlier on Thursday, Steinmeier criticized the German government’s proposed funding cuts to a fund commemorating atrocities committed during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
The president said the cut to the German-Greek Future Fund, which is used to finance numerous remembrance projects primarily aimed at young people, would send the “wrong signal.”
The German Foreign Office has proposed a cut from €900,000 ($975,000) to €300,000 as part of a wider programme of austerity measures.
The cut is set to be discussed in November in a parliamentary committee putting the finishing touches to Germany’s budget for 2025.
“Since 2014, the fund has been working on a common culture of remembrance and is thus also an important basis for our common future as close partner countries,” Steinmeier said.
“I am pleased that the funding is now to be discussed again in parliament,” he added.
