TIME EUROPE
July 31, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 5
Compensation Conflict
High politics and hidden treasure
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA Athens
Greece's 1,950 holocaust survivors, many of whom were slave laborers for Hitler's war machine, aren't waiting for Germany to compensate them. Real restitution, they argue, may come sooner from the bottom of a Greek gulf. This week a team of French divers will take to the Messinian Gulf in the southern Peloponnese in search of an estimated $2.4 billion booty of gold bars, coins and jewels taken by the Nazis from Greek Jews in early 1943. The loot was tossed into the sea by a senior Nazi officer who hoped to retrieve it after the war. This week's treasure hunt follows a tip from a mystery informant linked to the late Max Merten, the notorious Nazi believed to have orchestrated the Peloponnese plan while serving as a military administrator in Salonika in northern Greece.
The treasure hunt has added to tension between Germany and Greece regarding compensation for Nazi crimes. The person who tipped Jewish officials off to the sunken booty says that information is worth half the treasure. The Greek state also wants half, and even Germany may stake a claim, all of which could leave the Greek Holocaust survivors with less that one-quarter of their own fortune.
Berlin is annoyed with Athens for "allowing bad memories to come to the surface," according to a senior Foreign Ministry official. That's diplomatic shorthand for the $27 million in reparations that the Greek Supreme Court ordered Berlin to pay to the families of 217 Greek Orthodox residents of Distomo, a village in central Greece, who were massacred by the Nazis in 1944. If the Germans don't pay up, the Supreme Court has sanctioned the confiscation and sale of German holdings in Greece, including the German Archeological Institute and the Goethe Institute buildings in Athens. German government lawyers plan to contest the Supreme Court ruling at a trial in September. Says Ioannis Stamoulis, the lawyer acting on behalf of relatives of the Distomo victims: "For years Germany treated us as if we were ants, and it an elephant. Now the tables have finally turned. And Germany must face up to the horror of its Nazi past in Greece." If the dispute is not resolved, the bad memories are unlikely to recede anytime soon.
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July 31, 2000
SPECIAL REPORT
Spies Among Us
More than 20 million people have downloaded programs that secretly snoop inside their PCs. Are you one of them?
EUROPE
The Final Reckoning
Businesses agree to compensation for wartime Germany's forced labor policies — but where's the money?
Compensation Conflict
High politics and hidden treasure
MIDDLE EAST
Inside the Talks
How do you get Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak to sit together? Time looks at the long, hard road just to reach the Camp David summit
BUSINESS
Don't Call Us
Telefónica's controversial chairman gets the cold shoulder from many of his former friends
TECHNOLOGY
Stamping Out Mines
Two machines designed in the U.K. offer hope for safe and speedy removal of war's deadly leftovers
SOCIETY
What Money Can't Buy
In a scathing book, super-shopper Mouna Ayoub claims her life married to a rich Saudi was hell
THE ARTS
Valentino's Day
As the Italian designer rethinks his business plan for the new millennium, his loyal "Val's Gals" celebrate 40 years of gowns with a timeless appeal
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
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