Volkswacht Bodensee - Greece experts to examine Nazi atrocity photos find

The ministry said it was sending experts to Ghent, Belgium to examine the photos and to talk to a collector of Third Reich memorabilia who had put them on sale on Ebay on Saturday.

"It is highly likely that these are authentic photographs," the ministry said.

It said the 12 photographs appear to show "the last moments" of 200 Greek Communists who were executed on May 1, 1944 in retaliation for the killing of a German general and his staff by Communist guerrillas a few days earlier.

The Communist-led Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) was among the most active resistance organisations in occupied Europe.

The execution of the 200 men at the Kaisariani shooting range in Athens is a seminal event of the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation of Greece, which was marked by several atrocities, mostly against Greek villagers.

Greece's Jewish community was also decimated during this period.

Some of the pictures show groups of the men marching through a field, and standing against a wall at the shooting range.

One photo appears to show the men being marched into the shooting range, after discarding their overcoats outside.

"This is the first time we have an image from inside the shooting range at the moment of the execution...a major moment of the Greek resistance movement," historian Menelaos Haralambidis told state TV ERT.

"And it confirms the testimony we have, that these men headed (to their deaths) with their heads held high, they had incredible courage," Haralambidis said.

- 'My death should not sadden you' -

Until now, the only testimony of the 200 victims' final moments were from handwritten notes they had thrown out of the trucks taking them to execution.

"My death should not sadden you but steel you even more for the struggle you are waging," one of the men, lawyer Mitsos Remboutsikas, had written to his family.

Another man wrote a message behind the picture of his young daughter, requesting that she become a teacher.

Most of the men had been arrested years earlier during anti-Communist raids by the police of Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas.

The Greek Communist KKE party, which called the trove "priceless" on Monday said it had tentatively identified at least two of the men in the photographs.

"These documents belong to the Greek people," the party said.

"I feel grateful that we were given the opportunity for my grandfather’s story to become known to everyone, a man who remained faithful to his beliefs until the very end," Thrasyvoulos Marakis, the grandson of one of the men identified in the photographs, said in a letter to the 902.gr website Tuesday.

The Greek culture ministry said it was "highly likely" that the photographs were taken by Guenther Heysing, a journalist attached to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels's unit.

"If the authenticity and lawful provenance of the collection are documented, the Ministry of Culture will immediately finalise measures for its acquisition," it said.

T.Suter--VB