In an interview with the news website t-online at the beginning of June regarding the war crimes of the Wehrmacht in occupied Greece, the German historian Hans A. Richter claimed that the then military administrator there, the lawyer Max Merten, had been stylized as a “war criminal of the very highest order”. Richter’s attempt to exonerate Merten is part of the falsification and revisionism of the history of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, this is done under a scientific guise.
With its judgment of March 5, 1959, the Greek judiciary ruled that Max Merten was guilty of crimes he had committed during the German occupation of Greece. The statements of the witnesses, including Jewish Greeks, were decisive for the outcome of the trial and the condemnation of Merten.
Hans A. Richter’s attempt to wash the “butcher of Thessaloniki” Max Merten clean is outrageous and worrying.
Undoubtedly, the democratically anchored freedom of expression and the value of historical research are valuable assets. Precisely for this reason Richter’s attempt to wash Max Merten clean is outrageous and worrying. Because data, facts and sources are countered by well-known scientists such as the historian Hagen Fleischer and the lawyer Gerrit Hamann Richter’s relativization – their research results Richter downplayed as “so-called”. 67,000 Jewish Greeks lost their lives during the Shoah.
DISTORTION Merten was the “absolute ruler” of Thessaloniki, the city with the largest Jewish community in Greece. Together with Alois Brunner, head of the SS special command for the “final solution to the Jewish question”, and Dieter Wisliceny, “representative for Jewish affairs” for Slovakia, Hungary and Greece, he had managed to make Thessaloniki “free of Jews” within just a few months : 45,000 Jews of Thessaloniki were forcibly abducted and killed in the Nazi death camps.
The distortion of historical truth is extremely dangerous. It rewards the efforts of all those who planned, implemented and supported the “Final Solution”. If we want to build a society that will not allow the Holocaust to happen again or the fanaticism and ideology that led to it to prevail, we must respond vehemently to any voice that praises or tries to praise Nazism to downplay his crimes. Also on that of Hans A. Richter.
The author is General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Greece.
– .
