Let’s follow the lead of this true patriot

If we want to mend our relations with Germany, our politicians are going to have to drop the selfrighteous act, says Pantelis Boukalas. In one toe-curling incident recently, the German ambassador, Peter Schoof, agreed to attend a wreath-laying event to commemorate the victims of a Nazi atrocity in 1944, only to find himself heckled by a left-winger, who told him he had no right to be there, and began shouting about war reparations. Schoof, subjected to boos and catcalls, seemed to be backing off – until an elderly war veteran came forward, took him by the hand and led him to the monument to lay his wreath. The heckler, lawyer and former Syriza MP Zoe Konstantopoulou, insisted she’d done what any Greek would have done. Really? It was the authorities in Distomo, a village northwest of Athens where 214 civilians were slaughtered by SS soldiers, who invited Schoof to the event. Are they not Greek? And what of the 94-year-old who came to Schoof’s side – a true patriot who, aged 18, scaled the Acropolis to tear down the swastika flag? Afterwards, Manolis Glezos said simply that it is wrong to blame people for the crimes of their forefathers. We need more of his tolerance, and rather less of Konstantopoulou’s “dogmatic” certainty.