Greeks’ Holocaust jibe in Merkel talks

Is our debt crisis worse than Auschwitz, asks minister

THE Greek foreign minister has claimed that his country deserves EU help because it has not committed crimes on the scale of the Holocaust – while Germany has confirmed that it will not pay Greece war reparations.

Angela Merkel met far-Left Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras in Berlin yesterday – his first visit to Germany since he came to power in January.

Mr Tsipras is understood to have told the German Chancellor that Greece would face insolvency within weeks without the release of more funds.

However the meeting was overshadowed by comments from Nikos Kotzias, the Greek foreign minister, who said in an interview that his country deserved to be treated as leniently as post-war Germany.

He suggested that Germany should help set up a commission to come up with a plan to compensate Greece for the suffering caused by the Nazis during the Second World War.

The Greek government is claiming that Germany must now repay a loan which was ‘forced’ on Athens in 1942, as well as pay for Nazi atrocities.

And speaking to a German newspaper yesterday, Mr Kotzias pointed out that Germany had not been made to make arduous repayments after the war.

He told Suddeutsche Zeitung: ‘The Allies were very generous with Germany; they did not smother Germany.

‘There was an interest to build Germany up again. Don’t we have the same rights?’

He went on to ask if the ‘crimes that our people committed’ were greater than ‘Dachau or Auschwitz’ – referring to two of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps where more than a million people were murdered.

At the press conference yesterday, Mr Tsipras also renewed the demand for war reparations, saying: ‘We must work on the issue of forced loans and Second World War reparations.’

However Mrs Merkel said she viewed the demands as an attempt to distract from the need for economic reforms, adding: ‘The issue of war reparations is closed from a political and legal point of view. The topic has no relationship with the crisis and its emergencies.’

European leaders are currently refusing to give Greece any more money unless the Left-wing government commits to reforms. If they fail to come to an arrangement then Greece will be forced to leave the euro – plunging the continent into financial crisis.

Yesterday Mrs Merkel was careful to point out that Germany was only one of the eurozone nations that would be responsible for deciding whether Greece’s reforms are sufficient, and said that no decisions had been made in her talks with Mr Tsipras.

But she remained positive, saying the meeting had been held in ‘a spirit of trust’. The Greek prime minister also characterised the talks as ‘positive’, saying he found Mrs Merkel ‘listens and wants to be constructive’.

He said the Chancellor had invited him to come to Berlin over the phone, telling him: ‘It is better to talk with one another than about one another.’ Mr Tsipras went on to say: ‘I did not come here for financial help. I came for an exchange of our thoughts.’

Yesterday the Eurasia risk consultancy group said the likelihood of Greece having to leave the euro had risen from 20 to 30 per cent. The group’s eurozone analyst Mujtaba Rahman said: ‘The prospects of a deal are diminishing, as Germany, the eurogroup and Greece continue to posture. While Berlin still wants to keep Greece in the eurozone, it will not be flexible regarding the conditions attached to more financial aid.’

‘Don’t we have the same rights?’