Rare Photographs of the Nazi Occupation and the Kaisariani Execution Presented by the Ministry of Culture

The Ministry of Culture recently held a press conference presenting the photographs from the so-called Hoyer Collection—including three depicting some of the most dramatic moments of the execution of 200 Greeks in Kaisariani by Nazi occupation forces on May 1, 1944—and announcing the creation of a National Photographic Archive. At the press conference, in the presence of Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni, the participants included four experts who traveled twice to Belgium to meet Tim de Craene, a collector-dealer, in order to assess the authenticity and legal provenance of the collection, as well as its significance and value. The collection was purchased for €100,000 with funds from the Ministry of Culture.

Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni presented a historical overview, from the initial discovery of the collection – comprising 262 photographs, 16 documents, and four old banknotes offered for sale by a Belgian collector on an online auction site – to the transfer of ownership of the collection to the Ministry of Culture and the Greek state.

National Photographic Archive

Minister Lina Mendoni stated that “with a legislative provision, the Ministry of Culture will establish a National Photographic Archive. It will constitute a distinct body within the National Archive of Monuments and will be interconnected with the other databases of the Directorate for the Management of the National Archive of Monuments”. She emphasized that, beyond the photographs of exceptional importance from Kaisariani and the Hoyer Collection, “there were many reasons why we wished to establish a National Photographic Archive. For example, there are the extremely significant photographic collections from Tatoi for our modern history; photographs of Greek refugees—archives that have already been handled by the Ministry of Culture and which will be housed in the Museum of Refugee Hellenism in Thessaloniki—as well as photographs from the historical archive of the Archaeological Service. The Ministry of Culture holds a large amount of material, and if the collections of the supervised institutions are also taken into account, there was every reason to create this distinct National Photographic Archive within the National Archive of Monuments.”

Next steps

Regarding the next steps for the Hoyer Collection, L. Mendoni provided the following information: “The Ministry of Culture, since it has now declared the photographs as monuments – that is, they constitute a material monumental relic protected under Law – has already begun to handle the collection according to the procedure required for monuments: protection, conservation, safeguarding, scientific documentation, and ultimately its promotion and wider public presentation. The aim is for it to be used, like all the evidence of our historical and cultural heritage, in public discourse and in education. Throughout the study, what I insist on and what I have requested is strict scientific documentation and testimony. The photographs are monuments of our modern history, and this is how we will treat them. This period requires study and specialists who can address it,” the minister emphasized.

As was announced in the interview, the first step for the collection, after care by the competent Conservation Directorate, is the digitization of all the material. “Digital copies, under certain terms and conditions, may be provided by the Ministry of Culture to specific recipients. A necessary prerequisite is the historical identification of subjects, places, people, and dates, as well as the integration of the collection into its historical context. Obviously, the photographs of the execution will receive special treatment,” the Minister of Culture emphasized, noting that the research work has already been undertaken by the National Hellenic Research Foundation, within the framework of the Cultural Development Programmatic Agreement with the Ministry of Culture, under the scientific supervision of Mr. Schneider and his colleagues at the Foundation. “The collection is in very good condition. However, it is more than 80 years old, so it will require special care. What concerns us now is conservation, digitization, and management in order to protect the collection in the future,” said M. Mertzani, head of the Directorate for the Conservation of Ancient and Modern Monuments of the Ministry of Culture.

The Significance of the Collection

The head of the Directorate of Modern Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, V. Fotopoulou, emphasizing the importance of the collection and noted: “We were certain from the beginning about the value, importance, and authenticity of the entire set of photographs, and thus – with the very decisive stance of the political leadership – we managed, within 13 days, to bring to completion a very difficult undertaking. We were very confident because we are historians and we know very well what these kinds of collections are photographs taken by soldiers of the Third Reich, the Wehrmacht, and the SS of Nazi Germany, which now circulate widely. We know what happened here. It is estimated that more than 40 million photographs were taken by Wehrmacht soldiers and over 2 million photographs by the propaganda units established by Joseph Goebbels.”

“It is important, first of all, that we study how these individuals were shaped within the context of war. The photographs taken by this particular sergeant, and by many others, are a study of how people are formed through violence. They are also a study of the power of propaganda. Goebbels created a propaganda machine not only with professional photographers from the propaganda units but also by encouraging everyone – soldiers and their families – to take photographs. Why? So that these photographs would return home and create an image of the successes of the Wehrmacht for families, so that in the future – because he was certain that Germany would win – there would be a vast album of memories from the Great War and what Germany had achieved in it. Of course, and fortunately, none of that ever came to pass,” she pointed out.

Photographer Stavros Mavrommatis noted that the “photographer” in quotation marks is completely untrained. “He has almost no instruction for documentation and is simply creating a personal album. He uses a very good camera and excellent photographic paper that was circulating at the time—from this we understood the authenticity of the photographs at first glance. Nevertheless, his photographs are poor in photographic terms; that is, he had no instruction to document events. Rather, he had the instruction to create an album that would show the activities of the Third Reich. He takes the photographs completely detached from what he is seeing—in the album, next to the images of the executions, he places photographs of people swimming at Votsalakia Beach in Piraeus. This is precisely another reason why these photographs have particular value, because they show that they were taken not by explicit order, but in accordance with the spirit that prevailed among the occupation troops,” said.

Valentin Schneider, historian and researcher at the National Hellenic Research Foundation stressed that “these are photographs that have a hybrid character, because on the one hand they are private photographs, documenting private life in the army and during the war. On the other hand, however, it seems that there may have been some low-level instruction, perhaps at the level of the military unit itself, to document the everyday life of the unit so that photographs could be exchanged after the war.”

Valentin Schneider presented several characteristic photographs from the Hoyer Collection, including the 13 images from Kaisariani, three of which were the most dramatic, as they depict the moment of the execution and the minutes immediately afterward.