Photographs of an execution of Greek resistance fighters by German soldiers in May 1944 were recently put up for auction on the Internet. The discovery of these documents aroused great emotion in the country, leading to the halt of the sale by the Greek authorities, who declared them national heritage.

Published on: 02/18/2026 - 6:14 p.m. Modified on: 02/18/2026 - 7:57 p.m.

They look at the camera without looking down, in a row two by two. With the same momentum, they seem to sing. However, these men are heading towards death. A dozen photographs put up for sale on Saturday February 14 on the eBay site show Greek communist resistance fighters just before their execution on May 1, 1944 in Kaisariani, a suburb of Athens.

“These photos shocked me. Although the execution of these 200 resistance fighters is a well-known historical event, until now there was no photographic proof of it,” says historian Polymeris Voglis, professor of social history at the University of Thessaly. “Their faces reflect their determination as they proudly march towards the firing squad.”

The discovery of these photographs caused great emotion in Greece. All the media reported on this sale organized by Tim de Craen, a Belgian who manages a commercial platform dedicated to documents and coins from the Second World War, called "Crain's Militaria". Faced with public outrage, this collector removed the objects from the eBay site, even though some of these photographs had already reached more than $2,000 at auction. “I understand perfectly that these photographs have a particularly sensitive historical character,” he explained to the newspaper I Khatimerini.

An iconic execution

These photographs actually concern one of the worst atrocities committed in Greece by Nazi Germany. "The events of Kaisariani were triggered by an attack by the ELAS (Greek People's Liberation Army) on April 27, 1944, against a German convoy escorting Wehrmacht Lieutenant General Franz Krech. The attack resulted in the death of Krech and several of his escorts. The Wehrmacht responded with massive reprisals targeting three targets. The first consisted of 200 Communist Party members and resistance fighters. of them had been arrested by the dictatorial regime of Ioannis Metaxas, who came to power in 1936, and had remained imprisoned since before the war. They were handed over to the Axis authorities after the capitulation of Greece. Others were arrested later, during the Occupation", recalls Spyridon Tsoutsoumpis of the University of Manchester, specialist in the resistance in Greece.

The memory of this mass execution remains vivid in the country. “Many songs, poems, engravings and books refer to it, and an excellent film was dedicated to it more recently, in 2017. For the Greek left, the Kaisariani shooting range is a place of memory: it is no coincidence that, upon coming to power in 2015, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras went there on his first day in office to pay tribute to the victims,” underlines historian Polymeris Voglis.

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Until now, there was no known photo of the Kaisariani massacre. “There are few photographs of German reprisals in Greece, and even fewer executions. For example, there are photographs of the mass executions of civilians by German soldiers in Crete in June 1941, after the occupation of the island. These photographs remain the exception,” notes Polymeris Voglis. "For the execution of the 200 communists at Kaisariani, we knew the facts through stories. Now we have these photographs that confirm what we considered to be a somewhat stereotypical narrative: the political prisoners did walk toward the firing squad proud and defiant."

His colleague Spyridon Tsoutsoumpis also believes that this is a major discovery: “These photos are important because they offer a rare testimony of the victims of Nazi violence. Their spontaneous nature and the absence of staging also make them significant.” For this specialist in the Second World War, these images restore dignity to the victims of the Nazis: "They allow us to rehumanize them, to imagine them and to restore their presence to them, as they were. They convey an image of resistance and deep humanity, showing that even in their last moments, they retained their courage. They help us to better represent the state of mind, the motivations and the ideals of those who sacrificed their lives in the fight against fascism."

According to the Greek Reporter news network, the Communist Party of Greece and local researchers have already started work to give a name to these men who are heading to their place of execution. Two men have been provisionally identified: political activist Thrasyvoulos Kalafatakis and trade union leader Dimitris Papadopoulos.

Read also War reparations: Athens judges that Berlin owes it 279 billion euros

"The Executioner's Point of View"

The Greek Culture Ministry said the photographs were almost certainly taken by Günther Heysing, a journalist attached to the propaganda unit of Nazi criminal Joseph Goebbels. Other media in the country mention the German lieutenant Hermann Heller, then in office, as the author of these photos.

As summarized by historian Guillaume Pollack, resistance specialist and researcher at Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, this is in any case "from the point of view of the executioner": "Photographs of arrests or executions are generally taken by the forces of repression. These are photos which are worked on and which are not taken on the sly. There is a thoughtful framing. They may have been taken by soldiers as a war trophy or to show to their hierarchy that they had done their job well, or by German company operators who accompanied the troops wherever they went."

The French case

Even if these photographs are rare, the first to have been made public were during the conflict, particularly in France. This is the case of the execution of Émile Masson, a fisherman, arrested for sabotaging telephone lines, at the citadel of Amiens on November 12, 1940. The photograph taken by a German witness was developed by a photographer from the city who made a duplicate and transmitted it to the Resistance. Communicated in London, it traveled around the world. Others were discovered during the Liberation, such as that of the Kérihuel massacre, in the village of Plumelec, in Morbihan. In this photograph, French Abwehr agents pose proudly in front of the corpses of 18 Free French and Resistance paratroopers whom they have just executed. Taken by a German soldier, it was handed over to the French authorities by an English soldier.

Also read: Homage to the paratroopers of Free France: Pierre Marienne, the lion of the Saint-Marcel maquis

More recently, photos of the execution, on February 21, 1944, of Red Poster resistance fighters at Mont-Valérien have resurfaced. In 2009, these photos taken clandestinely by Clemens Rüther, a non-commissioned officer in the German Feldgendarmerie, were identified by the historian Serge Klarsfeld. The soldier had kept these documents for 40 years without telling anyone. Shortly before his death, he had confided this secret to a friend who had convinced him to hand over his previously unpublished photos to the Franz Stock Committee for Germany, whose mission is to pay tribute to the German military chaplain of Mont-Valérien.

Read alsoThe entry of Missak Manouchian into the Pantheon, a tribute to all foreign resistance fighters

Other discoveries to come?

How did photos of Kaisariani’s execution end up on eBay? “These images circulated widely among Wehrmacht veterans after the war. It is likely that they ended up on eBay through someone with access to these networks, perhaps a descendant of a veteran or a collector. However, we cannot say this with certainty,” says Spyridon Tsoutsoumpis.

Other discoveries will follow, according to Guillaume Pollack: "There are lots of things in the attics. German soldiers sent photos to their family in Germany, even of themselves executing a Jew or a resistance fighter. It can be complicated when you make this type of discovery on your grandfather, but you are not obliged to sell it on eBay", he insists, also lamenting the "morbid interest" in this type of documents. “We need to raise awareness among people and make them understand that they must report them to institutions so that they can be preserved.”

The Greek authorities understood the value of such archives. Athens sent experts to Ghent, Belgium, to examine the footage of Kaisariani's execution and speak with the Belgian collector who put it up for sale.

“They must be acquired by the Greek state provided that they are authentic. In this case, they are unique documents, inseparable from a specific tragic event in Greek history and which therefore form part of the cultural heritage of the Greek people,” Pavlos Marinakis, government spokesperson, declared on Monday. The batch of images was declared national heritage "because of its particular historical value", the minister said in a press release on Wednesday, thus laying "the legal bases to acquire them for the benefit of the Greek state".

For Guillaume Pollack, the saving of these documents will make it possible to document this crime, but also to finally do justice to the executed resistance fighters: "They wanted to make these men disappear from humanity. Each time we put a name to a face, it's a bit of defeating their project."

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