Russian serviceman wearing St. George ribbon symbolically steps on Nazi flag while visiting Greece’s Kalavritan Holocaust Museum

A message from Moscow to Berlin…courtesy of Kalavryta…“This is how we will step on fascism if need be.”

The above photo is making the rounds on various Greece language blogs.

In the pic, a Russian serviceman visiting the Kalavritan Holocaust Museum, and wearing the traditional and symbolic St. George ribbon, ascends on top of a display that has the German Nazi flag from WW2.

The officer was a part of the Russian crew on board the training ship “Kruzenshtern”.

Upon learning about the Massacre of Kalavryta, at the hands of Nazi Germany, the Russian servicemen was moved to step on top of the Nazi flag in a symbolic show of solidarity and support.

In 1943, German troops ordered all male residents of Kalavryta, aged 14 years and up, to gather in a field just outside the village to be machine-gunned down.

696 men died, and only 13 survived.

After the massacre, Germans burnt down the town, and the next day burnt down the Monastery of Agia Lavra…the birthplace of the Greek War of Independence.

After the war, the federal Government of Germany offered gestures of atonement in the form of free school books for the high school, scholarships for orphans of the massacre, and built an old peoples’ home.

To this day, no German commanders, (Major Ebersberger who carried out the destruction of Kalavryta; Hauptmann Dohnert who led the firing party), were ever brought to justice for these events…hence Greece’s insistence that Germany pay war reparations to Athens.

References:

http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/