Greeks evoke past injustices to overcome bailout shame

By Harry Papachristou

Germany is footing much of the bill for Greece's 237 billion euro bailout but Athens-trained dentist Aristomenis Syngelakis feels no gratitude; Berlin owes his country billions in reparations for Nazi crimes during World War Two, he says.

"They're wagging the finger at us while they are themselves the biggest cheats,» says Syngelakis, stung by headlines in popular German newspapers calling Greeks lazy swindlers.

Syngelakis is one of the leaders of a campaign, backed by opposition parties, to make Berlin pay as much as 162 billion euros ($223 billion) for the hundreds of villages destroyed, thousands of civilians executed and huge sums looted from the Greek central bank by the Nazis in 1941-1944.

But this campaign is about more than recovering money; it also aims to heal a deeply wounded national pride.

Many Greeks feel the bailout financed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund is just the latest in a series of humiliations inflicted by foreign powers on their fiercely proud nation at the weakest moments of its modern history.

Evoking past injustices - some dating from long before the Nazi occupation and blamed on a number of other countries - has become an outlet for Greeks' anger and frustration during six years of economic crisis.

In contrast to Syngelakis, historians say Athens could at most ask Germany for a few billion euros, but public frustration over Greece's foreign dependency is still directed at Berlin.

The Greek government hasn't officially quantified its reparation claims, and Berlin has long said that it has already honoured all its war obligations, including a payment of 115 million deutsche marks (59 million euros) to Greece in 1960.

While this...