FOUR survivors of a 1944 massacre by Nazi troops in the Greek village of Distomo began legal action against Germany today to seek compensation.
The four plaintiffs, a man and his three sisters who lost their parents in the killings, are trying to force Germany to pay them millions of euros in damages and if they succeed, the ruling could set a precedent for other suits.
The massacre at Distomo was one of the worst in World War II. Nazi SS troops killed 218 villagers, including children, in a two-hour frenzy of killing and looting on June 10, 1944, then burned the village down.
Germany has refused to pay compensation, claiming "only states and not individuals" can make such demands.
The hearing is the latest in a series of trials over the massacre since the late 1990s.
In the first instance, a Greek regional court ordered Germany to pay 29 million euro ($51.62 million) to the four, but Berlin appealed that ruling in 1999.
It claimed that Greek courts did not have the international jurisdiction needed to prosecute such war crimes, and that all demands for compensation had been settled by a bilateral claims agreement signed in 1960.
Under that accord, Germany paid Greece around 115 million marks ($105 million).
More than 400,000 Greeks from a population of seven million are thought to have died during the harsh three-year Nazi occupation. Jews accounted for 88 per cent of the total deaths.
At least 50,000 Greeks have filed lawsuits against Germany since 1995 to obtain compensation for war-time atrocities.
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