Nonagenarian Greek WWII resistance icon and current MEP Manolis Glezos told Deutsche Welle this week that the issue of German war reparations is definitely on the agenda of a leftist government in Athens.

DW made particular mention of the fact that the veteran left-wing politician travels by car from Athens to Brussels and Strasbourg to attend European Parliament sessions. Yet he changed routes on Tuesday, traveling instead – again by car – to Berlin.

While in the German capital the 92-year-old participated in an event dedicated to Greece’s poll-leading leftist SYRIZA party, under whose banner Glezos was elected to the European Parliament. The event was organized by Die Linke cadre and former East German communist party member Gabi Zimmer, who today chairs the Confederal Group of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left in the Euro-parliament.

Any Glezos statement linked to Germany earns increased media attention in Greece and beyond, given that as a teenager he climbed up the Acropolis — with companion Apostolos Santas — a little more than a month after Nazi troops occupied the Greek capital in 1941 and took down the Swastika flying atop a flagpole.

Asked point blank if a SYRIZA government assumes power in Athens can cooperate with the Merkel government in Berlin, Glezos more-or-less said a leftist Greek government is open to contacts, “but the initiative should be assumed by Berlin.”

“If the Merkel government wants, we can cooperate, if it doesn’t, we won’t cooperate. We’re open (to cooperation) though,” he said.

Glezos was adamant that the issue of war reparations and repayment of a forced loan mandated by an occupying Wehrmacht on wartime Greece is not closed, given, in his opinion, that no peace treaty was signed after the war by a German successor state and WWII victor Greece.