According to information from protothema.gr, yesterday’s deal between the Greek delegation of the Ministry of Culture and the collector-owner of the archive of historic photographs from the period of the German Occupation was finalized at around €100,000.

The archive is the extensive personal collection of German Wehrmacht Second Lieutenant Hermann Hoyer and includes a total of 262 photographs. Among them are the shocking documents from the mass execution of 200 Greeks at the Kaisariani Shooting Range on May 1, 1944.

The Belgian collector Tim De Craene, who specializes in German Army memorabilia and World War II artifacts, put the photographs up for online auction on February 14 through his company Crain’s Militaria, likely unaware of the immense historical value of some of them.

The competent Greek authorities immediately mobilized, contacted him, secured his agreement to withdraw the Kaisariani photographs—since they constitute evidence of Nazi war crimes and their auction is prohibited—and arranged a meeting in Belgium.

Meanwhile, the procedure was swiftly initiated for the Ministry of Culture to officially designate the entire photographic collection as a monument, following a positive opinion by the Central Council of Modern Monuments. The designation is due to its particular historical value as documentation of how perceptions and attitudes were shaped through imagery by the propaganda mechanisms of the Occupation forces in Greece during World War II.

Yesterday, Friday, the Greek delegation—comprising experienced Ministry of Culture officials as well as independent experts—carefully examined the material and, after certifying its authenticity, signed a preliminary agreement with the collector, once all the photographs had been immediately withdrawn from the auction website.

How much the auction prices had reached

The photographs from the executions of 400 in Kaisariani—which are the most significant and historically invaluable documents in the collection—were, as expected, fetching the highest prices. Shortly before they were withdrawn from the online auction, some of them had exceeded €2,000.

Significantly lower prices, however, were recorded until last night for other photographs in the collection of Wehrmacht Second Lieutenant Hermann Hoyer that had been taken in support of German propaganda. Several of these, published for the first time yesterday by protothema.gr, depicted Greek landmarks such as the Acropolis and the Panathenaic Stadium, with soldiers, Nazi flags, and weapons.

Others showed images from German camps and hospitals in Malakasa and elsewhere, Greeks in traditional dress, young children, as well as scenes from Athens, Thessaloniki, and other Greek cities during the period 1943–1944.