Photos showing last moments of men executed by Nazis appear on eBay
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The photos showed "the last moments" of 200 men executed at an Athens shooting range on May 1, 1944, Greece's the culture ministry said.
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World Photos showing last moments of men executed by Nazis acquired by Greece after appearing on eBay March 2, 2026 / 6:12 AM EST / CBS/AFP Add CBS News on Google Greece has acquired a trove of World War II photographs showing the last moments of 200 men executed by German soldiers following the assassination of a Nazi general, the culture minister said Saturday. The collection includes 262 photographs, 16 documents and four contemporary banknotes. The photographs are believed to have been taken by a German soldier who had also served in Belgium and France. "The transfer of ownership of the photographic collection... has been completed," Lina Mendoni said in a statement . The ministry had previously said they showed "the last moments" of 200 communists executed at an Athens shooting range on May 1, 1944. Twelve of the photographs had appeared on the eBay site Crain's Militaria earlier this month before being taken down. They had provoked strong emotions in Greece, especially among relatives of the victims. Ministry officials then traveled to Belgium to meet the collector who put them for sale and verify their authenticity. Some of the images had received bids worth more than $2,000 before Belgian collector Tim de Craen took them down, France 24 reported . "I fully understand that these photographs are of a particularly sensitive historical nature," he told Greek newspaper I Kathimerini . The executions followed the killing of a German general and his staff by communist guerrillas a few days earlier. Greece was under Nazi occupation from 1941 until 1944. Most of the executed men had been arrested years earlier during anti-communist raids by the police of Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas. Until now, the only testimony of the 200 victims' final moments were from handwritten notes they threw out of the trucks taking them to the execution site. One of the pictures shows the men marching through a field. Others show them standing against a wall at the shooting range. The mo...
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