The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) has called for the sacking of an advisor to the country's deputy interior minister. Earlier this week it had emerged that Ioannis Kotoulas, who works for Alternate Minister Charalambos Athanasiou of the New Democracy party, has repeatedly justified the crimes committed by the Nazis in his books and belittled the atrocities that were committed under the German occupation of Greece in World War II.
The Greek newspaper 'Avgi'on Tuesday brought to light a book written by Kotoulas called “The Rise of the Third Reich” in which he refers to Nazism as “a great revolution,” as well as a magazine article in which he refers to concentration camps as “a normal and established practice of all warring sides.” Kotoulas was transferred in September 2012 to work for Athanasiou, to whom he serves as an adviser on the citizenship law.
The KIS expressed indignation at the fact that Kotoulas is employed by Athanasiou's office. The official's revisionist texts about Hitler and his "shameless justification of the Nazi concentration camps and of the German bombardments of Greek cities" during the war were "an insult to the memory of the victims of the German occupation and of the Holocaust," the KIS statement said.
The organization emphasized that "at a time when the struggle against neo-Nazism is also a struggle for democracy itself, revisionists of the Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust must not have occupy any position in the service of the Greek state."
