A Greek Jewish leader is requesting €20 million ($22 million) in wartime reparations from Germany to fund the building of a Holocaust memorial.
David Saltiel, the head of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, said the requested funds were to compensate for Greek Jews being forced to pay for their own forced train deportation to the death camps.
Nearly 58,500 Jews, were deported from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps during World War II, where more than 50,000 of them were murdered.
“We think it’s a big opportunity that if the German government decides they want to help, it would be a very good coincidence that this money goes for this purpose,” Saltiel told 'Newsweek'.
Saltiel said that an earlier application in the 1990s for reparations for the compulsory train fares was rejected.
The call by the Jewish leader comes as the Greek government is also asking Berlin to pay reparations and damages for massacres during the German occupation of northern Greece and a war-time loan that was never repaid by Germany.
This week, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin in an attempt to clear air between the countries. Merkel and Tsipras spoke for more than four hours over dinner on Monday in what the German chancellor's spokesman said was a "good and constructive atmosphere".
Tsipras visited the Holocaust memorial in Berlin on Tuesday. His leftist government has repeatedly demanded reparation payments from Germany for the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II, which Berlin has repeatedly rejected.
In a news conference with Merkel on Monday, Tsipras said Athens' call for reparations from Germany was a "moral issue and not a material one".
While war reparations have been a staple demand of previous Greek governments, Tsipras’ government has made the issue a central part of the bailout negotiations with Germany. The Germans have dismissed such demands, saying compensation issues were settled decades ago in post-war accords.
