For eighty-two years, the execution of the “200 of Kaisariani” lived in Greece as a story carried by witnesses, poems, and names carved on stone, but never in images.
On May 1, 1944, two hundred political prisoners—mostly communists and resistance fighters—were taken from the Haidari camp to the shooting range in the Athens suburb of Kaisariani and executed by a German firing squad in reprisal for a partisan ambush in the Peloponnese.
The event became one of the central symbols of the Greek Resistance: a Labour Day turned into a mass sacrifice, with the men allegedly singing as they were driven to their deaths, refusing to bow their heads to the occupier.
Yet for generations, the moment itself—the faces, the posture, the walk toward the wall—remained unseen, imagined only through words and silence.
An Ebay Listing That Shook A Nation
All that changed in mid‑February 2026, when a small auction listing appeared on eBay, posted by a Belgian seller dealing in Second World War memorabilia.
The lot consisted of a series of previously unknown photographs attributed to a German officer, believed to show the last journey of Greek prisoners being led to their execution at the Kaisariani shooting range on May 1, 1944.
According to the auction description and subsequent Greek reporting, the images came from an album connected to German lieutenant Hermann Hoyer, who served in a fortress battalion based in Malakasa during the occupation.
Starting at prices as low as €36.50 per print, bids reportedly drove the value of individual photographs as high as around €2,100 once Greek media and collectors realized what they might depict.
The listing might have passed largely unnoticed had it not been spotted and reposted by the Facebook page “Greece at WWII Archives,” a small but dedicated community focused on wartime documentation.
Within hours of the page publishing the photographs online, Greek and international outlets picked up the story, transforming a niche auction into a national reckoning with history, memory, and the commercialization of atrocity.
The Men In The Frame
The photographs do not show the bullets striking or bodies collapsing, but something in some ways more intimate and harrowing: the walk toward the place where that will happen.
Grainy black‑and‑white images, some later colorised with modern tools for media presentation, appear to capture groups of men in jackets and shirts, guarded by German soldiers, stepping down from trucks or advancing in small columns toward the Kaisariani range.
In one widely shared image, a tall man in a white shirt stands on the right side of a column of prisoners entering the shooting range, his face turned just enough for the camera to catch his expression.
His family has now identified him as Vasilis N. Papadimas, an engineer from Pylos and brother of publisher Dimitris Papadimas, who was arrested by Italian authorities in 1941 and later handed over to the Germans.
Greek reports indicate that at least one person has been officially recognized by relatives, while party and archival sources speak of efforts to match other faces with known victims of the Kaisariani execution.
Some Greek coverage cites Communist Party sources suggesting that party members such as Thrasyvoulos Kalafatakis and Dimitris Papadopoulos may be among those tentatively identified, though full scholarly verification remains in progress.
The effect on viewers has been described in Greek commentary as “a chill of emotion”: not anonymous martyrs, but men with lines on their faces, walking under a pale Attic sky, aware of their fate yet standing upright.
For relatives, historians, and ordinary citizens, these images offer an unbearably human counterpoint to the stark statistics of occupation‑era massacres.
Between Evidence And Uncertainty
Historians in Greece have reacted with both excitement and caution.
The execution of the 200 in Kaisariani is one of the best‑documented Nazi reprisals in Greece in terms of written sources and testimonies, but until now no photographs of the event were believed to exist.
Specialists quoted in Greek media stress that, if proven authentic, the photographs would constitute the only known visual documentation of the Kaisariani execution, a “crack in time” that allows society to gaze into one of the darkest moments of the German occupation.
At the same time, they emphasize that full authentication requires rigorous analysis—technical examination of negatives or prints, cross‑checking uniforms and locations, and, crucially, positive identification of individuals by relatives or archival comparisons.
One historian cited in the Greek press said the images appear “99% authentic” based on contextual and visual clues, while adding that responsible scholarship cannot rely on impressions alone.
The debate extends to the way the photos are presented: some versions circulated to the public have been artificially colorized with artificial‑intelligence tools, a choice that, while intended to bring history “closer,” risks blurring the line between raw document and artistic interpretation.
Outrage Over An Auction Of Martyrdom
Beyond questions of authenticity, the manner in which the photographs surfaced has outraged many Greeks.
For them, images of men walking to their deaths are not “collectibles,” but sacred relics of a national trauma.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) called the photographs historical documents of “exceptional value” and condemned their sale as commercial items, demanding that they be acquired by the Greek state and preserved in public archives and museums.
Former prime minister Alexis Tsipras addressed a letter to the Speaker of Parliament urging the legislature to intervene and purchase the collection on behalf of the people, arguing that these images form part of Greece’s national historical record.
Many commentators linked the auction to broader unresolved issues, from Germany’s moral and financial responsibility for wartime atrocities to the way Europe still negotiates the legacy of Nazism.
Opinion pieces in Greek outlets described the sale as a “marketplace of death,” questioning how far free trade in historical materials can go before it violates the dignity of victims and survivors.
The State Moves To Claim Its Dead
The Greek Ministry of Culture quickly announced that it would seek to secure the photographs once their authenticity and provenance are fully established, framing them not merely as items of property but as elements of the country’s cultural heritage.
Officials have indicated that the matter will be examined by competent advisory bodies—such as central councils responsible for cultural property—to determine how the images can be acquired, protected, and made accessible to the public.
Faced with mounting public pressure and international scrutiny, the Belgian seller withdrew the photos from the eBay auction, saying he was “deeply shocked” by the emotional reaction in Greece and by the vandalism that followed at the Kaisariani memorial.
He stated that he remains open to “constructive dialogue” with Greek authorities over the future of the material, while noting that numerous private collectors had expressed interest in purchasing the images.
For the families of the executed and for local officials, however, the question is no longer whether the photographs will sell, but whether they will be anchored forever in public institutions that recognize their meaning.
A Scarred Monument, A Stubborn Memory
Within hours of the photographs going viral, unknown perpetrators vandalized the memorial at the Kaisariani shooting range, damaging a marble plaque that recounts the events of May 1, 1944.
The attack, condemned across the political spectrum, was seen by many as a grim reminder that even as Greece mourns its dead, the politics of memory and denial remain fierce.
The municipality of Kaisariani pledged to repair the damage immediately, declaring that “historical memory will not be erased, no matter how much it bothers some people,” and noting that the newly surfaced photographs had stirred “a profound emotional response for the heroic, valiant stance of the 200 communist heroes who stood up against the firing squad.”
Images from the site now show the bullet‑marked wall standing behind barriers, as if the city were once again placing guards around its martyrs.
Local commemorations have long turned the rifle range into a place of pilgrimage, especially on May Day, when trade unions, left‑wing parties, and families of the executed gather to lay wreaths and read out names.
The resurfacing of the photographs seems destined to add a new ritual: not only walking up to the wall, but seeing the faces that walked there once before.
The Road From Molaoi To Kaisariani
To understand why these images cut so deeply into Greek public life, it is necessary to recall the chain of events that brought those 200 men to the firing line.
On April 27, 1944, partisans of ELAS ambushed a German convoy near Molaoi in Laconia, killing Major General Franz Krech and three other officers and wounding several soldiers.
The German occupation authorities responded with a proclamation promising harsh reprisals and singling out 200 communist prisoners for execution, along with threats of further killings in the Peloponnese.
Most of the condemned were political prisoners from Akronafplia and exiles from Anafi, who had already suffered years of incarceration under the Metaxas dictatorship before being handed over to the Nazis after the occupation.
Testimonies preserved in Greek archives describe the final night in Haidari: the reading of the names, the farewell songs, the men writing last notes and tossing them from the trucks as they were driven toward Kaisariani at dawn.
Now, for the first time, some of those testimonies may have acquired a visual counterpart—truckloads of men, jackets buttoned, faces set, moving through a city that knew and did not know what was happening.
When History Looks Back
The emergence of the Kaisariani photographs has reopened fundamental questions about how societies remember war and resistance.
Greek and international commentators note that the images appear at a time when Europe is again debating the meaning of antifascism, occupation, and collaboration, and when Greece itself is confronting new geopolitical tensions and domestic divisions.
For many on the Greek Left, the photos reaffirm the story they grew up with: that the 200 walked to their deaths with songs on their lips and without renouncing their beliefs, a narrative of steadfastness that continues to inspire.[
For others, the images are a stark reminder that the cost of “history” is borne by individual bodies and families, by jackets returned in silence and graves that for years bore names guessed rather than known.
What unites most reactions, however, is a sense of duty toward the men captured on those fragile prints.
They were prisoners, communists, workers, peasants, intellectuals—sons, brothers, husbands—who found themselves at the intersection of occupation policy and resistance strategy, and who chose, or were forced, to face death in a way that later generations would call heroic.
From Auction Lot To Public Trust
The future of the photographs is still being negotiated.
The Belgian seller has paused the auction and indicated a willingness to discuss the material with Greek authorities, while the Greek state has formally declared its intention to obtain and preserve the collection.
If and when the photos enter a public archive or museum, they will not simply be catalogued as “visual evidence of a Nazi war crime.”
They will also be faces that Greek visitors can meet eye to eye: a tall man in a white shirt, a line of comrades descending from a truck, a group pausing for a moment on the gravel before the wall.
For eighty‑two years, the 200 of Kaisariani looked out at Greece only through words, slogans, and carved names.
Now, for the first time, Greece can look back at them—and in doing so is asked to decide not only how to honour their sacrifice, but how to protect the traces they left behind from ever again becoming the property of anyone but the people in whose name they died.
Photos: Tvxs