Germany’s President asks for ‘forgiveness’ during visit to Cretan village razed by Nazis

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday sought “forgiveness” for crimes committed by the Third Reich in Greece during a visit to a Cretan village destroyed by Nazi forces.

“Today I would like to ask forgiveness on behalf of Germany,” said the head of state in Greek, delivering an emotional address at Kandanos, a village he described as “a place of German shame.”

“I ask forgiveness from you, the survivors and descendants, for the heinous crimes that the Germans committed here,” he continued in German.

Kandanos was obliterated, with around 180 lives lost, as its residents had resisted during the Battle of Crete—a valiant effort by Allied forces to repel the Nazi airborne invasion in May 1941.

Steinmeier, the first German head of state to visit Crete, was greeted by massacre survivors and a crowd, some of whom called out slogans over Berlin’s continued refusal to provide wartime reparations. There were shouts of “justice” and “the fight continues.”

“It is a difficult journey to come to this place as German president,” Steinmeier acknowledged. “You have offered us the hand of reconciliation, and I am deeply grateful to you.”

The Nazi occupation of Greece from 1941 to 1944 was among Europe’s bloodiest, marked by widespread famine and the extermination of approximately 90 percent of the Greek Jewish community.

Steinmeier also addressed the fact that Nazi war criminal Kurt Student, responsible for the devastation of Kandanos, was never prosecuted for his crimes in Greece after the war.

This failure, he said, was another “shameful chapter,” adding, “I ask your forgiveness for the fact that my country delayed for decades in punishing these crimes.”

Before visiting Crete, the German president reiterated Germany’s position on wartime reparations, stating during discussions with Greek leaders in Athens on Wednesday that Germany viewed the matter as “closed under international law.”

However, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis argued that the issue of reparations remains “still very much alive.”

“We hope that at some point we will resolve them,” Mitsotakis stated.