Germany returned the watch of a Greek prisoner of war from the Nazi era. The watch was returned to his granddaughter after 80 years. This was done through the Arolsen Archives international center.
According to the Deutsche Welle report, the prisoner was Vasilios Kontogeorgiou, a prosecutor in the city of Volos who was arrested by the Nazi SS on May 25, 1944 only months before the German occupation army left Greece.
Kontogeorgiou was taken along with three of his companions in the Greek Resistance and was transferred as a political prisoner to the Neuengamme concentration camp. He was then moved to Salzgitter-Battenstedt and eventually Ravensbruck. Kontogeorgiou was the only survivor of the four Greeks who were displaced.
After the war, Kontogeorgiou returned to Greece, worked in a bank, raised a family, and passed away in Larissa in 1997. Eighty years later, the watch was returned to the Greek war prisoner’s granddaughter, Angeliki Kontegeorgiou.
The Arolsen Archives
“Found – Vasilios Kontegeorgiou” reads a poster of the Arolsen Archives showing an old watch, the one that the Greek prisoner had lost in the concentration camp in Germany.
The Arolsen Archives, the International Center on Nazi Persecution, located in Bad Arolsen, Germany is the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of the National Socialism regime. The center’s central task is to search for missing persons and locate belongings of prisoners found in concentration camps so as to return them to their owners. They receive inquiries of about 20,000 victims of Nazi persecution every year.
Another part of the Arolsen Archives work is in the fields of research and education. It is important to inform today’s society about crimes perpetrated by the Nazis 80 years ago. Remembrance is obligatory if we are to come to terms with the Nazi period crimes, political persecution, and racism.
The center manages documents and discoveries of concentration and forced labor camps from the National Socialist period, documenting crimes, identifying victims, and locating relatives of Holocaust victims or descendants of political prisoners and providing them with belongings found in these martyred places.
It also carries out extensive research for survivors and relatives. Furthermore, it provides information for people and is involved in education and research as well as organizing exhibitions, lectures, and other events.
The roots of the Arolsen Archives can be found in 1946 and the International Refugee Organization (IRO), established to deal with the massive refugee problem generated by World War II. In 1947, the name was changed to International Tracing Service (ITS). In 1954, when the status of occupation of Germany was repealed, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took over the administration of the ITS. In 1990, Germany took over the funding of ITS, and, as of November 28, 2007, the ITS archives were opened to public access.
The Arolsen Archives center is governed by an International Commission with representatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The Commission provides the guidelines for the work to be carried out by the ITS and monitors these in the interests of the former victims of persecution.
Germany and the occupation of Greece
Nazi Germany invaded Greece in April 1941, and the occupying troops departed on October 12, 1944. The Nazi occupation left the country and the Greek psyche with deep wounds , as numerous atrocities were committed.
The Arolsen Archives is an institution that aims to alleviate the pain of Nazi crimes to the extent possible. In the case of the Kontogeorgiou family, the watch that Vasilios lost in the concentration camp was found. A volunteer and historical researcher of the camp, Loukas Lymberopoulos of Hamburg, worked together with a relative of another victim, Vasso Panagou. Together, they found traces of the Kontogeorgiou family, specifically to Vasilios’ granddaughter, Angeliki, who lives in Germany in Berlin.
“It’s unbelievable. I can’t describe the feeling. After 80 years I have taken in my hands an object of a person very close to me, which was confiscated by the Nazis when he arrived in a German concentration camp,” Angeliki Kontogeorgiou told DW.
Archaeologist Stelios Lymberouloulos, the brother of Loukas Lymberopoulos, monitored the procedure of the recovery of the old watch and the handing over to Angeliki Kontogeorgiou.
“The Arolsen Archives have many items from the Neuengamme concentration camp of Greek prisoners,” Stelios Lymberopoulos told DW. “The Archives told my brother, who worked there, that they had wedding rings, chains, pocket watches, wristwatches of prisoners and asked if anyone could intercede to get them. Loukas Lymberopoulos returned to Greece and wrote in several local newspapers that the belongings of certain prisoners of the war are in Germany and they are looking for their owners, that is, the descendants of their owners.”
A moving ceremony for the return of the watch of the Greek prisoner of war
Kontogeorgiou’s watch was finally handed over to the granddaughter of the Nazi prisoner in a moving ceremony at the Greek Embassy in Berlin. This was at the initiative of Georgios Polydorakis from the Historical and Diplomatic Office of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with Ambassador Mara Marinaki.
Only days before, Greece assumed the presidency of the International Committee of the Arolsen Archives. This was “an important juncture, for democracy, freedom and also Greek-German relations,” as the Chargé d’ Affaires of the Embassy of Greece in Berlin, Panagiota Konstantinopoulou, emphasized in her greeting.
Director of the Arolsen Archives, Florian Azoulay, told DW:
“This is the first time that we have delivered an object of a prisoner to his family from Greece. In this way we are honoring the memory of a man who, being young at the time, was ready to sacrifice his life for freedom, to fight for Greece against the Nazis. He returned to Greece but his fellow fighters from the Resistance all died. In this way we remember today that freedom has a price, which our ancestors, our grandparents…were willing to pay.”
In addition to the Kontogeorgiou watch, the Arolsen Archives are looking for the descendants of the owners of at least six other folders containing personal belongings of Greek war prisoners of the Nazis. One can read their names on posters of the Archives: Dimitrios Vatiadis, Evangelos Kerasotis, Theofilos Simonidis, Georgios Sagmatopoulos, Christos Taktikos, Nikolaos Fassouliotis. The aim of the Archives is to locate all six families within 2024.