![The [Greek] European Tragedy](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWKI5s90SFm1wWTk6bs4p7CgslaC2SnYPsrZhb-B-smOufNNCSxCvpBLI9hOB-LsXZjir_PNmEiMk2-E62F3xkg96IoC6QFAaZAnPRTVH340IN9WBRmWJqPkjWlgyRj3zpALp7h6hvA58/s920/GkBack_new.jpg)
By Harriet Alexander, Distomo 6:00PM GMT 11 Feb 2012
The German flag was burnt in Athens last week as fury over further austerity measures boiled over. Harriet Alexander travelled to a town that bears the scars of hatred between nations, and found a town both angry at German demands and frightened for the future.
A protester burns a flag of Germany as others clash with riot police as they try to invade the Greek Parliament, during a general strike protest in Athens. The German flag was burnt in Athens last week as fury over further austerity measures boiled over Photo: EPA/ORESTIS PANAGIOTOU
Eleftherios Basdekis has lived his entire life beneath a German cloud.
As a boy he escaped from a Nazi massacre in his village, running for three days barefoot through the Greek countryside to flee the hellish scenes. As a businessman, he bought German-made Mercedes trucks, becoming heavily indebted in the process. And as a pensioner, looking back on 83 years spent in this mountainous pocket of central Greece, he finds himself scarcely able to survive on his meagre pension – with German-led EU politicians demanding yet more austerity.
"Once again, Germany is controlling everything for us," said Mr Basdekis.
"They are pushing us around, and I just don't trust them. They change what they say all the time.
"Greece will pay its debts back, if you let us. But not with a German knife held to our throats."
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Yet last week the knife was once again brandished at the ailing Greek government by its EU paymasters. Riots erupted in Athens on Friday, with furious Greeks hurling petrol bombs at the police as the harsh austerity package was unveiled. Unions also began a 48-hour strike, with politicians expected on Sunday to vote on the cuts and reforms.
Eurozone ministers say MPs must approve it before Greece receives €130bn (£109bn) in bailout funds. They are also demanding further budget cuts of €325m before Wednesday's meeting of the Eurogroup, when Brussels is due to decide whether to give Greece the money it desperately needs.
The politicians in Athens had little choice. Unemployment figures released last week showed that the number out of work had risen to 20.9 per cent, while Greece's manufacturing output fell by 15.5 per cent in the year leading up December. Behind closed doors EU officials were debating suggestions that Greece exit the eurozone and drawing up plans for an "orderly default".
The government, desperate to starve off bankruptcy and guarantee the next tranche of rescue funds, agreed after much wringing of hands to a cut in the minimum wage of 22 per cent; the sacking of 150,000 public sector workers within the year, and the slashing of pensions.
And Mr Basdekis, with his pension of €400 a month, does not know how he will survive.
"All my life, I have been proud to work and support myself. And now that has been taken away from me," he said. "I liked the feeling of being able to buy something with my own money. I worked hard and looked after my home. But that has gone. They have taken away my pride."
Gazing sadly out across the snowy central square, flanked by steep mountains, Mr Basdekis pointed to the yard where his five 32-ton Mercedes trucks, for each of which he paid €120,000 when new, stood idle. A change in the law demanded by the EU – ironically designed to stimulate the sector and open it up to competition – drove him out of business.
He had paid €90,000 per licence for his trucks – an artificially high price, but a result of the difficulty of obtaining the limited-issue documents.
Then, when the industry was liberalised, his competitors obtained cheap permits and drove him out of business, leaving him still to pay for his fifth lorry. He was forced to fire his four drivers, and closed the family business that supported his two sons, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. He would do well to get €100,000 for selling all five lorries together, a fraction of what he originally paid.
Even more galling for the sprightly pensioner is the fact that he cannot afford to care for his wife, who has Alzheimers and needs 24-hour nursing.
"I have been in love with her from the age of 15," he said, tears brimming in his eyes. "She always looked after me. And now I cannot look after her." He takes a deep breath, pulling his neatly-pressed tweed suit tighter around his chest.
"But we have lived through worse, of course. I am just very worried for my grandchildren. What will all this mean for them?"
Certainly the 4,000 inhabitants of Distomo, 100 miles north west of Athens, are more aware than most of the legacy of German demands – albeit in a horrific context, far beyond the suffering of any economic policies.
The town was the site of one of the worst atrocities committed by the Nazis against civilians in Greece, with 218 people of its then 500 residents killed by the SS on a single day in June 1944, in savage reprisal for partisan guerrilla attacks on German forces.
Mr Basdekis, who was 14 at the time, remembers that day "more vividly than my lunch yesterday", he said.
"I was in my family home upstairs when the Nazi soldier came.
"He rolled up his sleeves and started shooting. Our dog was barking, so he shot him, and then set the house on fire as we hid upstairs."
His uncle suggested they all go back down "to be shot rather than burn alive". But instead they managed to scramble out of the windows and flee, with a sniper pursuing the young Mr Basdekis as he ran without shoes through the surrounding woodland.
Three days after the massacre he returned to the devastated village – to discover that, miraculously, his parents and all six siblings were among those who had managed to escape.
Survivors and their families are still battling for compensation, although only two weeks ago the UN's highest court ruled that Germany was not liable, given the present-day state's legal immunity for actions committed by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
Lawyers for the 300 claimants told The Sunday Telegraph that they will fight on, saying that they have never been properly compensated by Germany, but most experts believe that they have few avenues left to try.
Less than three months after the massacre, Mr Basdekis's father Anastasios, 53, was murdered by guerrillas in the mountains, leaving Mr Basdekis to battle – literally and metaphorically – for his family's survival.
"What upsets me most is that everything we fought for – freedom, peace among different countries, a dream of being united – is all being torn apart again," he said.
"We should be working with our European brothers, and supporting each other. I don't have anything against German people, but I dislike what their government is still doing to us. I can't believe it has got as bad as this."
Younger Greeks are beginning to share his anger. Last week in Athens the German flag was burnt as anger boiled over at yet more austerity measures – enforced, in their eyes, by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.
"I hate Germany," said Efi Sfountouri, 42, who had travelled from Athens to visit her hometown of Distomo - now grown to 4,000 inhabitants - with her two daughters. Her eyes flashing with anger, she declared in heavily-accented English that Angela Merkel was "a monster".
"If there was a vote tomorrow, I would be the first in line to veto Germany sending an observer here," she said. "They killed Distomo; they stole our gold; they belittled Greece."
Her daughter Cathy Gripogianni, 21, a journalism student, was more diplomatic – saying she didn't hate German people, but admitting that she still resented their economic hold over her country.
"For my generation it is a disaster. I have been thinking seriously about following my cousin and moving to Belgium," she said.
Nikos Papatriantafyllou, 45, a bar owner, said: "Five years ago, no one had any problem with Germany. But now people are getting upset. The Germans say we are lazy, which is not fair. One Greek student in Munich couldn't find anyone to rent him a flat, despite his parents having money – just because he was Greek."
In his bar, he said, the atmosphere is glum. "People still come in for a coffee. But they just don't enjoy it. Everyone is so worried.
"Our generation resents Germany for different reasons to our grandparents. But the old sentiment is resurfacing."
The mayor of the town, Ioannis Patsantaras, condemned those who burnt the German flag, describing them as "isolated extremists". But he admitted that the people were angry.
"It is the culmination of 30 years of mismanagement by our government," he said. "Politicians were acting for personal or political gain, rather than in the interests of the people. And now we are a sick people, who must survive the operation ahead of us."
A fighter pilot for 38 years, Mr Patsantaras rose to become the chief of Greece's tactical air force. Glass paperweights etched with fighter planes sit on his desk; a photo of him in aviator sunglasses and a bomber jacket sit beside his computer. But he says his time in the forces, meeting RAF pilots and being based in Belgium with Nato, taught him the importance of working for a united Europe.
"The very word 'Europe' is derived from Greek. Ancient Greece was made of rival city states who learnt to work together, so it is in our history and in our blood," he said.
But surely that all fell apart in bitter wars?
"And then something bigger and better was born!" he said, laughing.
"Times are tough, that is certain. But Greece is an ancient land. We have endured a lot. And ultimately, a strong and united Europe is the best thing for everyone."