Of Dimitris Stavropoulou
The name of Pericles Nikolaidis still causes shivers in the old Thessalonians, who lived through the horror of the Occupation.
A recently published book reveals his hitherto unknown action, against not only the Jews but also the other inhabitants of the city.
Nikolaidis' spy network was not only anti-communist.
His targets were British fugitives and their spy networks, the city's Jewish properties, money in every form.
The key members of the spies were of course avowed fascists and Nazis, with "signs" in organizations such as the infamous EEE (National Union of Greece).
Nikolaidis becomes a factor, undertakes the fortification works of the Germans, demolishes the Jewish neighborhoods of Hirsch and 151 and sells the building materials with the much-discussed Max Merten at his side.
HE EVEN KILLED GERMANS
The men of Nikolaidis' personal guard never hesitate for anything, with the identity of the German counterintelligence in their pocket they even murder... German soldiers. In the middle of the occupation and with hunger reaping, "Fantomas" sets up a chain of casinos ("Orea Naoussa", "Aegeon", "Neon Phaleron", "Monte Carlo", "Panellinio", "Femina") in Thessaloniki and gambling clubs even Athens.
Self-financed and deadly efficient, handing out money to German officials as well, he entered into the operational competition of the German secret services that almost cost him.
Armed with money, bribery, fraud, relationships with fatal women of the time such as the singer Tada Valits and his orgy parties, the casinos were promoted by the Nazi newspaper "New Europe" as "centers of culture"!
Even during the German retreat, Nikolaidis was in a network preparing "armed guerrillas", since they believed that their escape would be temporary and they would return.
He himself eventually disappeared into the ashes of defeated Germany, killed or changed his identity and continued his life with the profits he had made.
Especially during the winter of 1941-1942 when the conquerors, seizing the wealth of the country, had seized all the food stocks from the state warehouses with the consequence that there was a famine, many were forced to sell their possessions, to literally secure " a bite of bread".
The humanitarian crisis of that horrible winter decimated mainly the big urban centers.
The crisis caused by the German occupation had taken on devastating proportions.
On the one hand, the Nazis looted agricultural production and on the other hand, they turned a blind eye to the crimes of their predatory collaborators, the mavragorites, who exchanged a tin of oil for expensive single-family homes in the center of Athens and Thessaloniki.
It is estimated that under this regime of unbearable pressure, 400 thousand citizens sold part or all of their property.
According to the data of the Thessaloniki Registry, 3.090 people died of starvation that winter, i.e. 1,5 of the total population of the city, which at that time amounted to 226.147 inhabitants.
NIKOLAIDES AND THE "Rich People"
Faced with the hunger and desperation of those who had families to feed, especially small children, the buying and selling of real estate began to take on terrifying proportions. Thousands of poor subsistence farmers were then forced to sell their small holdings for a pittance.
The sales had reached such proportions that even the government of Cairo took a stand, proclaiming in a radio broadcast that it considers all real estate transfers invalid.
According to the Serre lawyer Papantoniou, who was director of the Thessaloniki Mortgage Office at that time, the number of contracts for sales of this kind during the three years of the Occupation exceeded 7.000 in the area of the Thessaloniki Magistrate's Court alone.
Who were the buyers?
As he said in an interview in the first months after the release:
"They were the people of the time.
Those who had the ability, those who were swimming in the many millions of inexhaustible wealth of the goods of the happiness of gold.
Contractors, big and small.
Collaborators of the conquerors. Magalomavragorites.
Generally insatiable leeches, who did not mean to stop, who showed no inclination to be moved in the face of the endless drama of the people."
GREED WITH NAMES AND NUMBERS
The greed of those who had decided, using the backs of the conquerors, to acquire, by stepping "on dead bodies" large immovable properties, had reached its peak.
According to the indicative data published in the first months after the liberation by the Thessaloniki newspaper "Proini Ora", a machinist had bought 14 properties, an undershirt manufacturer had thus acquired 20 properties and a small grocer, Savvas Tryf. 13 properties. While typical was the case of a coffee maker, who, despite the fact that coffee had disappeared during the Occupation, he managed to buy six properties this year.
And of course, all of them, having the favor of the conquerors.
Like the editor of the German-funded pro-Nazi newspaper Nea Evropia Georgios Pollatos who had acquired five properties during the Occupation:
Three houses on 18-5-1942, 1-9-1942 and 26-2-1943, as well as a large farm on 7-5-1942 and a plot of land on 17-9-1942.
A few months after the liberation, the compulsory law A.N. was issued during the government of N. Plastiras. 182/45,
"On special taxation of those who got rich during the war period, on the basis of which the "those who got rich during the Occupation" were obliged to pay the taxes that would be set.
The punishment they faced was severe, as it provided for displacement, imprisonment and confiscation of all or part of their property.
Based on this law, the commission that had been set up in Thessaloniki, began to call various people, mainly people who had collaborated with the Nazis, asking them to pay sums of money to the state, as a tax for the properties they formed during the Occupation.
In the first list made public by the commission in July 1945, well-known names of dossiness and collaboration with the Hitlerites appeared, such as casino owners and Gestapo agents, Pericles (Peri) Nikolaidis and Laskaris Papanaum who were asked to pay 150.000.000 each .1000.000.000 drachmas each, of the partner of the German large-scale public works contractor Ioannis Müller (25.000.000 drachmas), of the columnist journalists of New Europe Dimitrios Tsurkas and Alexandros Orologas who had to pay the state XNUMX drachmas
YOURS
In the last months of 1946, the cases of a significant number of tax accountants, among which there were also cases of large companies, were heard in the Special Tax Court of Thessaloniki.
These trials for financial collaboration with the occupiers, from 20 in 1945, had reached the number of 59 in 1946.
The trial of two contractors who had built in April 1943 the fence of the Baron Hirsch camp, where all the Jews of Thessaloniki were to be transferred before being sent to be exterminated in the Hitler's crematoria, was typical.
The commission for this particular project, according to the prosecution witnesses, was 20%, while they also built a barracks in Lagada for the needs of the German army for a flat fee.
The one contractor was sentenced to twelve years in prison and confiscation of half of his property.
A little earlier, one of the bigots of Thessaloniki, Pavlos Dinas, had been tried in absentia, who had set up a company of technical works, from the execution of which he earned huge sums, according to the prosecution witnesses.
The commissioning of the projects, in the area of Thessaloniki and Ioannina, was done by the Germans in the form of a reward for Dina's contribution to the Gestapo project, given that the accused not only had financial dealings with the Occupation Authorities, but was also included in the donors of the German services.
In the end the Court imposed the ultimate punishment on him, finding him guilty because he took advantage of economic cooperation with the enemy, surrendered Greek citizens and committed acts of violence after being equipped by the Germans.
The cobwebbed file of the looting of Jewish property, as well as of the wealthy under occupation, must finally be opened at some point.
Thessaloniki, the whole of Greece, owes it to the tens of thousands of our Jewish compatriots, who not only suffered the torments of hell and most of them were killed in the crematoriums of the Nazi beast, but they also saw, powerless to react, that their lives were plundered.
In November 2014, the then mayor of Thessaloniki, Yiannis Boutaris, at the inauguration of the monument for the Jewish cemetery that was razed in 1942, said:
"The city was unreasonably slow to break its unjust and guilty silence, but now it can say it is ashamed of this attitude."
SOURCE: militaire.gr, 2.8.2022