Distomo massacre The Distomo massacre ( ; ) was a Nazi war crime perpetrated by members of the Waffen - SS in the village of Distomo , Greece , during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II . The Massacre . On June 10 , 1944 , for over two hours , Waffen - SS troops of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division under the command of SS - Hauptsturmführer Fritz Lautenbach went door to door and massacred Greek civilians as part of a ' retaliation measure ' for a partisan attack upon the unit . A total of 214 men , women and children were killed in Distomo , a small village near Delphi . According to survivors , SS forces " bayonet ed babies in their cribs , stabbed pregnant women , and beheaded the village priest . " Following the massacre , a Secret Field Police agent accompanying the German forces informed the authorities that , contrary to Lautenbach ' s official report , the German troops had come under attack several miles from Distomo and had not been fired upon " with mortars , machine - guns and rifles from the direction of Distomo " . An inquiry was convened . Lautenbach admitted that he had gone beyond standing orders , but the tribunal found in his favour , holding that he had been motivated , not by negligence or ignorance , but by a sense of responsibility towards his men . Legal Proceedings . Four relatives of victims brought legal proceedings against the German government to court in Livadeia , Greece , demanding reparations . On October 30 , 1997 , the court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs and awarded damages of 28 million Euros . Eventually in May 2000 , the Areopag , the Greek High court , confirmed this ruling . The judgment , however , could not be enforced in Greece because , as necessary under Greek law , the execution of a judgment against a sovereign State is subject to the prior consent of the Minister of Justice , which was not given . The plaintiffs brought the case to court in Germany , demanding the aforementioned damages be paid to them . The claim was rejected at all levels of German court , citing the " 1961 bilateral agreement concerning enforcement and recognition of judgments " between Germany and Greece , and " Section 328 of the German Code of Civil Procedure " . Both required that Greece have jurisdiction , which it does not as the actions in question were sovereign acts by a state . According to the fundamental principles of international law , each country is immune from another state ' s jurisdiction . In November 2008 , an Italian court ruled that the plaintiffs could take German property in Italy as compensation that was awarded by the Greek courts . The plaintiffs were awarded a villa in Menaggio , near Lake Como , which is owned by a German state nonprofit organization , as part of the restitution . In December 2008 , the German government has filed a claim at the International Court of Justice in Den Haag . The aim being to establish that this kind of lawsuit does not fall under the competence of the Italian courts , that their rulings constitute an infringement of international law and that they constitute an infringement of Germany ' sovereignty rights . In January 2011 , the Prime Minister of Greece , George Papandreou , announced that the Greek Government will be represented at the International Court of Justice in relation to the claim for reparations by relatives of victims . In its 2012 final judgment , the court ruled that Italy had violated Germany ' s state immunity , and directed that the judgment by the Italian courts be retracted . In film . " A Song for Argyris " is a 2006 documentary film that details the life story of Argyris Sfountouris , a survivor of the massacre .