Photographs showing the last moments of men executed by the Nazis acquired by Greece after appearing on eBay

Greece has acquired a trove of World War II photographs showing the final moments of 200 men executed by German soldiers following the assassination of a Nazi general, the culture minister said Saturday.

The collection includes 262 photographs, 16 documents and four contemporary banknotes. The photographs are believed to have been taken by a German soldier who also served in Belgium and France.

“The transfer of ownership of the photographic collection… has been completed,” Lina Mendoni said in a statement.

The ministry had previously said they showed “the last moments” of 200 communists executed at an Athens shooting range on May 1, 1944.

Twelve of the photographs appeared on Crain’s Militaria eBay site earlier this month before being removed.

They had provoked strong emotions in Greece, especially among the relatives of the victims.

Ministry officials then traveled to Belgium to meet with the collector who put them up for sale and verify their authenticity.

Some of the images had received bids worth more than $2,000 before Belgian collector Tim de Craen withdrew them, France 24 reported.

“I fully understand that these photographs are of a particularly sensitive historical nature,” he told Greek newspaper I Kathimerini.

The executions followed the murder of a German general and his staff by communist guerrillas a few days earlier.

Greece was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944.

Most of the executed men had been arrested years earlier during anti-communist raids by Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas’s police.

Until now, the only testimony of the final moments of the 200 victims were the handwritten notes they threw from the trucks that took them to the execution site.

One of the images shows the men marching through a field. Others show them standing against a wall at the shooting range.

The most dramatic photograph shows several of them staring defiantly at the camera. Two of them seem to be singing.

“The photographs surprised me,” Polymeris Voglis, a university professor of social history in Greece, told France 24. “Although the execution of 200 resistance fighters is a well-known historical event, until now there has been no photographic evidence of it.”

“Some of the photographs show the men’s faces, reflecting their determination as they walk proudly toward the firing squad,” Voglis told the outlet.