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Today, in the court of Rethymno on the island of Crete, the lawsuit began against the German history professor, Heinz Richter. The charges against him were brought up under the law against racism, adopted last year, and relate to parts of his book, The Battle For Crete. In the book, Richter argues that "ruthless and barbaric practices were not only used by the invading troops but also by the Cretans who rebelled against them." According to the prosecutor in Rethymno, expressions such as this one constitute a "denial of defamatory nature of the Nazi crimes committed against the Cretan people."

The case has triggered a series of responses on the island, where passions were additionally fanned by the fact that even MPs are preparing to testify in favour of the prosecution. On the other side, members of the Greek academic community came up with a petition in support of their German colleague underlining that "it is extremely worrying that in the current 2015 criminal proceedings against historians have been initiated based on the positions they have taken in their scientific publications. Discussions on scientific matters should not be confined to the realm of populism".

Expectedly, quite a few comments appeared in the Greek press, condemning both the criminalization of scientific thought and the nationalist ways of interpreting history. One of them was penned by journalist Andreas Zamboukas in the online liberal.gr and bore the title: "The trial of shame, the Richter trial."

"A friend of mine, a teacher, told me an old story about a 9th grade schoolgirl in history classes. Shortly before the exams in June, she said: "Oh, ma'am, we have been studying the Peloponnesian war over so many hours and I still can't understand who the good ones and who the bad ones are... This Thucydides is so boring!"

Indeed, this is the big issue with Thucydides. He has no good ones and evil ones. No "heroes", myths, legends and ethnic insecurities. Thucydides is considered the father of political realism: the leading school of thought in international relations and strategic studies. He was free of all insecurities, which the national historiography created over successive generations, to guard their uniformity. Last but not least, Thucydides is a famous Greek. He is one of those whom our modern Greek consciousness has always been "proud of", yet without understanding why.

The trial against German professor Richter, carried out today in Rethymno, is based on the law against racism (the charges were brought under Article 2 of Law 4285/2014) and  refer to an intellectual product of Richter's. The Rethymno prosecutor has kicked off a criminal persecution, because he deemed a chapter of Richter's book entitled "The Occupation of Crete" constituted "a denial of defamatory nature of the Nazi crimes committed against the Cretan people."

Now look whom we are talking about: a professor of history at the University of Mannheim who has devoted his entire academic career to Greece and Cyprus. Together with an archaeology professor of Heidelberg University, Reinhard Stupperich, Richter has published 67 volumes of the so-called Peleus series featuring Greek history and archaeology. Pileas' Volume 12 contains the doctoral dissertation of Hermann Frank Meyer about Kalavryta (under the title, From Vienna to Kalavryta). This is the work that gives definitive answers about the 1943 massacre. Volume 8 of the series contains the proceedings of the conference of the Protestant Academy in Bad Boll titled, "Reconciliation without truth? German war crimes in Greece during WW2", authored by Giebeler, Stupperich and Richter. For his "exceptional merit in the public domain enhancing the international prestige of Greece" Richter was awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of the Phoenix by former President of Greece Konstantinos Stephanopoulos.

In 2014, the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Crete decided to award Richter a honoris Ph.D. for his scientific work related to Greek history. This is the reason for today's lawsuit against him. So, once again, a soap opera split between "patriots" and "progressives" has opened over the contents of Richter's historical narrative. A classic confrontation between "venerable" opponents fighting bitterly over what happened in the past. Something like a war on the corpse of history, which is the apple of contention between two armies from another world and a different culture.

In all cases, memory is a big problem for our collective psyche. In fact it is the hallucinogenic factor that churns out all our national fantasies and does not allow us to clear our minds. And also this type of identity, which continues to be a "mentally retarded servant", doomed to carry on his shoulders our great and heroic past. Because we never questioned it. Because we never started a big discussion, as did the Germans and other nations, on our own history, which would have helped us find who modern Greeks are and what their true place is in the world.