The book is based on 159 of the ministry's files relating to the cultural, economic and political activities of Greek Jews and to their suffering during the Holocaust.

Steven Bowman, a professor of Judaic studies at the University of Cincinnati who helped compile the English-language volume, said the book contains many previously unpublished official documents that languished in the Foreign Ministry archives until three years ago.

"We come to the real problem that the appearance of this volume punctures like a lance in the boil of denial. Nazis expropriated, exploited then killed the Jews. But after the war, who got the loot?" he asked.

Greece is one of the only countries that gave back to the remaining Jewish community all the property that belonged to Jews before the war. Some 85 percent of the country's prewar Jewish population of 80,000 perished in Nazi death camps.