Former SS Capt. Erich Priebke will go on trial for his role in Italy’s worst Nazi massacre on May 8, the 51st anniversary of the end of World War II.
A Rome military judge formally indicted Priebke last week for “multiple homicide aggravated by cruelty” stemming from his involvement in the March 24, 1944, mass execution of civilians — including 75 Jews — in the Ardeatine Caves south of Rome.
The 82-year-old Priebke, who was extradited to Italy last November from Argentina, expressed no emotion as Judge Giuseppe Mazzi read the indictment April 4 at the end of a closed-door preliminary hearing.
Priebke, who during the Nazi occupation of Rome was an aide to SS commandant Herbert Kappler, escaped from a POW camp after the war and fled to Argentina, where he lived peacefully until he was discovered there by an ABC News team in 1994.
“I think it is a just ruling, both in form and in substance,” Tullia Zevi, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said after the decision was announced to put Priebke on trial.
“The decision was very well thought out and will now give the possibility of contributing to the ascertainment of the facts in a spirit of equity and of justice. It was not a condemnation, but the initiation of a process.”
Paola Severino di Benedetto, a lawyer representing the interests of Rome’s Jewish community in the case, issued a statement expressing “great appreciation and satisfaction” with the judge’s decision.
The Nazis ordered the Ardeatine Caves Massacre in direct reprisal for an attack the day before by Italian partisans that had left 33 German soldiers dead. Ten Italians were ordered killed for each German, but five more Italians were killed than required by the arithmetic of reprisal.
The mass execution is considered Italy’s worst World War II atrocity, and the Ardeatine Caves are a national shrine.
Most of the victims were anti-fascist prisoners taken from Nazi-run Roman jails, but others were rounded up from their homes or on the streets.
The victims were trucked to the Ardeatine Caves, where they were led inside in groups of five with their hands tied behind their backs. There they were shot in the back of the neck. Many had to kneel on the bodies of those killed before them.
Priebke has admitted to drawing up a list of victims, checking them off at the caves and personally shooting two people.
But he has defended his actions, saying he was following orders.
He told the court last week that killing the civilians had been a legitimate reprisal for the partisan attack.
Priebke also said blame for the massacre should rest with the partisans who carried out the attack against the German soldiers, according to lawyers who attended the closed-door hearing.
“I am sorry for what happened,” the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Priebke as saying. “I lived all this time with this weight in my heart, but the revenge was legitimate.
“The order came directly from the Fuhrer, and if we hadn’t obeyed it, we would have been killed. To think about it now, it was a terrible thing, but at the time, you couldn’t do anything else.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
