The decision by a military tribunal in Bari to release Nazi war criminal Walter Reder in five years has raised a storm of protest in Italy and created a sharp split between the Vatican’s position in favor of clemency for the mass killer and the insistence by the families of his victims, supported by most of the media, that the enormity of Reder’s crimes was such that they must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
The 65-year-old Reder, a former SS Major, was responsible for the massacre of 1830 people mostly women, children and the elderly — in Marzabotto and other towns and villages in northern Italy and the surrounding countryside in 1944. The carnage was part of a Nazi plan to “depopulate” the region so that partisan fighters hiding in the mountains would be forced into the open because there would be no local population to help them.
Reder was sentenced to life imprisonment and has served 35 years in the military prison at Gaeta. Over the years, appeals by defense attorneys for his release were refused because the survivors of Marzabotto would not grant him a pardon. The military tribunal in Bari in effect changed Reder’s status from war criminal to “detainee” and his release therefore no longer depends on a pardon from his victims or their relatives.
The tribunal accepted the claims of Reder’s lawyers and other supporters that he has “repented” his crimes. The Vatican organ, L’Osservatore Romano, upheld the military court’s action last week, stating that the “authorities” that impose sentences have the right to reevaluate them when expiation and redemption have taken place.
According to Father Gino Concetti, the theologian who wrote the article, “This presupposes faith in man, in his capacity to repent and feel remorse, even when he has sullied himself with abominable crimes. ” Concetti quoted the New Testament: “Love leads to unconditional forgiveness.”
REACTION BY THE MEDIA
But the influential daily Corriere Della Sera echoed the victims and their families when it observed that “Some crimes are unforgivable. “The paper charged that the “institution of repentance is used for the exclusive reward of State thieves, “a reference to politicians imprisoned for corruption and then released, “and war criminals.”
In reaction to the Bari decision, several newspapers published eye-witness accounts of the Nazi massacres of infants and women. Most of the victims were non-Jewish but a significant number were Italian Jews.
The worst crimes were committed by Reder and by SS Col. Herbert Kappler, also serving a life sentence, who escaped from a military hospital in Rome several years ago with the assistance of unidentified collaborators. Kappler died before he was apprehended. Jews and Catholic victims had been asked to pardon him but both, as in the Reder case, refused.
According to the record, Reder was responsible for the murders of 147 people, including 50 children, in Marzabotto, near Bologna; 107, including 24 children, in Caprera; and 282 people, including 58 children and two nuns, on farms in the countryside. In nearby Cerpiano, 49 people were killed with hand grenades; 560 were killed in Lucchesia; 340 in Valla, Bardino and Vinca; 33 in Pioppeta di Monemagno; and 108 in a concentration camp near Lucca.
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.
