ITALY/FILE: Italian civil and church authorities move to prevent a funeral in Rome for Erich Priebke, a convicted Nazi war criminal

Record ID: 860171

  • Title: ITALY/FILE: Italian civil and church authorities move to prevent a funeral in Rome for Erich Priebke, a convicted Nazi war criminal
  • Date: 15th October 2013
  • Summary: ROME, ITALY (FILE - 1997) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) NAZI WAR CRIMINAL ERICH PRIEBKE WALKING DOWN CORRIDOR TOWARDS COURT ESCORTED BY POLICE VARIOUS OF PRIEBKE STANDING IN COURT, CAMERAS FILMING PRIEBKE SPEAKING TO LAWYER IN COURT
  • Embargoed: 30th October 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • City:
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: Crime,Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3IBC02DA101LQ5MCRCTBAKWCJ
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Civil and church authorities in Italy moved to prevent a funeral in Rome on Tuesday (October 15) for Erich Priebke, a Nazi war criminal convicted of one of Italy's worst wartime massacres, who died last week at the age of 100.
    At the Jewish quarter in central Rome, roads are littered with memorials to the dead during the Nazi occupation of the capital.
    Priebke, who never apologised for his role in the killing of 335 civilians in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome in 1944 and who denied the Nazi Holocaust ever took place, was serving a life sentence under house arrest in the Italian capital when he died.
    His death, like his 100th birthday in July, has brought into the open some of the deep tensions that remain in the aftermath of World War Two in Italy, which came close to civil war after the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini collapsed in 1943.
    "This is such a problematic issue, it would be better if he wasn't buried here because here they are still living through what they experienced with the holocaust, it is still fresh to them, he shouldn't be buried here" said tourist Mordechai Moti visiting the Jewish quarter, known locally as the "ghetto."
    "He should be cremated and chucked out to sea. There should never be a place where this person can rest in peace" said resident Bruna Bernardini.
    In March 1944, Priebke was in charge of SS troops who executed 335 people in retaliation for the killing of 33 German soldiers by a partisan group near Rome.
    Only few people have been heard to take a less aggressive stance on the burial site for Priebke.
    "This person has already done wrong, we shouldn't be fighting over a dead person it would be like behaving how he did, with a kind of vendetta" said Rome resident Sergio Punelli After the war Priebke escaped to Argentina but was deported to Italy after he was interviewed on U.S. television and admitted his role in the massacre, which he said had been conducted against "terrorists".
    The Argentinean government has also refused to allow his body to be returned to be buried next to his wife.
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