SS officers responsible for Tuscan mass murder have life sentences confirmed

[Antipodean Andy]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...-23109,00.html

ITALY'S highest court has confirmed life sentences for three former Nazi SS officers for their role in the murder of 560 Tuscan villagers, in one of Italy's worst civilian massacres during World War II.

The verdict on the three former German officers, all in their 80s, is largely symbolic, as they are unlikely to be extradited from their homeland and people of that age are usually deemed too old to serve prison sentences in Italy.

But survivors and fellow villagers, as well as left-wing politicians, said justice had been done.

“After 63 years, we could not be happier,” survivor Mauro Pieri said, tears in his eyes.

Pieri was 12 when the massacre, in which his mother and brothers were killed, took place.

At dawn on August 12, 1944, soldiers of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, surrounded the stone houses of Sant'Anna di Stazzema, forcing people onto the street where they were shot.

Most of the victims were women and children - the youngest was 20 days old.

The Sant'Anna massacre was one of many civilian shootings that occurred as German troops retreated to the so-called “Gothic line” of defence that cut across Italy.

However, they came to light only in the mid-1990s, when a filing cabinet full of witness statements was found in Rome.

The first trial for the Sant'Anna killings ended in 2005 and sentenced 10 former Nazi officers to life in jail, including the three for which the verdict was confirmed yesterday - Gerhard Sommer, Georg Rauch and Karl Gropler.

US director Spike Lee is making a film on the village of Sant'Anna and the role of black American soldiers fighting against Nazi occupation there.

[Kyt]

This article was published in 2004. Probably the most detailed on the web:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...2/ai_n12798674