A 90-YEAR-OLD former Nazi officer has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of ordering the massacre of 14 Italian men and women in 1944.
A Munich court said it was satisfied yesterday that, as a 25-year-old Wehrmacht officer, Josef Scheungraber headed a massacre in the Tuscan village of Falzano di Cortona, between Sienna and Perugia, on June 2nd, 1944.
On that day, soldiers of Battalion 818 under his command shot dead an elderly woman and four men before destroying the village, house by house.
Before the eyes of the other villagers, 11 youths and men were forced into the basement of a farmhouse, which was then blown up with the men inside – on Scheungraber’s orders.
“A few minutes after the explosion, screams, groans and whimpers could still be heard,” said prosecutor Anton Winkler, “so the German soldiers shot at the rubble with their machine guns.”
The court agreed with prosecutors who linked the massacre to the killing by Italian partisans of two of Scheungraber’s officers.
“The act of revenge, directed exclusively at civilians, was driven first and foremost by revenge, but also by anger and hatred,” the court said. It added that, due to lack of evidence, it could not prosecute Scheungraber for the shootings, but found him guilty of the murder of the 10 buried alive in the house.
Scheungraber’s defence lawyer said his client was not involved in the massacre. The 90-year-old said he handed the civilians over to the military police but “never heard what happened to them”.
Key to the prosecution’s case was Gino Massetti, the sole survivor of the basement blast, now aged 80. His testimony resulted in an Italian court sentencing Scheungraber in absentia to life imprisonment three years ago.
Several villagers from Falzano di Cortona were in court for the verdict.“What we are asking for is to be able to believe in justice again,” said mayor Andrea Vignini to German television, “and for war crimes to be prosecuted.”