Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre

The Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre was a German war crime[1][2][3] committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany, Italy, in the course of an operation against the Italian resistance movement during the Italian Campaign of World War II. On 12 August 1944 the Waffen-SS, with the help of the Brigate Nere, murdered about 560 local villagers and refugees, including more than a hundred children, and burned their bodies. These crimes have been defined as voluntary and organized acts of terrorism by the Military Tribunal of La Spezia and the highest Italian court of appeal.[4][5]

Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre
Massacre memorial sculpture
LocationSant'Anna di Stazzema, Italy
Date12 August 1944
TargetCivilian villagers and refugees
Attack type
War crime, massacre
Deaths~ 560 (130 were children)
Perpetrators16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, 36th Brigata Nera "Benito Mussolini"

Massacre
An elderly survivor at the village on 14 December 1944
The restored village church and World War I memorial in 2008

On the morning of 12 August 1944, German troops of the 2nd Battalion of SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 35 of 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Anton Galler, entered the mountain village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. With them came some fascists of the 36th Brigata Nera Benito Mussolini based in Lucca, dressed in German uniforms.[6]

The soldiers immediately proceeded to round up villagers and refugees, locking up hundreds of them in several barns and stables, before systematically executing them. The killings were done mostly by shooting groups of people with machine guns or by herding them into basements and other enclosed spaces and tossing in hand grenades. At the 16th-century local church, the priest Fiore Menguzzo (awarded the Medal for Civil Valor posthumously in 1999[7]) was shot at point-blank range, after which machine guns were then turned on some 100 people gathered there. In all, the victims included at least 107 children (the youngest of whom, Anna Pardini, was only 20 days old[8]), as well as eight pregnant women (one of whom, Evelina Berretti, had her stomach cut with a bayonet and her baby pulled out and killed separately[9]).

After other people were killed through the village, their corpses were set on fire (at the church, the soldiers used its pews for a bonfire to dispose of the bodies). The livestock were also exterminated and the whole village was burned down. All this took three hours. The SS men then sat down outside the burning Sant'Anna and ate lunch.[10]

Aftermath
The National Park of Peace monument in 2007

After the war, the church was rebuilt. The Charnel House Monument and the Historical Museum of Resistance were both built nearby. Stations of the Cross illustrate scenes from the massacre along the trail from the church to the main memorial site—the National Park of Peace, founded in 2000. The massacre inspired the novel Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride, and Spike Lee's film of the same title that was based on it.

Prosecutions
List of the victims

Apart from the divisional commander Max Simon,[lower-alpha 1] no one was prosecuted for this massacre until July 2004, when a trial of ten former Waffen-SS officers and NCOs living in Germany was held before a military court in La Spezia, Italy. On 22 June 2005, the court found the accused guilty of participation in the killings and sentenced them in absentia to life imprisonment:[11]

  • Werner Bruss (b. 1920, former SS-Unterscharführer),
  • Alfred Concina (b. 1919, former SS-Unterscharführer),
  • Ludwig Goering (b. 1923, former SS-Rottenführer who confessed to killing twenty women),[12]
  • Karl Gropler (b. 1923, former SS-Unterscharführer),
  • Georg Rauch (b. 1921, former SS-Untersturmführer),
  • Horst Richter (b. 1921, former SS-Unterscharführer),
  • Alfred Schoneberg (b. 1921, former SS-Unterscharführer),
  • Heinrich Schendel (b. 1922, former SS-Unterscharführer),
  • Gerhard Sommer, (b. 1921, former SS-Untersturmführer), and
  • Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag (b. 1924, former SS-Unterscharführer).

However, extradition requests from Italy were rejected by Germany. In 2012, German prosecutors shelved their investigation of 17 unnamed former SS soldiers (eight of whom were still alive) who were part of the unit involved in the massacre because of a lack of evidence.[13] The statement said: "Belonging to a Waffen-SS unit that was deployed to Sant'Anna di Stazzema cannot replace the need to prove individual guilt. Rather, for every defendant it must be proven that he took part in the massacre, and in which form."[14] The mayor of the village, Michele Silicani (a survivor who was 10 when the raid occurred), called the verdict "a scandal" and said he would urge Italy's justice minister to lobby Germany to reopen the case.[15] German deputy foreign minister Michael Georg Link commented that "while respecting the independence of the German justice system," it was not possible "to ignore that such a decision causes deep dismay and renewed suffering to Italians, not just survivors and relatives of the victims."[16]

See also

Notes
  1. Simon was sentenced to death for war crimes. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He was pardoned in 1954 and died in 1961.

References
  1. Leslie Alan Horvitz, Christopher Catherwood, Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide, 2009, ISBN 978-0816080830
  2. Mogherini, Federica (5 October 2014). "Minister Mogherini's message for the commemoration of the Marzabotto massacres". Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  3. "German and Italian presidents honor Nazi massacre victims". Deutsche Welle. 24 March 2013. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  4. "Strage di Sant'Anna, riaperte le indagini. Per il tribunale spezzino fu puro terrorismo" (in Italian). Gazzetta Della Spezia. 6 August 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  5. "INTERROGAZIONE A RISPOSTA SCRITTA 4/05851 presentata da RICCI MARIO (RIFONDAZIONE COMUNISTA - SINISTRA EUROPEA) in data 10/12/2007". dati.camera.it (in Italian). Italian Chamber of Deputies. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  6. "Stazzema, storia dei fascisti che aiutarono le SS: "Travestiti, ma li tradì l'accento"". Il Fatto Quotidiano (in Italian). 2015-04-25. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  7. "Mulina di Stazzema ricorda i martiri don Lazzeri e don Menguzzi". www.luccaindiretta.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  8. "Anna Pardini, di 20 giorni". www.santannadistazzema.org. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  9. "Centro studi della Resistenza: l'eccidio di S. Anna di Stazzema". www.storiaxxisecolo.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  10. Popham, Peter (1 July 2004). "SS Massacre: A conspiracy of silence is broken". The Independent. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  11. McMahon, Barbara (22 June 2005). "10 former Nazis convicted of Tuscan massacre". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  12. Johnston, Bruce (1 July 2004). "'Haunted' SS veteran stands trial for massacre of the innocents in village". The Telegraph. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  13. "Probe into Nazi massacre at Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Italy, dropped". BBC News. 1 October 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  14. "Sant'Anna di Stazzema Massacre By 16th SS-Panzergrenadier Division 'Reichsfuehrer SS' Probe Shelved". Huffingtonpost.com. 1 October 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-10-05. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  15. Tom Kington (2 October 2012). "German court drops investigation into Nazi massacre in Italy". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  16. Armellini, Alvise (2 October 2012). "Italian outrage after Germany closes file on 1944 Nazi massacre". Stars & Stripes. Archived from the original on 2014-02-21. Retrieved 2013-01-29.

Further reading
  • US NARA, Record Group 153, Judge Advocate General, War Crimes Branch, Cases filed 1944–1949, Location: 270/1/25/3-4, Entry 143, Box 527, Case 16–62 (Santa Anna).
  • National Archives and Records Administration, RG 238, Office of the Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Location: 190/10/34/25, Entry 2, Box 10, Case 16–62 (Santa Anna).
  • Claudia Buratti/Giovanni Cipollini, Vite bruciate. La strage di Sant'Anna di Stazzema 1944–2005, Rome, 2006.
  • Carlo Gentile, Politische Soldaten. Die 16. SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Division "Reichsführer-SS" in Italien 1944, in: Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 81, 2001, pp. 529–561.
  • Carlo Gentile, Sant'Anna di Stazzema, in: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.), Orte des Grauens. Verbrechen im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Darmstadt, 2003, pp. 231–236.
  • Carlo Gentile, Le SS di Sant'Anna di Stazzema: azioni, motivazioni e profilo di una unità nazista, in: Marco Palla (ed.), Tra storia e memoria. 12 agosto 1944: la strage di Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Rome, 2003, pp. 86–117.

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