A military court this week suspended a work permit handed
to a former Nazi war criminal after protests from Italian
Jews.
Members of Rome’s Jewish community protested outside
the offices of 93-year-old Erich Priebke this week after
a military court granted permission for him to go to work
despite being under house arrest.
Around 100 demonstrators gathered outside the law firm in
Rome on Monday shouting “Murderer” at the former
SS officer who was jailed for life in 1998 for killing 335
men and boys during World War Two.
A military court ruled last Wednesday that Priebke, who
is serving his sentence under house arrest for health reasons,
can leave his home to go to work for his lawyer.
The ruling allowed him to travel to and from the office "every
day, freely" and "go out to satisfy, at nearby
places and for the time strictly necessary, the indispensable
necessities of life."
But the court suspended the order on Monday claiming Priebke
had not informed judges when he would be foin to work.
The court’s initial decision was condemned by Italian
politicians and Jewish campaigners at the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre describing it as an “insult to the family and
friends of those murdered by Priebke."
Priebke was extradited to Italy in 1995 from Argentina where
he had been hiding since the end of the war. He was convicted
of shooting 335 men, including around 75 Jews, in the 1944
Fosse Ardeantine massacre. The massacre, in caves just outside
Rome, was believed to have been ordered by Adolf Hitler as
a reprisal for an attack by Italian resistance fighters which
killed 33 German soldiers.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Israel director Efraim
Zuroff, described the decision as “outrageous, senseless,
and insensitive.”
He said: “Any decision which grants privileges to
a convicted and unrepentant Nazi war criminal like Priebke
is outrageous because it is based on a totally false assumption
that as an elderly person Priebke deserves a measure of sympathy
and even privileges.
“But the passage of time in no way diminishes the
guilt of Holocaust perpetrators and people like him, who
had no mercy for their victims, do not deserve any sympathy
themselves. The decision is senseless since there is no basis
to grant Priebke privileges and the fact that he has reached
an elderly age does not turn a murderer into Righteous Gentile.
It is insensitive since it insults the family and friends
of those murdered by Priebke and his cohorts.”
totallyjewish.com
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