It
infuriates me that Erich Priebke, the SS officer who
supervised the infamous Ardeatine caves massacre in Rome
in 1944 (335 Italians executed in response to an attack
by partisans), lived more than a hundred years. He finally
died [1] a few days ago. Of natural causes. But then,
these monsters often live a very long time, as I discovered
when I went to Italy in the mid-sixties to begin research
on Italian fascism, the subject of my doctoral dissertation.
I was amazed at the longevity of many of the men I was
studying, as I was amazed at the ease with which they
recycled themselves into “mainstream” life. Fascist propagandists
found good university positions in sociology and political
science departments, and if they were willing to join
the Communist Party, their fascist careers were airbrushed
from the official histories (only very recently has this
ugly story begun to be documented).
Priebke didn’t recycle at all; he escaped to Argentina, where he worked as a
butcher (how’s that for consistency?) until ABC reporter
Sam Donaldson found him in 1994. So Priebke escaped to
freedom for half a century, and was then extradited to
Italy, where you might have expected the full weight
of justice to be brought to bear on him. But no. It took
three trials, two in military courts (the first ordered
him released, the second gave him five years, and the
third, in criminal court, sentenced him to life — and
not in prison but under house arrest). He came and went
at will (albeit under surveillance), was said to step
aside for women in line at the markets, and slowly slipped
into dementia, watching children’s cartoons on Italian
television.
I attended a day’s worth of
the third trial, because i thought it obligatory. The
case was clear cut, the story of the massacre was well
documented, and Priebke didn’t deny the facts. Years
later he confessed to one mistake: he had miscounted
the victims, and an extra five had been executed, kneeling
with their hands tied behind their backs, with a bullet
to the back of the neck. Those 335 were guilty of being
Italian. Eighteen of them were Jews. He invoked the Nurenberg
defense: just carrying out orders. It worked in military
court, to the shame of the judges.
The Priebke affair speaks
to us today, at least to those of us determined to destroy
such evil. He should have been executed. Inevitably,
he became the object of protests against the “injustice”
to which he’d been subjected. He wrote a ponderous memoir.
I have no doubt that, if he is not executed, we will
some day read a ponderous memoir from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
and that demonstrators will protest his unjust treatment.
Indeed, there have already been many demonstrations against
Guantanamo.
Priebke and his fellow SS
killers executed the 335 innocents in order to break
the will of any Italian inclined to resist the Nazis,
just as the Muslim fanatics of 9/11 sought to break our
will twelve years ago. Do we want the 9/11 terrorists
to live a hundred years?
I hope we will be spared the
shame of endless appeals and retrials, but somehow I
have the horrible suspicion that it’s going to be Priebke
all over again.
pjmedia.com
|