93-Year-Old Nazi Won’t Face Trial in Massacre of 342 Italians

By Reuters May 28, 2015

Germany will not prosecute a former Nazi SS soldier who allegedly helped kill more than 300 people in Italy during World War Two because he has dementia and is unfit to stand trial, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Hamburg state prosecutors have ended their investigation into the unnamed 93-year-old former company commander in the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division, their office said in a statement.

The man is alleged to have been involved in a massacre in northern Italy on Aug. 12, 1944. SS troops on anti-partisan operations surrounded the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany and killed hundreds of people, including many women and children.

“The assessment of the extensive file material had led to the conclusion that the accused — had he been fit to stand trial — would have in all probability been charged with 342 cases of cruel murder with reprehensible motives,” the prosecutors office said in a statement.

But psychiatric and neurological examinations of the man have shown that he suffers from very advanced dementia, so he would not be able to stand trial under the terms of Germany’s constitution.

The number of people who can be prosecuted for Nazi war crimes is dwindling as elderly suspects die.

In April, a German court started the trial of a 93-year-old former bookkeeper at the Auschwitz concentration camp accused of assisting in the mass murder of Jews. It could be one of Germany’s last big Holocaust trials.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO