A court in Italy has sentenced nine elderly Germans to life imprisonment for Nazi killings of hundreds of people in the north of Italy in 1944.
The convicted men were part of the “Hermann Goerhring” group which had attempted to destroy the Italian resistance and unsystematically slaughtered hundreds of innocent people.
The verdicts were also for massacres operated in other parts of the Emilia Romagna region and near Arezzo in Tuscany.
The trial began in November 2010 after five years of investigation. The men were absent when sentenced.
Plaintiff Demos Malavasi said that “Finally there has been justice for the victims and their relatives and a bloody page of history can be closed”.
He also mentioned the fact that sixty-seven years have passed but at least they weren’t in vain.
Charges had been dropped against three other men, now dead.
However, 90-year old Wilhelm Karl Stark (sergeant at the time) was given a life sentence along with 93-year old Ferdinand Osterhaus (second lieutenant at the time) and 91-year old Helmut Odenwald (captain at the time).
Herbert Wilke, 92, Erich Koeppe, 91, Hans Georg Karl Winkler and Karl Friedrich Mess (both in their 80’s) also received life sentences.
The men were also ordered to pay the relatives of the victims – who had travelled to the Verona court house with local mayors – compensation.
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