The Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre was a German war crime committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

, Italy, in the course of an operation against the

Italian resistance movement The Italian resistance movement (the ''Resistenza italiana'' and ''la Resistenza'') is an umbrella term for the Italian resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Socia ...

during the Italian Campaign of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. On 12 August 1944 the

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...

, 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 La Spezia (, or , ; in the local Spezzino dialect) is the capital city of the province of La Spezia and is located at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the southern part of the Liguria region of Italy. La Spezia is the second largest cit ...

and the highest Italian court of appeal.

Massacre

Sant anna kriegerdenkmal-1915-1918 kirche

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 Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one ...

, dressed in German uniforms. 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) 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), as well as eight pregnant women (one of whom, Evelina Berretti, had her womb cut with a bayonet and her baby pulled out and killed separately). 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.

Aftermath

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 The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows or the Via Crucis, refers to a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of Crucifixion of Jesus, his crucifixion and accompanying prayers. The station ...

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 ''Miracle at St. Anna'' is a 2008 AmericanItalian epic war film directed by Spike Lee and written by James McBride, based on McBride's 2003 novel of the same name. The film stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Pier ...

'' by James McBride, and

Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...

's film of the same title that was based on it.

Prosecutions

Apart from the divisional commander

Max Simon Max Simon (6 January 1899 – 1 February 1961) was a German SS commander and war criminal during World War II. Simon was one of the first members of the SS in the early 1930s. He rose through the ranks of the SS, and became a corps commander dur ...

, no one was prosecuted for this massacre until July 2004, when a trial of ten former

officers and

NCOs A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...

living in Germany was held before a military court in

, Italy. On 22 June 2005, the court found the accused guilty of participation in the killings and sentenced them ''in absentia'' to

life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes fo ...

: * 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), * 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. 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." 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. 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."

Notes

References

External links

The National Park of Peace of Sant’Anna di Stazzema

"A Day of Shame" for Germany
''

Deutsche Welle Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service cons ...

'', 12 August 2004 {{coord, 43, 58, 27, N, 10, 16, 25, E, source:itwiki_region:IT_type:landmark, display=title 1944 crimes in Italy Massacres in 1944 Collective punishment Modern history of Italy Massacres in Italy Nazi SS Mass murder in 1944 Massacres in the Italian Social Republic August 1944 events de:Sant'Anna di Stazzema#Massaker