Trial Reopens War Wounds Former Ss Captain Charged With Massacre Of 355 In Italy

His back to the children and grandchildren of Nazi victims, a former SS captain listened intently Wednesday as a clerk recounted a World War II massacre of 335 civilians and the charges that brought him to justice.

The opening of Erich Priebke’s trial - on the 51st anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe - spanned past and present as it recalled Nazi atrocities and the parallels to war crimes being investigated today in the former Yugoslavia.

Priebke, 82, is likely to be one of the last significant Nazi officers to face trial in a country still uncomfortable about its Fascist past and always worried about a resurgence of ultra-nationalism.

His trial also shares an unsettling parallel with the first war crimes trial of the Bosnian civil war, which opened a day earlier at The Hague.

Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, is the first person to face an international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg trials a half century ago.

“The past and present are both here,” said Giulia Spizzichino, who had six relatives killed in the massacre that Priebke is charged with. “We want justice for what happened. But we need to show that evil is not something of the past, but is still with us.”

Priebke is charged with taking part in the slayings of 335 people in 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome to avenge a bombing by Italian partisans that killed 32 German soldiers. The victims included Roman Catholic priests, a 14-year-old boy and 75 Jews. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.

Priebke admits to killing two victims and calling out the names of 100 others who were led to the caves, gunned down and then dynamited in an attempt to hide the bodies.

But he insists he would have faced death himself had he not followed orders.

“My biggest worry is that this is not a trial of Erich Priebke, but a trial about the incarnation of Nazism and the ferocity of Nazism,” defense attorney Velio Di Rezze said.

The prosecution contends Priebke could have rejected the orders. “He was under orders, but they were illegitimate,” said the chief prosecutor, Antonino Intelisano.

Wearing a silver-gray suit and blue-gray tie, Priebke walked briskly into the courtroom Wednesday surrounded by police. He did not look at the more than 100 relatives of victims in the chamber, including one who carried a photocopied list of the Jews killed at the caves.