Ludwig Heinrich Sunday
Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag (born March 25, 1924 in Dortmund ) was an SS-Unterscharführer in the Waffen-SS . He was involved with the 8th Company of the 2nd Battalion / Panzer Grenadier Regiment 35 of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" in the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema , in which around 560 civilians were murdered. For this he was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Italian military court in La Spezia . Ludwig Sonntag was not extradited to Italy, so this judgment could never be enforced and the proceedings against him were dropped in Germany.
Military career
Ludwig Sonntag joined the SS voluntarily on May 21, 1942 and then served in an SS police division . After his military training he was transferred to the Eastern Front, where he was wounded on October 5, 1942 and March 10, 1943. He was taken to a military hospital and after his recovery Ludwig Sonntag was assigned to the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division “Reichsführer-SS” . In this division he served first in the 6th Company and later in the 8th Company of the 2nd Battalion / Panzer Grenadier Regiment 35 of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" . On April 1, 1944, he was promoted to SS-Scharführer and only two months later to SS-Unterscharführer. On June 30, 1944, he was hit in the head south of Cecina , he was taken to a hospital and returned to his company for 14 days.
survey
As part of a request for legal assistance from the Italian authorities, Ludwig Sonntag was questioned by the German agency responsible for this in Germany. In it, Ludwig Sonntag stated that he “had never heard of the name Sant'Anna di Stazzema” and “had also not heard from other people who had committed violence against the civilian population”. This statement is not credible, because it was not the first massacre of the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" and above all the SS men would have known about massacres from their units before the massacre in Sant'Anna di Stazzema says historian Carlo Gentile . The Italian military court assumed that Ludwig Sonntag had undoubtedly participated in the military operation with the 8th Company in the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema on August 12, 1944. There was no apparent reason for the court why he, as a platoon leader of a tracked vehicle with attached cannon of 8th Company and four men of crew, was released from the operation or did not take part. In addition, three of his subordinates had declared that they had participated in the military operation against civilians on August 14, 1944.
Judgments in Italy
In 2002, the military prosecutor in La Spezia opened a case against alleged perpetrators of the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. This was made possible because there were files that had been created after the end of the Second World War and were hidden in the so-called closet of shame . In 2004 the trial began at the La Spezia Military Court. Ludwig Sonntag and Werner Bruß , Karl Gropler , Gerhard Sommer , Alfred Schöneberg , Heinrich Schendel , Georg Rauch , Ludwig Göring and Alfred Mathias Concina were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. These judgments were upheld in 2006 by the Court of Appeal in Rome in the second instance and in 2007 by the Supreme Court of Cassation in the third and last instance.
Investigations in Germany
Since 2002, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office has been investigating nine of the people convicted in Italy, plus another five who were not indicted in La Spezia. The proceedings were closed in 2011. A reopening of the investigation was rejected by the Stuttgart public prosecutor.
Ludwig Sonntag denied involvement in this war crime until the end of his life.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Republika Italiana in Nome del Popolo Italiano il Tribundal Militare della La Spezia (court judgment of June 22, 2005 in Italian) (PDF), June 22, 2006. Retrieved October 3, 2019
- ↑ a b c 10. La posizione degli imputati (Italian), from the Ministerio di difesa (Ministry of Defense, Italy). Retrieved October 5, 2019
- ↑ Felix Bohr: German Justice rejects the reopening of the investigation , from May 21, 2013, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 5, 2019
- ↑ Silvia Buzzelli, Marco De Paolis, Andrea Speranzoni: La ricostruzione giudiziale dei crimini nazifascisti in Italia. Questioni preliminari. Giappichelli, Turin 2012 ISBN 978-88-348-2619-5 . Pp. 145-146
- ↑ Nazi war crimes: proceedings on SS massacre in Italy discontinued , October 1, 2012, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 3, 2019
- ↑ Felix Bohr: German Justice rejects the reopening of the investigation , from May 21, 2013, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 3, 2019
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sunday, Ludwig Heinrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sunday, Ludwig |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German SS officer and convicted war criminal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 25, 1924 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dortmund |