Civitella massacre in Val di Chiana, Cornia and San Pancrazio

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The church of Santa Maria Assunta in Civitella with the sacrificial memorial (left)

The Civitella massacre in Val di Chiana, Cornia and San Pancrazio of civilians by German Wehrmacht members took place on June 29, 1944 during World War II . The three Italian villages of Civitella in Val di Chiana , Cornia and San Pancrazio are located in Tuscany , about 15 kilometers southwest of Arezzo between the Chiana and Ambra valleys. In the three places were according to the state of the more recent research by the historian Carlo Gentileit is proven that 170 people and more people were murdered. In older literature, numbers are given that range from over 200 to 245 victims. It is also stated that "around 100 houses [...] were destroyed by fire" in the course of the massacre.

prehistory

After Rome was liberated by the Allies on June 4th, the Wehrmacht was in retreat. A small partisan group called "Banda Renzino" was active in the area of ​​the three villages. The IXXI. Panzer Corps and Parachute Panzer Division 1 Hermann Goering that there in their withdrawal movement dislocated had found themselves by the partisans threatened and incidents confirmed this. A group of paratroopers encamped on June 18, 1944 near a farm in Civitella. When four of them went to the village inn that evening, they were attacked. Two of them were killed immediately by partisans, the third was seriously wounded and died shortly afterwards. The fourth was able to flee with the help of the population. On June 21, 1944, a sergeant of the field gendarme of Hermann Göring's division near Corcia was seriously wounded in a partisan attack and two soldiers were abducted. On June 23, the German military reacted to the kidnapping and freed the two soldiers, but lost a man during the liberation.

On June 29, 1944, the German troops attacked the three villages under the pretext of "fighting gangs". It was not an attack on the partisans, but a murder of civilians. It is not known whether the order came from the Panzer Corps or from Hermann Göring's division . There are no files or written orders from the Wehrmacht about the massacre.

Civitella in Val di Chiana

The Pietà del Giugno 1944 memorial in Civitella in Val di Chiana

Before the Second World War, 284 people lived in the village of Civitella in Val di Chiana ( ⊙ ) . Around 100 men of the alarm company of the supply troops "Vesuvius" of the Panzer Division Hermann Göring began to surround the lower village at dawn. At the same time, many people from the surrounding hamlets and villagers went to early mass. When the soldiers entered the village, they shot almost all the men and some women present, ransacked the houses and set them on fire. The soldiers interrupted mass in the village church and forced everyone into the central piazza, where the men were separated from the women and children. After the women and children had been driven out of the village, soldiers led the men in groups of five behind a wall in the piazza. There they murdered them one by one with a headshot. The corpses lying in the piazza and behind the wall were dragged onto the piazza and thrown into the burning houses. But people were not only murdered there, but also in the houses and streets. About 70 to 75 residents of the surrounding houses were rounded up in a square at the foot of the mountain above which Civitella rises. The women and children were sent away. The remaining 20 men were shot by a volley from a machine gun. 93 people from Civitella were murdered, about a third of the village population. Of these, 58 people were killed inside the walls of Civitella and 35 outside.

San Pancrazio

The sacrificial memorial at the San Pancrazio cemetery

Early in the morning soldiers from the "Pauke" alarm company of the "Hermann Göring" tank regiment broke into the village of San Pancrazio ( ⊙ ). The men and women were guarded for several hours in different places in the village. Then women and children were driven out of the village. 59 men were individually killed in a basement by a shot in the neck. When about half had already been shot, the men who were still alive were asked to testify about partisans. Six volunteered and after the murder of the 59 men were taken to an assembly camp for forced laborers.

Cornia

The sacrificial memorial at the Cornia cemetery

The village of Cornia ( ⊙ ), about eight kilometers south of San Pancrazio, is located in a side valley. The German soldiers approached in three groups, some of which were motorized. When the German troops climbed the hillside village on July 29, 1944, they shot three women, a boy and two other men on their way. Once in town, the procedure was different. Men, women and children have been shot dead in houses and in other cases women have been released. Some women were also believed to have been raped. The only partisan in the three villages was among those murdered in Cornia . In Cornia and the surrounding hamlets, the historian Carlo Gentile counted 28 murdered people; further murders, which he did not quantify, have to be added. Among the murdered was a one-year-old child with a mother. Also among the victims are the Swedish artist Helga Elmquist with her husband and the Italian writer Giovanni Cau, who were allegedly suspected of collaborating with the partisans. They were arrested on June 29, 1944. Their bodies were found near Monte San Savino in 1950 .

Court judgments

In 1945 the massacre was documented by a commission of inquiry appointed by the UN . In 1950, the commander of the Parachute Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring, Lieutenant General Wilhelm Schmalz , who was accused of aiding and abetting in the massacres of Civitella in Val di Chiana, Cavriglia and Bucine , was found not guilty by an Italian military court in Rome . On October 10, 2006, however, the military court in La Spezia sentenced the former division members NCO Max Josef Milde , Lieutenant Siegfried Böttcher and Lieutenant Karl Stolleisen to life imprisonment in their absence . The verdict against the defendant Milde - the defendant Böttcher had died in the meantime - and against Stolleisen, who did not object to the judgment in the first instance, was passed in the second instance in 2007 by the Court of Appeal in Rome and in 2008 by the Supreme Court of Cassation in the third and last instance approved.

The Military Court of Appeal in Rome also sentenced the Federal Republic of Germany to pay compensation of one million euros to nine relatives of two victims who had appeared as joint plaintiffs. The Federal Republic appealed against this judgment to the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome. The latter dismissed the objection, making the judgment final, which set a precedent for the legal appraisal of the war crimes committed by Nazi Germany against civilians in Italy during World War II .

The German government brought an action against the enforcement of this judgment before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague . On February 3, 2012, the IGH ruled in favor of the German government. In a fundamental judgment of October 22, 2014, the Italian constitutional court contradicted the ICJ. The Italian Constitutional Court has since received a lawsuit from victims' associations, so the question of compensation is open again.

A European arrest warrant was issued against Max Josef Milde in 2011 by the military court in Verona . The Schleswig-Holstein Public Prosecutor's Office refused to extradite Milde, whereupon the military court in Verona applied for the judgment to be enforced in Germany, which, however, also went unheard.

Commemoration

In the central piazza of Civitella, a bronze relief and a plaque with the names of the dead commemorate them.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary on June 29, 2014, the then Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the then Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini paid tribute to the victims by attending memorial hours and laying a wreath in Civitella.

literature

  • Carlo Gentile : Political Soldiers. The 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" in Italy in 1944. In: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries. 81, 2001, pp. 529-561.
  • Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . (Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2008.)
  • Gerhard Schreiber : German war crimes in Italy - perpetrators, victims, prosecution. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Massacre of Civitella  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 331, 324, 325f
  2. ↑ a b c Civitella Val di Chiana , on Memorial Sites Europe 1939-1945. Retrieved October 10, 2019
  3. ^ Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy - perpetrators, victims, prosecution. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 . P. 174
  4. ^ Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy - perpetrators, victims, prosecution. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 . P. 164
  5. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . P. 320
  6. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 321-324
  7. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . P. 324
  8. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . S 324/325
  9. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 333/334
  10. ↑ 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 p. 93
  11. ↑ 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. 146-147
  12. ↑ Stragi Naziste: la Cassazione condanna la Germania a risarcire le vittime. Per l'eccidio nell'Aretino di Civitella, Cornia e San Pancrazio (203 morti) del 29 giugno 1944. In: corriere.it. October 21, 2008, accessed October 11, 2019 (Italian).
  13. ↑ Wehrmacht crimes . Italians are also demanding reparation payments from March 13, 2015 on Deutschlandfunk . Retrieved October 10, 2019
  14. ^ Assemblea generale della Corte Militare di Appello - Anno Giudiziario 2016. In: associazionemagistratimilitari.it. Retrieved October 11, 2019 (Italian).
  15. ^ Tilmann Kleinjung: Steinmeier commemorates the Wehrmacht victims in Italy , June 29, 2014, on Handelsblatt . Retrieved October 10th