19 June 2007
Members of Italy’s Jewish community have demonstrated outside the lawyer’s office where a convicted Nazi war criminal has begun work. A court ruled last week that the 93-year-old Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke may leave his house arrest every day to work, a move which provoked widespread condemnation. The former SS captain Priebke was jailed for life by a military court for the massacre of 335 men and boys at the Ardeatine Caves near Rome during World War II. The killings were a reprisal for partisan attacks on Germans. Priebke was extradited to Italy in 1995 from Argentina, where he fled after the war.
The president of the Jewish community in Rome, Leone Passerman, questioned how it was possible that a Nazi war criminal, allowed to complete a sentence at home on health grounds, was suddenly fit enough to go back to work. "The first thought that I had was of the magistrate that made the provision, perhaps had remembered the lesson that was on the gate at Auschwitz - 'Arbeit macht frei', 'work will set you free' - and perhaps he thought it was right to free Mr Priebke to allow him to work," he said.
However Priebke's lawyer, Paolo Giachini, defended the decision. "The law says that after a period in prison, inmates have the right to certain benefits, because detention here in Italy isn't just punitive, it tries to re-educate those who have been condemned," he told Reuters news agency.
