What to do with the body of a Nazi war criminal no one wants?
Rome’s
mayor, police chief and the pope’s right-hand man have all refused to
grant former SS captain Erich Priebke a church funeral in the city where
he participated in one of the worst massacres in German-occupied Italy.
Now there’s the added question of where to bury him, since neither
Rome, nor his adopted homeland of Argentina, nor his hometown in Germany
wants to take in his remains.
Priebke spent nearly 50 years as a
fugitive before being extradited to Italy from Argentina in 1995 to
stand trial for the 1944 massacre at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome,
in which 335 civilians were killed.
He died Friday at age 100 in the
Rome home of his lawyer, Paolo Giachini, where he had been serving his
life term under house arrest.
Rome’s archdiocese made it official
Monday, saying it had told Giachini to have the funeral at home “in
strict privacy” and that Pope Francis’ vicar for Rome, Cardinal Agostino
Vallini, had prohibited any Rome church from celebrating it.
But
Giachini refused, pressing instead for a private church Mass.
The
archdiocese responded by reminding all Roman priests that they must
abide by Vallini’s decision.
Separately, Rome’s police chief and
the government prefect for the capital announced they would prohibit
“any form of solemn or public celebration” for Priebke because of public
security concerns.
Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino said the city would accept
neither a church funeral nor a burial for him.
It was a rebuke by
both church and state that was greatly appreciated by Rome’s Jewish
community, which has long resented having Priebke living in its midst,
particularly after he was granted small freedoms from his house arrest
like going to church.
“Any demonstration of honor — civil or
religious — would be an intolerable affront to the memory of those who
fell in the fight for freedom of Nazism and fascism,” said the head of
Italy’s Jewish communities, Renzo Gattegna.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center also hailed the solidarity shown by both civil and religious leaders to deny Priebke a funeral.
During
his trial, Priebke admitted shooting two people at the Ardeatine Caves
massacre and to rounding up victims in retaliation for an attack by
resistance fighters that killed 33 members of a Nazi military police
unit. He insisted he was only following orders.
In his final
interview released upon his death, he denied the Nazis gassed Jews
during the Holocaust and accused the West of inventing such crimes to
cover up atrocities committed by the Allies during World War II.
Rabbi
Riccardo Pacifici, chief rabbi of Rome’s Jewish community, suggested
Priebke be cremated and his ashes dispersed in the air “like those of
our grandparents,” the ANSA news agency reported.
“He would be cremated
while dead, unlike the millions of children who went into the ovens and
for whom Priebke never had pity.”
In a telephone interview, the
lawyer Giachini said he never intended to make a political or public
event out of the funeral, but said that as a practicing Catholic,
Priebke deserved a Catholic funeral and burial.
“It’s a question of a right to religious liberty,” he said.
But
not even Priebke’s adopted homeland of Argentina, where he lived in the
mountain resort of Bariloche, would take him: Foreign Minister Hector
Timerman said his remains wouldn’t be allowed in Argentine territory.
Giachini suggested Priebke might be buried in his native land, noting that he “really loved Germany.”
In
Berlin, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said a German
citizen could be buried in Germany but that no request had been made by
any family members about Priebke.
Priebke was born in Hennigsdorf,
a small town north of Berlin.
The town administration pointed Monday to
local rules that give only residents a right to burial in its cemetery,
German news agency dpa reported.
Exceptions are possible in cases where
people have family graves there, but the Priebke family doesn’t have
any.