There was a German Nazi SS officer who was one of the main participants in the Rome Massacre. After the war ended, he fled to South America and spent nearly 50 years of peaceful life very comfortably. Perhaps he thought people had forgotten his crimes and even accepted a high-profile interview, exposing his true identity to the world. The result was that he was arrested and imprisoned in his 80s, and eventually extradited for trial, betraying imprisonment. However, this former SS officer eventually lived to be one hundred years old, and he was the captain of the SS First Class Assault Squadron, Prebek.
Erich Priebke was born in July 1913. His parents passed away early and he was raised by his uncle. After graduating from high school, he started working as a waiter in hotels and worked in Germany, England, and Italy. This taught him Italian through self-study. In 1936, he joined the SS as a translator for the Gestapo. In 1941, he was sent to work at the SS Security Service in Rome.
Priebke was a major participant in the Roman Massacre. In March 1944, a group of SS soldiers were bombed by guerrillas, resulting in the death of 33 German soldiers. Hitler and Goebbels once issued an order that if a German soldier was killed, ten Italians would be killed in retaliation. The SS commander in Rome, Kapler, strictly followed this order. As Kapler’s assistant, Prebek personally drafted and reviewed a list of 335 Italian hostages and participated in the shooting of the hostages. The additional five hostages were reportedly added by Prebek himself.
On March 24, 1944, under the leadership of SS officers such as Kappler, Prebuk, and Karl Haas, SS soldiers escorted 335 victims to a cave called Ardeatine on the outskirts of Rome. They were placed in groups of five, with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the back of their heads. The cave was filled with corpses, so that the victims who were later taken into the cave could only kneel on top of their bodies and be killed. During the process of supervising the murder, Priebuk personally entered the cave and shot two hostages with his own hands. After all the hostages were executed, the SS used explosives to blow up the cave entrance and buried all the bodies in the cave.
The victims of this massacre included Jews, members of resistance organizations, and Italian prisoners of war, as well as some civilians randomly captured by the SS on the streets. Even with the strict order of shooting hostages at 1:10, there were five more victims in this massacre, which became the main factor in later convicting Priebuk.
After Germany surrendered, Priebuk was arrested by the Allied forces in Italy. Knowing that his guilt was inevitable, Priebuk escaped from the prisoner of war camp in 1946. With the help of residual Nazi organizations, he hid in Italy, Germany, and Austria. In 1948, he obtained a new identity and changed his name to Otto Pape. He smuggled into Argentina with his family. Despite being accused of war crimes, Priebuk still spent 47 years of freedom in Argentina.
In April 1994, ABC journalists Harry Phillips and Sam Donald discovered Priebuck’s whereabouts through extensive investigations and conducted interviews with him. After some hesitation, Priebuk accepted an interview and admitted his true identity and role in the massacre, but he defended himself by saying that he was only following orders and believed that the victims were all terrorists and should be punished. When asked by reporters why they killed the elderly and children, Priebuk firmly denied it, but it has been confirmed that three 14-year-old teenagers and one 75 year old man were among the victims. When asked again why the Jews were shot, Prebek’s answer was: because they were Jews, it was better to (execute them on the spot) free up trains to transport other things instead of transporting them to Auschwitz. 50 years later, at the age of 80, Priebuk had no remorse for his Nazi views and war crimes.
After the news was exposed, the Argentine government arrested Priebuk under public pressure, but did not imprison him due to health reasons. Instead, he was placed under house arrest. Germany and Italy have made extradition requests, and Priebuk’s lawyer has delayed extradition for various reasons, even denying prosecution against him. The lawyer’s reason is that according to Argentine law, the statute of limitations for murder is 15 years, and Priebuk’s crime has exceeded the statute of limitations.
After a year and a half of delay, at the end of 1995, with the efforts of judicial professionals from multiple countries, Prebek was extradited back to Italy. Coincidentally, the plane he was on landed at a military airport in the suburbs of Rome, which happened to be located near the Ardeatine cave where the massacre was carried out.
The trial of Priebuk lasted for four years, and he denied all charges against him in court. He attributed the cause of the Rome Massacre to the Italian guerrillas who killed German soldiers and were called “terrorists” by him. He insisted that his participation in the massacre was obedience to orders from superiors, and that it was a reasonable warning and punishment. This was a common excuse used by many Nazi war criminals who committed war crimes after the war, but the Nuremberg Tribunal had long denied this claim. Strangely enough, the Italian court accepted his defense, acquitted him, and released him in court.
This verdict caused a huge uproar, with angry crowds gathering outside the court to protest and protest. The prosecutor also filed a protest, but the Italian Supreme Court overturned the verdict, and Priebuk was arrested again. In March 1998, the court sentenced Priebuke to life imprisonment, and in August of the same year, the Supreme Court upheld the original verdict. Due to his advanced age, he was not suitable for imprisonment and could only be placed under house arrest, but the execution was not strict, and Priebuk still had a lot of freedom of movement in the future.
But Prebuk refused to accept the judgment. He appealed the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The court again rejected his appeal. Prebuk was indignant: I have spent nearly 50 years for Argentina, and they don’t want me. I fought for Germany in the war, but now they want me to be tried for obeying orders.
On October 11, 2013, Priebuk died of natural causes in Rome at the age of 100. Before his death, he applied to the Argentine government to send his ashes back to Argentina to be buried with his wife, but was refused by Argentina; The German government also refused his request to return to his hometown for burial; The Vatican has issued an unprecedented ban, prohibiting all churches from holding his funeral. In the end, a splinter Catholic group, the Brothers of St. Pius X (SSPX), which was not under the control of the Roman Catholic Church, held his funeral. His funeral was chaotic, with armed clashes between pro Nazi organizations and anti Nazi activists. His relatives and family members did not attend the funeral because they were unable to enter the scene surrounded by protesters.
The Italian government took over Priebuk’s coffin and transported it to a secret location for disposal, in order to prevent his grave from becoming a pilgrimage site for the neo Nazis. Priebuk, a hundred year old Nazi war criminal, ended up with no burial.
