Former SS captain Erich Priebke continues serving a life sentence under comfortable house arrest in Rome at a vigorous 94 years of age. In his spare time he opens lawsuits against writers such as myself.
Four years ago, I received a phone call from Garzanti, the publishers of the Italian translation of my book The Real Odessa. My jaw dropped. Priebke had appealed to a court in Milan, objecting to a chapter about his wartime crimes and Vatican-assisted escape to Argentina.
Priebke was living peacefully in Argentina until 13 years ago, when he was discovered and filmed by an American news team in Bariloche. The screening of the cold-blooded admission of his crimes resulted in his extradition to Italy, where he was convicted for his part in the massacre of 335 partisans, Jews and children at the Ardeatine caves in Rome in 1944.
Being sued by a condemned SS war criminal might appear laughable, except that he was deadly serious. Priebke was demanding €50,000 and the withdrawal of my book, Operazione Odessa, from Italian bookshops.
Adding to the worry, he enjoyed the favour of Italian judges. Since his imprisonment, he had been winning lawsuits against newspapers and relatives of Nazi victims up and down Italy, attending some proceedings in person.
Fortunately, my research proved more solid than Priebke's arguments and the judge in Milan distinguished himself from his colleagues by ruling against Priebke on all counts finally last March, ending the Nazi's winning streak and making me legally justified in calling him a "notorious criminal", the subject of one of his more surprising objections.
Yet Priebke and his lawyers were not completely defeated. Before the lawsuit, Operazione Odessa had inspired Italian parliamentarians to request prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to set up an inquiry into the passage of Nazis through Italy on their way to Argentina. But, with the lawsuit, the debate lost strength and there was barely a mention of Priebke's setback in an Italian press intimidated by his previous successes in court.
Silence of a kind was imposed, damage of a kind was done.
PRIEBKE vs ODESSA
‘For Every German Soldier, 10 Italian Had to Die’
When Erich Priebke was discovered by a US newsman living quietly in the southern town of Barlioche in Argentina, he was totally unrepentant of his part in the killing of 335 civilians in Rome in 1944.
"For every German soldier, 10 Italian had to die," says the former SS captain to ABC journalist Sam Donaldson.
With the international outrcry after the broadcasting of this program in 1994 Priebke was extradited to Italy and sentenced to life imprisonment by a Roman court.
Although he claims to have had no part in the roundup of Jews, some 2,100 Jews were sent from Rome to Nazi concentration camps during the time Priebke was a member of the Gestapo in Rome.
PRIEBKE vs ODESSA
Priebke & Mengele
Two SS criminals, Erich Priebke and Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, entered Argentina with consecutive Immigration file numbers, during a period when 500 files were being opened daily by Immigration authorities in Buenos Aires, showing how there was an organization at work bringing Nazi fugitives to Argentina. The clip is from the Discovery Channel documentary Fugitive Nazis.
