Sant'Anna di Stazzema
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Sant'Anna di Stazzema is a village in Italian Tuscany. It was the site of a World War II massacre.
Massacre
On August 12 1944, SS of 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS rounded up 560 villagers and refugees - men, women, children - and shot, then burned them. The village was never rebuilt, and stands as a memorial.
In Italy, the massacre was not publicly known until 1994, when nearly 700 reports about it were accidentally found in a metal cabinet (named "cupboard of shame" by Italian media) in the basement of the Rome military court.
Trial
Until 2004, no one had ever been prosecuted for the massacre. In July 2004, a trial started before a military court in La Spezia against 10 former SS officers living in Germany. After an year of trial, on June 22, 2005 the ten former Nazi officers were found guilty of the massacre by an Italian military court and sentenced in absence to life imprisonment. The convicts are:
- Karl Gropler
- Georg Rauch
- Gerard Sommer
- Alfred Schoneberg
- Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag
- Alfred Concina
- Horst Richter
- Werner Bruss
- Heinrich Schendel
- Ludwig Goering