Survivors of WWII Massacre in Italy Persist in Quest for Justice

On August 12, 1944, during WWII, Waffen SS troops massacred 560 people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Italy. An excerpt from the article:

"Enrico Pieri was ten when German SS soldiers attacked his home village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema, Italy on Aug. 12, 1944 in a massacre that left 560 people, mostly women and children, dead.

Nearly seventy years later, justice remains elusive for Pieri and others, as German prosecution rejected the re-opening of an investigation into the massacre, citing the lack of proof for planned action and for the guilt of the individuals involved.

In 1944, Sant’Anna, situated on the hills of the Tuscan city of Lucca, was considered a “white zone”. Reachable only through a path in the woods, many local refugees fled to Sant’Anna, where the war seemed too far away to affect them – until the morning of Aug. 12, when the 16th Panzergrenadier Division “Reichsführer SS” approached and encircled the village.

The news of their arrival spread quickly. Fearing capture, the men hid in the mountains, while women, children and the elderly remained in their houses, certain that the Germans would not harm them.

Unlike the other men, Pieri’s father, uncles and grandfather stayed home to protect the house. When the soldiers arrived, everyone else was forced into a neighbour’s kitchen, where Pieri managed to hide in a locker, Pieri has recounted publicly.

The gunfire started immediately and lasted for five minutes. Pieri heard one of his sisters screaming, and then, silence. When he left his hiding place, the bodies of his mother, father, two sisters and grandparents lay on the floor.

From the field where he spent the following hours hiding together with two other survivors, he could hear the screams and cries coming from houses that the Germans set on fire. They returned to the village once the troops had left, but by then everyone was dead. Still, no one has yet served a sentence for the massacre of Sant’Anna.

Today Pieri is the president of the Association for the Martyrs of Sant’Anna and still struggling for justice. “Crimes against civilians like the one Sant’Anna must be condemned,” he told IPS.

'We don’t want any revenge,' he insisted, 'but justice, yes, we want it, as a matter of respect for the victims.'”