This just in from Italian news outlets: Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke has died in Rome at age 100. He was in house arrest for the assassination of 344 people at the Fosse Ardeatine on March 24, 1944. After the war, he escaped to Argentina where he lived for many years, and was so comfortable with his position there that he granted an interview to Sam Donaldson of ABC in 1994. Having been prosecuted in absentia, Italian authorities had him extradited to serve his sentence in Rome.
My thoughts today are with Rome's Jewish community and the descendants and family members of the Partisan opposition who fought so valiantly against the Nazis.
As it happens, the anniversary of the deportation of Jews from Rome's Ghetto was recognized today by Pope Francis.
I will simply quote and translate here from the Repubblica article, a statement by Riccardo Pacifici, President of the Jewish Community of Rome:
A living being died today, not a man. In the face of Priebke's death, we may not cry or laugh because in neither case may the victims come back. A bitterness remains for a figure who never denounced his acts and who had blood on his hands, like those of all Nazi troops. Now his victims are there awaiting him in heaven, in the hope that there is divine justice.