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German President Apologizes to Italy
for Nazi massacre
Wednesday, 17-Apr-2002
Story from AFP / Claudine Renaud
Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse
MARZABOTTO, Italy, April 17 (AFP) - German President Johannes Rau expressed his "profound sorrow and shame" to Italy Wednesday for the Nazi massacre of almost 1,000 villagers at the end of World War II.
A solemn Rau made the formal apology at a ceremony attended by families of the victims gathered in this Appenine town near the northern city of Bologna. The 955 victims, including women and children, came from Marzabotto and a cluster of surrounding villages raided by SS troops between September 29 and October 5, 1944.
"When I think of the children and of the mothers, of women and entire families, victims of the extermination of those days 58 years ago, during which the Germans brought violence and an immense pain to Marzabotto, it brings me a feeling of profound sorrow and shame," said Rau. "I bow before these deaths," he added, flanked by an openly weeping German ambassador to Italy, Klaus Neubert.
The apology for the Nazi slaughter as the highlight of a four-day official visit to Italy that Rau began on Monday. The half-hour ceremony took place before about 100 invited guests in front of a ruined church in the Monte Sole district of the town where many of the victims lived. The president, accompanied by his Italian counterpart Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, had earlier visited a memorial to the victims in the town centre. It is decorated with plaques linking this mountain town of 6,000 people with others which have experienced similar wartime tragedies, among the Oradour-sur-Glane in France, Coventry in Britain, and Guernica in Spain.
The massacre, the worst atrocity carried out in Italy during World War II, is burned into the collective memory of Marzabottoand the neighbouring villages of Girzzana and Monzuno. SS troops under the command of Walter Reder rounded up and shot 955 civilians, including 216 children and 316 women, ostensibly in an attempt to rout the Italian resistance. The victims are buried in the local cemetery.
"It's a worthy gesture," Pasquale Palmieri, 77, a former member of the Italian resistance and a Survivor of the massacre, said earlier Wednesday. "It will show perhaps that there is no more hatred. I agree with it. But my neighbour who had 19 members of his family killed won't be going to the ceremony." "He says that it's not Rau who should come but the four officers who are still alive and who did the killing," Palmieri told AFP.
Palmieri was 18 when he joined the Italian resistance against the occupying Germans, who became Italy's enemy after a treaty between Italy and the allies in 1943. He recounted his horror at seeing a three-month-old baby thrown in the air and shot by the Nazis, before his parents were executed. "There are things which break your heart and nobody can comfort you," he said as tears swelled in his eyes.
Reder was sentenced to life imprisonment by a military tribunal in Bologna in 1951, seven years after the slaughter. He was freed in 1985. According to an Italian weekly news magazine, L'Espresso, around a dozen ex-SS officers who participated in the massacre are still alive and have been identified by Italian magistrates who want to question them.
Rau compared the SS officers who carried out the killing to "hyenas", the consequences of whose actions "must be faced by the generations to come." The German president said that at the end of the war "reconciliation seemed impossible." He thanked Italians for the fact that "Marzabotto is no longer something which divides but which unites." "What happened is a part of our common history and from it was born our duty to a peaceful future," Rau said.
Ciampi, 80, said that memory of the massacre would serve as a warning "so that there will never again be blood spilt between the peoples of Europe."
Source: www.custermen.com
Maybe not all of them. Here is a news article released in 2002. German President Apologizes to Italy for Nazi massacre Wednesday, 17-Apr-2002 - Story from AFP / Claudine Renaud MARZABOTTO, Italy, April 17 (AFP) - German President Johannes Rau expressed his "profound sorrow and shame" to Italy Wednesday for the Nazi massacre of almost 1,000 villagers at the end of World War II. A solemn Rau made the formal apology at a ceremony attended by families of the victims gathered in this Appenine town near the northern city of Bologna. The 955 victims, including women and children, came from Marzabotto and a cluster of surrounding villages raided by SS troops between September 29 and October 5, 1944. The apology for the Nazi slaughter as the highlight of a four-day official visit to Italy that Rau began on Monday. The half-hour ceremony took place before about 100 invited guests in front of a ruined church in the Monte Sole district of the town where many of the victims lived. The president, accompanied by his Italian counterpart Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, had earlier visited a memorial to the victims in the town centre. It is decorated with plaques linking this mountain town of 6,000 people with others which have experienced similar wartime tragedies, among the Oradour-sur-Glane in France, Coventry in Britain, and Guernica in Spain. The massacre, the worst atrocity carried out in Italy during World War II, is burned into the collective memory of Marzabotto and the neighbouring villages of Girzzana and Monzuno. SS troops under the command of Walter Reder rounded up and shot 955 civilians, including 216 children and 316 women, ostensibly in an attempt to rout the Italian resistance. The victims are buried in the local cemetery. For more on this war crimes, see book “Silence on Monte Sole”, by Jack Olsen, published by G. P. Putnam and Sons, New York, 1968
It would probably be to humiliating for them to admit their wrondoings, and there haven't really been any accounts of the Germans apologizing, so most likely no, they did not.
MOST LIKELY, SOME DID.
_____
Steady on! "The Germans" can either mean individual Germans or German governments. As for the latter, please note:
- From 1953-1975 West Germany made voluntary payments to Israel.
- Many German Holocaust survivors and also Jews who emigrated from Germany in the early years of Nazi rule received compensation - obviously not in full, but some compensation nevertheless. Many were compensated for loss of property and awarded pensions. In a few cases they were also given free medical treatment in Germany.
- Since 1949 people who were stripped of German citizenship by the Nazis have been entitled by law to have it restored on demand. This is enshrined in the German Constitution and applies to Jews and non-Jews alike.
- In 1990 the then East German parliament, conscious that East Germany had done very little to make amends, passed a law allowing Jews from anywhere in the world to settle in East Germany with very few questions asked. When the two parts of Germany were reunited later that year, this law was adopted with only very minor modifications by Germany as a whole. An estimated 150,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union have settled in Germany since 1991.
German governments may not have made a formal apology (probably for legal reasons) but they made very some practical efforts to make amends.
Also - in 1970, when the then Chancellot Willy Brandt visited Warsaw he knelt, apparently spontaneously, in front of the memorial to the dead of the Warsaw Ghetto. A survey conducted by the Spiegel magazine indicated that 41% of West Germans thought it was appropriate, 48% thought it was 'exaggerated' and 11% were unsure.
West Germany was the first country to make Holocaust denial a criminal offence. (Even if one dislikes this as an infringement of freedom of speech it does suggest something about official attitudes).
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What was the hollocust?
The holocaust was the mass murderig of mainly jews but also people like disabled people or homosexual people, they wre put into consentration camps and starved,beaten and made to work, many people died, some went into the rich peoples houses as slaves and could be beaten when ever. The holocaust was lead by Hitler in the 2nd world war there are still survivors of the holocaust today, eg. I know the first soldier who went into Auschwitz as the holocaust ended to help get people out. The holocaust was horrible. You can find out more by just googleing the holocaust hope this helped :)
Were other people killed along side the Jewish people in Europe?
Absolutely. The genocidal policies of the Nazis resulted in the deaths of about as many Polish Gentiles as Polish Jews, thus making them co-victims in a Forgotten Holocaust. This Holocaust has been largely ignored because historians who have written on the subject of the Holocaust have chosen to interpret the tragedy in exclusivistic terms--namely, as the most tragic period in the history of the Jewish Diaspora. To them, the Holocaust was unique to the Jews, and they therefore have had little or nothing to say about the nine million Gentiles, including three million Poles, who also perished in the greatest tragedy the world has ever known. Little wonder that many people who experienced these events share the feeling of Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, who anxious when the meaning of the word Holocaust undergoes gradual modifications, so that the word begins to belong to the history of the Jews exclusively, as if among the victims there were not also millions of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and prisoners of other nationalities. -- Richard C. Lukas, preface to The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944
How did Hitler say he was going to make Germany better?
He said that he was going to better the economy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, satisfy the thirsty and give Germans more living-space.
Did Isi Brauman die during the Holocaust?
No one knows anything about Isac and his family after the Germans occupied Liepaja on June 29th 1941. He had a older brother, named Isi. At that time the Germans occupied Liepaja, Isac was 4, and Isi was 7.No traces of what happend to their family have ever been found.Here, read the whole thing on this link;http://www.graceproducts.com/fmnc/bisac.htmAnd if you are curious about his brother;http://www.graceproducts.com/fmnc/bisi.htmRead more: Did_Isi_Brauman_die_during_the_Holocaust
How long did the Holocaust last in years?
The Holocaust in the sense of the systemtatic extermination (genocide) of the Jews lasted from 1941-45.Obviously, ever since Hitler came to power in 1933, Jews had been persecuted, first in Germany and then in the various countries annexed and invaded by Germany. Important 'milestones' on the road to the holocaust include the establishment of ghettos where Jews were forced to live in intolerable conditions (Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow).___The Nazis started putting people in camps as early as 1933. Many people died in those camps before the "Final Solution" was developed. Those earlier years should be included. We should also include other targeted groups such as Gypsies, Slavs, the mentally retarded, and political prisoners.___Well, if you're going to include 'putting people in camps', then it was plain, ordinary persecution - like in Pinochet's Chile - and the word 'Holocaust' is just a melodramatic redundancy. In other words the last answer is profoundly wrong.
What did the Germans think of the Holocaust when it was revealed?
many denied it ever happend especially the slaughtering of the Jews
Mass slaughter of Jews?
The Germans at the time called it "the Final solution". The Jews to whom it was done call it the "holocaust". What ever it was called it was a genocide of massive proportions.
Why did the Jews get whipped during the holocaust?
Whipping was one of many punishments. As the Germans had total power over the Jews, they could do what ever they wanted.
Did the jews ever deny the germans work?
Jews did not prevent Germans from working at any time in German history.
Will the Jews ever get over the Holocaust?
Individual survivors were generally very resilient and managed to rebuild their lives. If you mean something like, 'Will the Jews ever forget the Holocaust?' then the answer is no. It has become one of the most salient aspects of Jewish identity, or to put it differently, the Jews have become 'the people of the Holocaust'. Others may have different ideas about this.
Did the Jews ever protest against the Germans?
Presumably you mean stand up to. See the related question.
Will the Jews ever forget the Holocaust?
No. According to some observers it has become a (or even the) key feature of Jewish identity.
Have the Jews forgiven the Germans for the Holocaust?
I'm not sure that anyone has the authority to 'forgive' the Germans (or rather, the Nazis) for the Holocaust. (Obviously, individual survivors and their children can forgive as individuals; but they aren't in any position to forgive on behalf of others).If you are asking whether all Jews the world over hate the Germans, the answer is no. In fact, in the last 15 years or so, about 100,000 Jews from former Soviet Union have chosen to settle in Germany. Moreover, Germans who were deprived of citizenship on racial and/or political grounds and their descendants can have their German citizenship restored on request. About 70,000 people - mainly descendants - have done so.However, the Holocaust was committed by groups of individuals. Very few former death camp personnel were ever put on trial and practically none have apologized for anything.If you mean something more along the lines: 'Do the Jews worldwide bear Germany a grudge for the Holocaust?' I think the answer is that most do not.Germans who were deprived of citizenship on racial and/or political grounds and their descendants can have their German citizenship restored on request. About 70,000 people - mainly descendants - have done so. That suggests that they have a reasonably positive view of Germany.
What has the author Trude Levi written?
Trude Levi has written: 'Did you ever meet Hitler, Miss?' -- subject(s): Biography, Personal narratives, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), Jews, Holocaust survivors 'A cat called Adolf' -- subject(s): Biography, Personal narratives, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), Jews, Holocaust survivors
Why was the Holocaust associated with Germany?
Have you ever heard of Hitler? He was the Nazi leader which is often considered as Germans which is a big stereotype. Hitler started the Holocaust so that is the connection___The Holocaust was carried out by men in German uniforms acting on orders passed down from their leaders. To put it simply: It was Germany that committed the Holocaust.
What do Jewish people think of the Holocaust?
Jews (along with many other cultures of people) think that the Holocaust was one of the most horrible and depressing times in history. Nothing can ever erase what was done.
During the Holocaust did Nazi officials ever employ Jews as servants?
yes, they did, not so much as paid servants but more so as 'slaves"
