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| GOOD AS PLACE AS ANY |
What do you do with the body of a dead nazi the likes of Erich Piebke? Toss it in the trash where it belongs, I say, then take it out to a landfill and bury it in garbage.
You want to know about Erich Priebke. Well, the Jewish Virtual Library will tell you:
Erich Priebke was a SS Hauptsturmführer of Nazi Germany who participated in the massacres at the Ardeatine caves in Rome.
The Guardian adds,
In a written interview recorded a few months before his death, Priebke, who was jailed for life over the execution of hundreds of Italians in the so-called Ardeatine massacre, denied the Holocaust and defends Adolf Hitler and the Nazi ideology. Asked if he still consider himself a Nazi, Priebke answers: "I've chosen to be myself." "[Nazism] is my way of looking at the world. It's my ideals, it is what for us, Germans, was the 'Weltanschauung' (worldview), which has to do with honour and self-respect also today." The text of the interview was given to IBTimes UK by Priebke's lawyer, Paolo Giachini, who was tasked by the former Schutzstaffel (SS) captain with releasing it after his death. He said it is Priebke's "human and political will". In the interview, Priebke proved an arrogant Nazi monster until his dying day. He claims Jews are partially to blame for the Holocaust, the true extent of which he denies. He reveals himself as an unreconstructed anti-Semite who continued to peddle the lies that stoked the genocide of six million Jews, among them 1.5 million children, as well as millions of Russians, Poles, gypsies and homosexuals. "Responsibility lies with both parties," he says. |
"We don't have to bury Priebke in Hennigsdorf and we will not do it."
Priebke's son, a no good Jew hater himself, suggested they bury the old man in Israel. He said, Jews were being unfair to dear old dad and commented,
Why they always pick up on someone [for things happened] during war time, more than 60 years ago.
They should stop being such a pain in the neck, they are resentful, they've been a pain in the neck to the world since before Christ.
Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, told IBTimes UK Priebke's son didn't even deserve a response.
"He is an ignorant racist sympathetic to the Nazis. What he cares about is the memory of his father but unfortunately for him and especially for us his father was a Nazi murderer," said Zuroff, who wrote a book on the Jewish Nazi-hunting organisation's'activity titled Operation Last Chance: One Man's Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice
"It is exactly this kind of anti-Semitic comment that helped creating the background for the rise of the Nazi party."
What to do with the corpse that no one wants.
Up steps the Society of Saint Pius X, that ultra conservative Jew hating bunch who split from the Vatican because they thought it too liberal and too freindly to Jews. One of its disgraced members is Bishop Richard Williamson, who made headlines in 2009 when he denied that any Jews were killed in gas chambers during the Holocaust.
On Saturday, the Bishop Bernard Fellay, the society's Swiss-born leader, attended a church conference right here in Kansas City and reportedly said, "The situation of the church is a real disaster, and the present Pope is making it 10,000 times worse.”
The Italian chapter acknowledged in a statement Tuesday that Priebke was "controversial" but said he had already been convicted by Italian courts and has the right to a Christian burial.
"A Christian who has been baptized and who has received the sacraments of the Confession and the Eucharist, regardless of what have been his crimes and sins, as he dies reconciling with God and with the Church has the right to have a Holy Mass celebrated at his funeral," the group said in a statement.
Although the mayor of Albano Laziale tried to ban the nazis coffin from entering his town for the service, he was overruled by the local governmet prefect.
However, the funeral mass, the procession, the whole shindig did not pass by in peace as the report below from the AFP below shows. The National Post writes:
As the hearse bringing the coffin arrived outside the society’s church, people in the crowd slammed their fists and umbrellas on the car and shouted “We are all anti-fascist!” and “Priebke, murderer!”
Did I mention that tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the round up of Rome's Jewish community during the Holocaust.
Hundreds protest as Catholic rebels hold Nazi funeral
By Vincenzo Pinto (AFP)
ALBANO — Catholic breakaway traditionalists held a funeral for Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke in a town near Rome on Tuesday as hundreds of angry protesters outside shouted "Assassin!" and "Hangman!"
The ultra-conservative Society of St Pius X in Albano began a private ceremony in Latin with family present for the unrepentant former SS officer -- but it had to be interrupted when far-right sympathisers broke into their compound.
Rome prefect Giuseppe Pecoraro, who is responsible for public order, issued a police order banning the group from entering the chapel, at which point the funeral priest left, Italian media reported.
The pro-Nazis had been shouting: "He was a hero!"
Some 500 protesters outside the compound earlier banged on the hearse carrying Priebke's coffin as it was driven through gates into the seminary from a Rome morgue as dozens of riot police pushed back.
Priebke died last week aged 100 while living under house arrest in Rome for a 1944 massacre of 335 people, including 75 Jews, at the Ardeatine caves near the city in retaliation for a partisan attack.
The Holocaust denier, who claimed he was only following Gestapo orders, has caused uproar even in death with an international controversy over his funeral and final resting place.
Protesters and far-right activists in Albano clashed after a group shouting fascist slogans demanded to be allowed to take part.
Local mayor Nicola Marini issued a last-minute decree to prevent the hearse from crossing his town's territory saying it had been a centre of the partisan resistance during World War II but the ruling was struck down by the Rome prefecture.
'Take him to the landfill'
A priest from the Society of St Pius X had to be protected by police as he tried to enter the seminary after being shoved by the protesters.
"Take him to the landfill!" one man shouted as the black hearse passed through the crowd, while others sang the Italian partisan song "Bella Ciao" and held up a banner reading "Priebke Hangman".
"This is a moment of mourning and has nothing to do with politics. We have done our best to respect the feelings of his critics," Priebke's lawyer Paolo Giachini told reporters before the funeral.
Don Floriano Abrahamowicz, a St Pius X priest, defended the decision to host the funeral, telling Radio 24 that "Priebke was a friend of mine, a Christian, a faithful soldier."
"His was the only case of an innocent man behind bars. It's a scandal how he was persecuted in Italy while immigrants are received with dignity."
But Albano's mayor, from the leftist Democratic Party, said he was "shocked" and had not been warned about the controversial funeral.
"We are absolutely against this event," he said.
Tensions are running particularly high in the Italian capital as Wednesday marks the 70th anniversary of a raid by Nazi troops that cleared out the city's historic Jewish quarter.
The funeral coincided with a silent procession through the Rome Ghetto in honour of the more than 1,000 Jews who were taken away to concentration camps -- of whom only 16 came back alive.
Confusion reigned as to whether the funeral would be completed and whether Priebke's body would return to Rome.
Reports suggested authorities wanted him cremated, amid fears a burial could become a rallying point for far-right groups.
Argentina, where Priebke lived for nearly 50 years before being extradited to Italy and where he wanted to be buried, has refused to take the body.
The Vatican also issued an unprecedented ban on celebrating the funeral in any Catholic church in Rome, although it said that a priest could officiate a private ceremony at home.
Jewish groups and relatives of the massacre victims have said the body should be cremated and the ashes scattered to erase his memory forever.
The Society of St Pius X is a Catholic conservative group that broke off from the Vatican in 1970 over opposition to reforms and is often accused of far-right and anti-Semitic leanings.
Priebke escaped from a British POW camp in Italy immediately after World War II and was supplied with Vatican travel documents by a Nazi-sympathising Catholic bishop.
He was sentenced to life in prison in 1998.
Because of his age and ill-health he was allowed to serve out his life sentence at home.
