Ss mann erich priebke biography
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Erich Priebke, convicted Nazi war criminal, dies in Rome aged 100
Erich Priebke, one of the last Nazis to be convicted of war crimes, has died at the age of 100 after serving a life sentence for murders committed in Italy during World War II.
Priebe, a former SS officer who never expressed remorse, had been living under house arrest in Rome after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 for his role in a bloodbath at Rome's Ardeatine caves in March 1944 that left 335 people dead, including 75 Jews.
Because of his age and ill-health he was allowed to serve out his life sentence at the home of his lawyer Paolo Giachini, who told AFP the former SS captain had "died aged 100".
He will be buried near his wife in Argentina, where he fled after the war, Mr Giachini said.
Nicknamed the "butcher of the Ardeatine caves", Priebke always insisted that he had only ever obeyed orders.
"The order came directly from Hitler in Berlin," he told the Italian
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Body of Nazi Erich Priebke moved to Italian airport
He was one of the SS officers overseeing the killing of men and boys at Rome's Ardeatine Caves in 1944, one of the worst massacres in Italy during World War II.
In a reprisal for the killing of 33 German soldiers in Rome by resistance fighters, 335 Italian civilians were shot dead. It is believed that Adolf Hitler ordered 10 Italians killed for every German.
Though Priebke admitted his role in the massacre, he never expressed any remorse and maintained he was following orders.
He was extradited in 1994 after investigative journalists from US television network ABC News tracked him down in Argentina.
In 1998, he was sentenced to life in prison. However, he pleaded that he was too old and sick for jail, and was soon allowed to switch to a regime of house arrest.
The Vatican had issued an unprecedented ban on holding Priebke's begravning in any Catholic church in Rome, but a Catholic splinter group, the Society of St Piu
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Erich Priebke
Erich Priebke was a SS Hauptsturmführer of Nazi Germany who participated in the massacres at the Ardeatine caves in Rome.
Priebke (born July 29, 1913; died October 11, 2013) was born in Hennigsdorf, Germany. Serving as an officer in the Nazi SS, Priebke was among the forces sent by Adolf Hitler to secure Italy from allied invasion in 1943.
In March 1944, 33 German soldiers marching on Via Rasella were killed bygd a bomb set off bygd Italian Communist partisans. Hitler made an order that within 24 hours, ten Italians were to be shot for each dead German. Nazi authorities in Rome quickly compiled a list of 330 civilians which were to be killed, many of them prisoners for petty offenses, many Jews and some other people also got arrested.
The victims were transported to the Ardeatine caves in groups of five people where they were led into the cave with their hands tied behind their back and then shot in the neck. Many were forced to kneel down over the bodies of those wh