Our Italian physicist friend, Dorigo, at A Quantum Diaries Survivor reports that an Italian court ruled against a newspaper that started a campaign to deny the history of the Ardeatine Massacre.
Good news today. The supreme court of Cassazione in Italy has ruled that the press campaign labeling “terrorists” the GAP partisans who organized the bombing of Via Rasella in nazi-occupied Rome in 1944, launched by the national newspaper “Il Giornale”, was a striking example of manipulation of historic truth for political means. The newspaper is owned by Paolo Berlusconi (brother of Silvio, formerly premier of Italy in 1994 and 2001-2006), and was directed by Vittorio Feltri . . . a journalist who never hid his sympathy for the extreme right.
What was the Ardeatine Massacre?
The massacre of Fosse Ardeatine (Italian: Eccidio delle Fosse Ardeatine) took place in Rome, Italy during World War II. On 23 March 1944, 2 German soldiers, 31 Italian soldiers of Battaglione Bozen and a few Italian civilians passing along the road, were killed when members of the Italian Resistance set off a bomb close to a column of German soldiers who were marching on via Rasella[1]. This terrorist attack was led by the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica, of Rosario Bentivegna, Carla Capponi, Antonello Trombadori (Head of GAP in Roma) and the approval of Sandro Pertini (later President of Italian Republic), in order to provocate the reaction of SS troops.
Adolf Hitler is reported but never confirmed to have ordered that within 24 hours, one-hundred Italians were to be shot for each dead German. Commander Herbert Kappler in Rome concluded that ten Italians for each dead German would be sufficient and quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be killed. Kappler voluntarily added ten more names to the list when the 33rd German/Italian died after the Partisan attack. The total number of people murdered at the Fosse Ardeatine was 335, most Italians. The largest cohesive group among the murdered were the members of Bandiera Rossa, a Communist military Resistance group.
Why is there controversy 60 years later? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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