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Investigation into massacre which inspired 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' reopened
Former German soldiers accused of involvement in the massacre of Italian prisoners of war portrayed in “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” could face prosecution after a diary was found in which it was alleged they boasted of the murders.
The discovery of the long-lost report has reopened an investigation into the killings which inspired Louis de Bernieres’s book.
The find has raised hopes in Italy that there might finally be some justice for the 6,000 Italian officers and men who were slaughtered by German forces in a savage reprisal for a revolt on the idyllic Greek island of Cephalonia in Sept 1943.
Italian investigators are said to have stumbled across a dispatch allegedly written by a military chaplain, Father Luigi Ghilardini, soon after the massacre, in which he claimed that two German soldiers who had been taken prisoner bragged of their involvement in the mass killing.
“The soldiers ... who had previously been prisoners of ours ... boasted that they shot 170 unarmed soldiers who had surrendered”, the chaplain allegedly wrote.
His account was said to have been found in the Italian army’s archives in Rome by prosecutors who were investigating the alleged involvement in the slaughter of a German officer, Lt Otmar Muelhauser.
The case against him had to be dropped last year when he died at his home in Munich in July, just short of his 89th birthday.
Italian military investigators contacted police in Germany, who discovered that the soldiers, now 86, are still alive.
“We’ve opened a new investigation and we are trying to verify the nature of their involvement in the Cephalonia massacre,” said the chief military prosecutor in Rome, Antonino Intelisano.
“At this point we are trying to establish concrete facts, which is why we have requested the help of the German authorities.” The former Wehrmacht soldiers, who were 19 at the time of the massacre, have both been questioned in the presence of their lawyers, during which they reportedly said they had no role in the atrocity.
Allegations that they were involved in the horrific massacre of soldiers from Italy’s Acqui Division were first investigated by the Italians in the late 1950s, and then by German police during the 1960s, but both inquiries concluded that there was not enough evidence to send them to trial.
The killing of 5,500 Italian soldiers and nearly 500 officers is thought to have been the second-largest murder of prisoners of war during the Second World War, ranking alongside the infamous 1940 Katyn Forest massacre of Polish army officers by Soviet military police.
It formed the background to Louis de Bernieres’s 1993 best-selling book, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”, which was turned into a Hollywood film starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz in 2001.
Only one person has ever been held to account for the killings on Cephalonia — a senior German commander, General Hubert Lanz, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1948.
Italy had originally occupied Cephalonia at the start of the war, after allying with Germany.
But when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, the Italians stationed on the island faced an agonising decision.
The garrison commander told them they had three choices: surrender to the Germans, declare neutrality or take up the fight on behalf of the Allies.
They eventually decided to resist. After days of fierce fighting, during which about 1,200 Italians were killed, the Germans won control of the island.
They then rounded up thousands of the surviving Italian troops and shot them as a reprisal for what they regarded as betrayal of the Axis cause.
One of the last survivors of the massacre told Il Messagero newspaper that he was lined up in a firing squad but the bullets missed him.
“I was saved by the body of a comrade which shielded me,” said Salvatore Di Rado, now 94, who lives in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.
“I stayed still under all the bodies, pretending to be dead, and then when darkness fell, and the Germans went away, I hid in the scrub, suffering the agonies of hunger and thirst. But I was alive, and farmers on Cephaloni later gave me help.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-reopened.html
Investigation into massacre which inspired 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' reopened
Former German soldiers accused of involvement in the massacre of Italian prisoners of war portrayed in “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” could face prosecution after a diary was found in which it was alleged they boasted of the murders.
The discovery of the long-lost report has reopened an investigation into the killings which inspired Louis de Bernieres’s book.
The find has raised hopes in Italy that there might finally be some justice for the 6,000 Italian officers and men who were slaughtered by German forces in a savage reprisal for a revolt on the idyllic Greek island of Cephalonia in Sept 1943.
Italian investigators are said to have stumbled across a dispatch allegedly written by a military chaplain, Father Luigi Ghilardini, soon after the massacre, in which he claimed that two German soldiers who had been taken prisoner bragged of their involvement in the mass killing.
“The soldiers ... who had previously been prisoners of ours ... boasted that they shot 170 unarmed soldiers who had surrendered”, the chaplain allegedly wrote.
His account was said to have been found in the Italian army’s archives in Rome by prosecutors who were investigating the alleged involvement in the slaughter of a German officer, Lt Otmar Muelhauser.
The case against him had to be dropped last year when he died at his home in Munich in July, just short of his 89th birthday.
Italian military investigators contacted police in Germany, who discovered that the soldiers, now 86, are still alive.
“We’ve opened a new investigation and we are trying to verify the nature of their involvement in the Cephalonia massacre,” said the chief military prosecutor in Rome, Antonino Intelisano.
“At this point we are trying to establish concrete facts, which is why we have requested the help of the German authorities.” The former Wehrmacht soldiers, who were 19 at the time of the massacre, have both been questioned in the presence of their lawyers, during which they reportedly said they had no role in the atrocity.
Allegations that they were involved in the horrific massacre of soldiers from Italy’s Acqui Division were first investigated by the Italians in the late 1950s, and then by German police during the 1960s, but both inquiries concluded that there was not enough evidence to send them to trial.
The killing of 5,500 Italian soldiers and nearly 500 officers is thought to have been the second-largest murder of prisoners of war during the Second World War, ranking alongside the infamous 1940 Katyn Forest massacre of Polish army officers by Soviet military police.
It formed the background to Louis de Bernieres’s 1993 best-selling book, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”, which was turned into a Hollywood film starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz in 2001.
Only one person has ever been held to account for the killings on Cephalonia — a senior German commander, General Hubert Lanz, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1948.
Italy had originally occupied Cephalonia at the start of the war, after allying with Germany.
But when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, the Italians stationed on the island faced an agonising decision.
The garrison commander told them they had three choices: surrender to the Germans, declare neutrality or take up the fight on behalf of the Allies.
They eventually decided to resist. After days of fierce fighting, during which about 1,200 Italians were killed, the Germans won control of the island.
They then rounded up thousands of the surviving Italian troops and shot them as a reprisal for what they regarded as betrayal of the Axis cause.
One of the last survivors of the massacre told Il Messagero newspaper that he was lined up in a firing squad but the bullets missed him.
“I was saved by the body of a comrade which shielded me,” said Salvatore Di Rado, now 94, who lives in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.
“I stayed still under all the bodies, pretending to be dead, and then when darkness fell, and the Germans went away, I hid in the scrub, suffering the agonies of hunger and thirst. But I was alive, and farmers on Cephaloni later gave me help.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-reopened.html
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