Hearing gunshots, Leonildo Pistoni ran from the stables on his farm outside the mountain village of Monchio in central Italy. He didn’t get far until he was shot dead. His killer was Hermann Göring, a rifleman with the 1st Paratrooper Panzer Division. The date was March 18, 1944. Mr. Pistoni’s only crime was living in Monchio. The riflemen belonged to a detachment sent to avenge the nearby killings by local partisans of German soldiers occupying Italy after it was withdrawn from World War II. September.
The echoes of that fatal gunshot will be heard again next month when Warda Pistoni, the victim’s granddaughter, files a claim for compensation before a judge in Rome. This is the latest in an avalanche of applications for the 61 million euro (about $66 million) fund set up by the Italian government. “The problem has become huge,” said Giulio Arria, a lawyer who represents several applicants, including Mr. Pistoni. He estimates up to 1,500 claims have been filed.
The petitioners also include descendants of victims of arbitrary killings like Mr. Pistoni. Number of partisans executed. Jews and Roma who died in Nazi concentration camps. and Italian soldiers, sailors, and aviators sent to Germany as forced labor. In cases that have already been decided, descendants of people forced into forced labor have received payments of between 30,000 and 40,000 euros. Relatives of those who died were paid even larger sums. Two sisters left orphaned after their father died in a massacre in Tuscany received €270,000 each. This has raised questions about the appropriateness of the fund, which was created to avert a crisis in relations between EU member states.
Germany has long maintained that responsibility for its military’s actions in Italy was settled in 1962, when it handed over 40 million D-marks (equivalent to about 1.5 billion euros today). However, this cash was not primarily intended to compensate individuals, but only applied to claims then existing within its scope. Italian judges then ordered the German government to pay bounties to numerous survivors and descendants of the victims, but Germany refused. Poland’s previous government had set a much larger claim against Germany, demanding 1.3 trillion euros. But even there, Germany maintains that all its debts were forgiven under a decades-old deal.
In 2012, the International Court of Justice ruled in Germany’s favor on the grounds that the government would not abide by the rulings of other countries’ courts. But two years later, Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled that it is liable if the underlying crime violates international law. Italian judges continued to issue rulings, and in 2022 a court in Rome was poised to order the confiscation of German government-owned assets, including the Goethe Institute. Then Italy’s previous government, led by Mario Draghi, intervened and created a new fund. This originally covered outstanding claims, and he had set a 30-day deadline for filing new claims. However, that deadline has been extended in stages until the end of 2023, allowing hundreds more submissions.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the Italian government have been fighting the applicants at every turn on behalf of the German government. Their opposition drew condemnation from some politicians. “They are making skin-chilling arguments,” said Dario Parini, a senator from the opposition Democratic Party. Last May, he introduced a bill to rein in government lawyers. The bill garnered bipartisan support but has since languished in committee.
The government appeals every verdict, and appeals in Italy can take years, so it’s unlikely any part of the cash will be paid out. Two orphan girls, now in their 80s, may never see a Eurocent. “From a legal standpoint, I’m not surprised,” said Arya, the lawyer. “But as the grandson of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and never returned, I am horrified.”
© 2023, The Economist Newspaper. All rights reserved. Published under license by The Economist. Original content available at www.economist.com.