Free Republic

One of the most-wanted Nazis in the world, Soren Kam, has died at the age of 93 without having been punished for a murder conviction, The Independent reported on Thursday, citing German media. Kam, a Danish former volunteer officer died on March 23, just a little more than a fortnight after his wife passed away, according to the German newspaper Allgauer Zeitung. He was the fifth-most wanted war criminal by Jewish rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center, which seeks to bring former Nazis to justice and educate about the Holocaust. Kam had been a volunteer officer in the Schalburg Corps, a...

ROME (CNN) - The Italian branch of schismatic Catholic sect with a history of anti-Semitism has agreed to hold a funeral for a convicted Nazi war criminal, despite protests from Jewish groups and the local mayor. -snip- But the conservative Society of St. Pius X, whose leaders were excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1988 for ordaining their own bishops without Vatican approval, agreed Tuesday to hold funeral rites for Priebke. -snip- The society also said that it "reaffirms our repudiation to any form of anti-semitism and racial hatred." But the Society of St. Pius X has a long history...

Following yesterday’s thwarted funeral, some reaction in Italy: The head of Rome’s Jewish community praised protesters who blocked the funeral of a convicted Nazi war criminal as Italy marked on Wednesday the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from the Rome ghetto.Erich Priebke’s final resting place is now unclear after the protesters forced a suspension of his funeral on Tuesday in the Italian town of Albano Laziale. His body is lying at a military airport near Rome pending a decision from the authorities.The former German SS officer died aged 100 last week in Rome, where he had been serving...

After the Rome diocese refused to allow a church funeral for Erich Priebke, a funeral for the convicted Nazi war criminal was held in a chapel of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) outside Rome. The October 15 funeral for Priebke drew a crowd of protesters, with some shouting “murderer” as the coffin passed by, while counter-protesters gave the fascist salute. Police kept the two groups separate. Priebke, who was convicted for orchestrating the killing of over 300 Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves, died last week at the age of 100. He had never disavowed his Nazi...

A convicted Nazi war criminal arrived in Italy yesterday to start a life sentence imposed in his absence for the murder and torture of prisoners in the final year of the Second World War. Michael Seifert, 83, a Ukraine-born Canadian citizen dubbed the "Beast of Bolzano", has lived in Canada since 1951. He had been fighting extradition for eight years. The former SS corporal was a guard at a prison camp in Bolzano, northern Italy - used as a transit point for Jews, Italian resistance fighters and others - in 1944 and 1945. An Italian military tribunal convicted him in...