Qutoe Italy court: Germany must pay for WWII massacre - International Herald Tribune ROME: Italy's top criminal court on Tuesday ordered Germany to pay damages to the families of victims of a World War II massacre and upheld the conviction of a former sergeant in the German military. The Court of Cassation ordered Berlin to pay a total of €1 million (US$1.32 million) to nine family members of some of the victims in the 1944 massacre in Tuscany, said Augusto Dossena, a lawyer representing the German government. The Rome judges upheld a 2007 appeals court ruling which also sentenced to life in prison a former sergeant in an elite paratrooper unit. He was convicted in absentia for taking part in the massacre of more than 200 civilians in and around the Tuscan town of Civitella. In June 1944, soldiers in the Hermann Goering division, named after the head of Hitler's air force, shot many of the inhabitants and destroyed most of the homes in Civitella to avenge a deadly attack by partisans. Italian law allows victims of a crime to attach civil lawsuits to a trial, and Dossena said it was the first time the high court had ordered Germany to pay damages as part of criminal proceedings for a Nazi-era massacre — a ruling that could set a precedent for other cases.
