Modern/Post-War Photos

Josef Eduard Scheungraber

www.nrw.vvn-bda.de/texte/0351_scheungraber.htm

An 89-year-old former German officer is to face a murder trial over the killing of 14 civilians in Italy during the Second World War. Josef Eduard Scheungraber will go on trial in Munich on September 15. Scheungraber, who was stationed in Italy as the commander of a mountain infantry battalion, is accused of ordering his troops to kill the civilians at Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo, in June 1944. The killings were a reprisal for the killing of two German soldiers and had its most bloody episode when the troops shut 11 people in a farmhouse and then blew up the building. Anton Winkler, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors, said the charges were based on documents and witness testimony, including that of a survivor of the massacre.