The Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi war crimes archive or armoire of shame (Italian : armadio della vergogna) is a wooden cabinet discovered in 1994 inside a large storage room in Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi, Rome which, at the time, housed the chancellery of the military attorney's office. The cabinet contained an archive of 695 files documenting war crimes perpetrated on Italian soil under fascist rule and during Nazi occupation after the 8 September 1943 armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces. The actions described in the records spanned several years and took place in various areas of the country, from the southern city of Acerra to the northern province of Trieste and as far east as the Balkans; it remains unclear, to this day, how the archive remained concealed for so long, and who gave the order to hide the files in the immediate post-war period.
In 1994, military prosecutor Antonino Intelisano, who was at the time in charge of the trial against former SS officer Erich Priebke, accidentally uncovered the content of the wooden cabinet, which had remained stored for decades, face to the wall, in an unused room in Palazzo Cesi. Its contents had seemingly been placed in the armoire temporarily, probably in the immediate post-war months, and forgotten or (perhaps purposely) overlooked.
The armoire contained the memorandum titled Atrocities in Italy, stamped "secret", which had been compiled by the British Secret Intelligence Service, whose officers had documented the victims' accusations and painstakingly collected depositions, and consigned it to the Italian magistrates, who failed to prosecute the individuals mentioned in the files, limiting publication of details and accusations to the cases against unnamed Nazi and fascist officers.
Information in the files led to judicial proceedings starting (or re-starting) on many specific war crimes, including:
Sant'Anna di Stazzema, officially Sant'Anna, is a village in Tuscany, Italy. Administratively, it is a frazione of the comune of Stazzema, in the province of Lucca.
The Piazza Fontana bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, another bomb exploded in a bank in Rome, and another was found unexploded in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The attack was carried out by the Third Position, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo, and possibly undetermined collaborators.
The Bologna massacre was a terrorist bombing of the Bologna Centrale railway station in Bologna, Italy, on the morning of 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200. Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari were sentenced for the bombing, although the group denied involvement.
The Marecchia is a river in eastern Italy, flowing from near Monte dei Frati in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany, to the Adriatic Sea in Rimini, Emilia-Romagna. Along its course, the river passes next to or near the settlements of Novafeltria, Verucchio, and Santarcangelo di Romagna. It passes near the Republic of San Marino. Among its tributaries are the San Marino river and the Ausa.
Gaetano Martino was an Italian politician, physician, and university teacher.
Casteldelci is a comune (municipality) in the province of Rimini, in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, located about 140 kilometres (87 mi) southeast of Bologna and about 55 kilometres (34 mi) southwest of Rimini.
In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.
The Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre was a German war crime, which was committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany, Italy, in the course of an operation against the Italian resistance movement during the Italian Campaign of World War II. On 12 August 1944, the Waffen-SS, with the help of the Italian paramilitary Brigate Nere, murdered about 560 local villagers and refugees, including more than a hundred children, and burned their bodies. These crimes have been defined as voluntary and organized acts of terrorism by the Military Tribunal of La Spezia and the highest Italian court of appeal.
The Acca Larentia killings, also known in Italy as the Acca Larentia massacre, were a double homicide that occurred in Rome on 7 January 1978. The attack was claimed by the self-described Nuclei Armati per il Contropotere Territoriale. Members of militant far-left groups were charged but acquitted, and the culprits were never identified.
Giovanni Oliva is an Italian historian and politician.
Giuseppe Casarrubea was an Italian historian and author.
Vasco Ferretti is an Italian novelist, historian, professor and journalist from Buggiano, Tuscany. He has written books in the fiction genres of historical novels and the Romance novel. His most important books are Kesselring (2009), Vip & Stars (1983), Dante Alighieri e la battaglia di Montecatini (2015), Le stragi naziste sotto la linea gotica 1944: Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Padule di Fucecchio, Marzabotto (2004).
Two of the three major Axis powers of World War II—Nazi Germany and their Fascist Italian allies—committed war crimes in the Kingdom of Italy.
The Caiazzo massacre was the massacre of 22 Italian civilians at Caiazzo, Campania, Southern Italy, on 13 October 1943, during World War II by members of the German 3rd Panzergrenadier Division. The massacre was described as having been of a particularly brutal nature and its leader, Lieutenant Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden, was soon after captured by Allied forces. Lehnigk-Emden confessed to part of the crime but was later accidentally released and, for the next four decades, was not put on trial.
The Massacre of Kos was a war crime perpetrated in early October 1943 by the Wehrmacht against Italian army POWs on the Dodecanese island of Kos, then under Italian occupation. About a hundred Italian officers were shot on the commands of General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, after being considered traitors for resisting the German invasion of the island.
Piazzale Loreto massacre was a Nazi-Fascist massacre that took place in Italy, on 10 August 1944 in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, during the World War II.
The Fragheto massacre was the massacre of 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans in Fragheto, a frazione of Casteldelci in central-northern Italy, on 7 April 1944, during World War II, by soldiers of the German 356th Infantry Division. After partisans belonging to the Eighth Garibaldi Brigade ambushed troops approaching the hamlet, fourteen soldiers of the Sturmbattaillon OB Sudwest conducted house-to-house searches and summarily killed civilians. Representing 40% of the hamlet's population, many of the victims were elderly people, women, or children. A further seven partisans and one civilian were shot the next day at Ponte Carrattoni, at the confluence of the Senatello and Marecchia.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link), retrieved February 2, 2009.