Kin of Italian victims of Nazis may finally get compensation

HEARING GUNFIRE, Leonildo Pistoni ran from the stables of his farm on the outskirts of Monchio, a mountain village in central Italy. He did not get far before he was shot dead. His killer was a rifleman of the Hermann Göring 1st Paratroop Panzer Division. The date was March 18th, 1944. Pistoni’s only crime was to live in Monchio: the rifleman belonged to a detachment sent to avenge nearby killings by local partisans of German soldiers, who had occupied Italy after it withdrew from the second world war the previous September.The echoes of that lethal shot will reverberate again next month when the victim’s granddaughter, Walda Pistoni, presents a petition for compensation to a judge in Rome. It is the latest in an avalanche of applications to a €61m ($66m) fund set up by the Italian government. “The issue has become enormous,” says Giulio Arria, a lawyer representing several applicants, including Ms Pistoni. He estimates that up to 1,500 claims have been submitted.