World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder welcomed reports that Argentine, Roman and Catholic authorities are moving to block a funeral for notorious Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, who died Friday at age 100.
Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timerman gave an order not to accept the return of Priebke’s body, Argentine authorities said Friday.
Rome's mayor, its police chief, and the pope's right-hand man have unanimously refused to grant Priebke a church funeral or burial in the city where he was involved in one of the worst massacres in German-occupied Italy.
Lauder declared: "The entire world is expressing its revulsion at this unrepentant Nazi war criminal. We commend the government of Argentina, the Mayor of Rome, and the Church for refusing to give Erich Priebke posthumous rehabilitation and credibility. His corpse should be cremated and its ashes scattered in an unknown location, as was done with Adlof Eichmann and Osama Bin Laden, lest his grave become yet another shrine for Neo-Nazis and other anti-Semites."
Priebke was an SS captain who took part in a 1944 massacre at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome that killed 335 men and boys, including about 75 Jews.
He was living under house arrest in Rome when he died. Extradited from Argentina in 1995, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 but was allowed to live under house arrest because of his age and ill health. He remained unrepentant to the end, saying he was only obeying orders.