WAR-TIME MASSACRE

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33450, 4 February 1974, Page 12

WAR-TIME MASSACRE

S.S. colonel’s denial (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) ROME. A former Schutz-Staffel colonel who was a liaison officer between the Nazis and the Vatican has described as absurd suggestions that the late Pope Pius XII knew of S.S. plans to execute 335 Romans. Mr Eugen Dollmann said in an interview with the Italian Roman Catholic news agency, A.S.C.A., that the executions — ordered by Hitler—were not known of beforehand except by a small number of S.S. officers. The massacre by the Gestapo in March, 1944, was a reprisal for a partisan attack in which 33 S.S. troops had been killed. Mr Dollmann’s comments came as three men, including the American author, Robert Katz, and the Italian film producer, Carlo Ponti, face charges in Rome of defaming the late Pope in the film, “Massacre in Rome,” which is based on Katz’s book, “Death in Rome.” Katz maintains that he has documentary evidence to support his view that Pope Pius was informed in advance of the Nazi execution plan.