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Germany

Italy Supreme Court: Germany Must Pay Compensation For Nazi Crimes

Italian soldiers of the Decima MAS (RSI) in Rome in March 1944
Italian soldiers of the Decima MAS (RSI) in Rome in March 1944
Stefan Ulrich

BERLINA historically loaded conflict with potentially serious consequences about compensation for Nazi crimes looms between Germany and Italy. The Italian Supreme Court in Rome has ruled that Nazi victims can sue Germany for compensation in Italian civil courts.

The court ruled last week that international law's principle of "state immunity," which would normally preclude such suits, does not apply where the "wrongful acts of a state, acts that can be classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity, are concerned." The reasoning behind the decision was that in such extreme cases the inviolable human rights guaranteed by the Italian constitution take precedence.

The highest Italian court thus stands in direct opposition to a decision by the highest court of the community of states. In 2012, the International Court of Justice in The Hague decided in favor of Germany against Italy. The Hague judges took the view that even in the event of the worst crimes against humanity, state immunity must still apply.

Italian courts must therefore reject civil suits by Italian Nazi victims as inadmissible. Italy deferred to the judgment and in 2013 passed a law that incorporated the Hague judgment into national legislation. This law has now been annulled by the Supreme Court in Rome.

This could mean a plethora of civil suits against Germany in Italy. Those who could sue include Italians who were taken to Nazi concentration camps to provide forced labor. Relatives of victims of Nazi massacres could also ask for compensation from the German government.

Were Germany to ignore Italian verdicts the plaintiffs could try to claim German assets in Italy, such as the grounds of cultural institutes, seized and publically auctioned by court order. There have been attempts such as these in the past.

Berlin has long feared that the Italian example could be followed by other countries victimized by Nazi Germany such as Ukraine, Russia and Greece. That was one of the reasons the German government turned to the International Court of Justice. In the tribunal in The Hague it argued that state immunity was a cornerstone of international order and served the peaceful coexistence of states with one another, particularly after wars where there had been injustice on a massive scale.

Sources at the foreign ministry in Berlin said the verdict of the Supreme Court in Rome was being analyzed. The German legal opinion, that had been confirmed by the International Court of Justice, would in any case not change.

The federal government plans to examine how it could assert its legal opinion. About the Supreme Court verdict, Rome-based military lawyer Marco De Paolis, who has been involved in many lawsuits against the Nazis, said that "this is an extremely important decision that I believe the international community cannot ignore."

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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