MARK KURLANSKY
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Bolgia has a supply of photographs of his father's SS death notice which
he passes out whenever he finds an occasion. The secretary for the
organization is Nicoletta Leoni, thirty-three, granddaughter of the tenor
Nicola Stame who was killed in the caves, his decomposed corpse
identified by a pitch pipe found by Franco Zauli, a brother-in-law who
is also active in the organization. Zauli's voice still quivers when
describing the experience. Born in the sixties, Nicoletta has been coming
to this office since she was taken there as a small child.
Like the mothers of the disappeared who still demonstrate every day
in front of the presidential building in Buenos Aires, demanding that
their dead children not be forgotten, these survivors of the Ardeatine
cave massacre feel alone in spite of their public protest, because they are
people with memories living in societies that are built on amnesia.
Berlusconi, with his five neo-Nazi ministers, demanded Priebke's
extradition, and Menem, running for re-election with embarrassing Dirty
War revelations, when he wasn't talking to a military crowd, said he
was supportive. But then the Berlusconi government fell, and Menem
succeeded in his re-election bid. The legal battle over Priebke went on,
fought across the central Argentine political fault line. The Italian
victims' association hired the Argentine lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo,
who first earned his reputation prosecuting military officers. When he
prosecuted the leaders of a rebellion in December 1990, the defense
attorney for the military was Pedro Bianchi, now representing Priebke.
Bianchi, whose client list includes not only rebellious military and
former Nazis but also drug traffickers and mafia figures, is a bald and
dapper seventy year-old with a black cane to help him with a bad leg
that does not impede the boundless energy in his stocky broad-shoul–
dered little body. At a Bariloche Rotary Club dinner I shared a table
with Bianchi, Priebke's German-born daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, blonde
with strong German features, and her two teenage daughters who look
like skinny young copies of their mother. Also at the table was a mid–
forties mother of two, who professed to be a great admirer of Priebke.
An Argentine of German parents, when I asked her last name, wrote out
"von Gebhardt de Hitler," then giggled and crossed out the last part.
Late evening entertainment included a political ballad of the "Nueva
Cancion" style popularized in Cuba in the sixties. It was about the dis–
appeared in the Dirty War. The room was instantly divided by genera–
tion. The youth, like Priebke's granddaughters, seemed bored. Even
Moreno Ocampo told me that he has never taught his children about
the Dirty War. The older people looked either moved or uncomfort–
able. Unexpectedly, tears like big soft lenses formed over Von Gebhardt's
eyes. She explained that two of her good friends were killed in the Dirty
