Italy commemorated a massacre by German occupying troops on the outskirts of Rome during World War II with a memorial service on Sunday, exactly 80 years since the atrocity.
Soldiers from Nazi Germany shot a total of 335 men in the Ardeatine Caves in the south of the capital on March 24, 1944, in retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans in Rome the day before that killed 33 members of an Nazi's SS police regiment.
German Culture Minister Claudia Roth attended the memorial service on behalf of the German government and spoke of a "monstrous crime" in her remarks.
Germany is aware of its historical responsibility towards Italy and the whole of Europe, Roth said: "There must be no closure."
The mass murder in the Ardeatine Caves is one of the worst war crimes committed by German troops on Italian soil.
At the beginning of the war in 1939, Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini allied his country with Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany.
After Mussolini was overthrown in a revolt in July 1943, Italy was partially occupied by German troops, who battled against Italian anti-fascist partisans.
