Germany and Italy are to set up a joint commission that will probe legal claims linked to the Second World War as well as the fate of thousands of Italian deportees, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday.
The minister made the announcement while attending a commemoration service with German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier at the former Risiera di San Sabba Nazi concentration camp, on the sidelines of an Italo-German summit in nearby Trieste.
Two landmark rulings in Italy have brought the issue of war damages to the forefront this year. In June the Cassation Court ruled that Germany must pay compensation to 12 Italians who were taken prisoner by Nazi forces and deported to Germany for slave labor after Benito Mussolini fell from power and Italy abandoned its former ally in September 1943.
Around 600,000 Italians, dubbed 'Hitler's slaves', are believed to have been deported, most of them soldiers.
Last month, the Cassation Court said that Germany must also pay damages to the families of nine civilians killed by German soldiers in three Tuscan villages during WWII.
A total of 203 people were shot dead in the towns of Civitella, Cornia and San Pancrazio on June 29, 1944 in retaliation for the murder of three German soldiers by Italian partisans.
In both cases, judges rejected Germany's claims that it was exempt from being held financially responsible for crimes committed by Nazi soldiers under accords drawn up in 1947 and 1961.
Germany has now taken the civilian massacre case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague.
Frattini repeated Tuesday that the Italian government ''will respect'' any ruling the ICJ makes in the case.
Explaining the commission's second task of examining what happened to the Italians deported to Germany, Frattini said: ''Nazism and Fascism are absolute evils in our history, and only by telling the full story can we defend our future''.
Steinmeier, who is the first representative of the German government to visit the camp since the end of WWII, expressed ''deep sympathy'' over the ''suffering'' of Italian soldiers who were taken prisoner.
''We owe them and their memory commemoration and explanation, not silence and dismissal,'' Steinmeier said.
The first meeting of the joint commission will take place in Como next year, Frattini said.
A former rice mill, the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp was the only camp with a crematorium in Italy.
More than 3,000 partisans and Jews are thought to have been killed in the camp.
