The Italian Court of Cassation in Rome has recently issued a decision that could eventually allow Greek descendants of Nazi victims to seize German assets through an enforcement procedure.
The Federal Government stated that it is closely monitoring the developments, but a spokesperson for the Foreign Office clarified that Germany is not involved in the proceedings and will offer no commentary. The ministry also stressed that the ruling is preliminary, confirming it as an interim judgment from the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation concerning a specific enforcement case against Deutsche Bahn AG.
The key decision involves the Court of Cassation ruling that non-Italian Nazi victims and their descendants can enforce claims on the assets of German state-owned enterprises. With this ruling, Italy’s highest civil and criminal court rejected a revision appeal filed by Deutsche Bahn. DB sought to have the enforcement proceedings, initiated by the victims of German war crimes in Greece and their descendants, suspended. The background of the claim centers on a massacre perpetrated by the SS in 1944 at the Greek village of Distomo, where 218 people were killed.
Deutsche Bahn told the news magazine that the current case before the Cassation Court was solely about whether Italian law automatically mandates the cessation of compulsory enforcement proceedings upon the establishment of a compensation fund. While the company reported that the Court dismissed its request to halt enforcement, it added that this outcome does not make the attachment or seizure of DB assets in Italy inadmissible; that issue remains subject to two ongoing trials at the Rome District Court.
A spokesperson for DB also mentioned that in the first instance, the Rome District Court ruled in the company’s favor on both appeal procedures. The court’s reasoning stated that DB is a corporate entity legally separate from the federal government and therefore cannot be generally liable for the federal government’s debts.
The action concerning the descendants of the victims from Distomo has been ongoing for several years. After the Greek survivors initially failed to enforce seizure of German assets within Greece, they pursued the matter in Italy. There, they successfully had their property rights over German assets recognized by the Court of Appeal in Florence, a decision recently confirmed by the Court of Cassation in Rome. Deutsche Bahn subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Cassation Court challenging the enforcement of these assets.
