ROME – Exactly 80 years ago today, on March 24, 1944, the Nazi occupiers of Rome shot 335 Italians to death, mostly civilians, in a series of caves on the southern outskirts of town called the Fosse Ardeatine.
The killings came in retaliation for an attack the day before by the Italian resistance that left 33 German soldiers dead, making it a ratio of ten Italian lives lost for every one German. (In a rare lapse in Nazi efficiency, bureaucratic confusion led to five more people than strictly necessary being executed.)
