Walter Steinmeier will travel to Italy on Sunday to commemorate the massacres by the Nazi armed forces of Wehrmacht and SS units during World War II.
Steinmeier will meet his Italian counterpart Sergio Matarella in the village of Vivitsano near the northern Italian region of Tuscany on Monday noon.
Soldiers from the 16th Armored Division of the SS Reich SS killed brutally 400 villagers in August 1944.
It was an act of revenge after a previous battle with the rebels in which 16 German soldiers were killed.
The German and Italian presidents intend to point out that there must be a sermon on these atrocities: a peaceful and united Europe must be upheld in times of growing nationalism.
It is noteworthy that Steinmeier visited more than once several places in Italy where German soldiers committed war crimes.
In 2012, a panel of German-Italian historians estimated that up to 15,000 Italian civilians had been killed by German soldiers.
