A new book about Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty looks at how the Irish
priest helped Jews to flee Rome during the second World War and the
Gestapo leader who put a price on his head.
MONSIGNOR HUGH
O’Flaherty was a reluctant war hero.
The native of Cahersiveen in Co
Kerry was working in the Vatican when the second World War broke out.
A
mixture of circumstance, fate and his humanitarian spirit meant he ended
up running one of the most successful Allied escape operations seen
during the conflict. His story is as remarkable as it is dramatic.
Hugh
O’Flaherty was from a nationalist background. His views were formed
when, as a young student in Limerick, he saw atrocities being carried
out by Black and Tan soldiers from Britain and a number of his friends
were killed.
When the war began in 1939, he was understandably careful
to avoid taking sides. He told one colleague, “I don’t think there is
anything to choose between Britain and Germany.”
His views
changed, however, after he learned of the violence being inflicted on
Jews, and after he began to visit Allied prisoners being held in harsh
conditions in Italian jails.
In 1943 he began to offer shelter to Allied
servicemen who turned up at the Vatican looking for sanctuary.
Within
months, he had set up an organisation capable of looking after thousands
of Allied escapees and Jewish civilians.
In German-occupied Rome, it was a risky operation, and O’Flaherty soon attracted the attention of Herbert Kappler, the SS
Obersturmbannfuhrer (lieutenant colonel), who ran the Gestapo there.
Kappler
had established a ruthless regime and the two men became adversaries in
a real-life game of hide and seek, a fiercely fought rivalry that would
culminate in failed attempts by the Nazis to try to kidnap and kill the
Monsignor.
Kappler was so desperate to trap O’Flaherty he placed a
bounty of 30,000 lire on his head. On another occasion Kappler told his
men, “I don’t want to see him alive again”.
O’Flaherty managed to
outfox Kappler by dodging raids by German soldiers, using fake
documents and secret communication channels.
The Monsignor succeeded in
evading capture for the duration of the German occupation.
Kappler
was an ambitious high-flyer and highly thought of by Adolf Hitler.
Throughout the Nazi occupation, however, messages sent by Kappler from
Rome to Germany were intercepted by the Allies and the decoded messages
that have now been declassified are available in the National Archives
in Washington.
The documents reveal how Kappler would round up Jews, how
he helped to rescue Benito Mussolini and what he thought of the
Catholic church and the Vatican.
Using the decodes we are able to build
up the most comprehensive picture to date of Kappler’s behaviour.
It is with the events of March 1944, however, that the Gestapo chief will forever be associated.
After
the Resistance killed 33 German soldiers in a bomb attack, Hitler was
enraged and demanded a revenge attack to “make the world tremble”.
Kappler drew up the plans to do so.
Then Kappler and his men killed 335
people in the Ardeatine Caves, a labyrinth of tunnels outside the city.
It was one of the worst atrocities committed on Italian soil during the
second World War.
After the war had ended, Kappler was sentenced
to life imprisonment with no parole for the crime.
From his cell,
Italy’s most famous prisoner penned a letter to his old rival.
He
invited O’Flaherty to visit him and, within days, the Kerry priest
arrived to meet and talk with his former adversary.
Their meetings
became regular affairs and, according to O’Flaherty’s friends, they
discussed religion and literature.
The classical singer Veronica Dunne,
who knew the Monsignor, remembers O’Flaherty meeting Kappler.
She
says the Kerry priest enjoyed the visits.
“He took a great liking to
him. He used to joke, ‘Here I am, this man who had 30,000 lire over my
head for information and now we are sort of pals’.”
It seems the feeling
was mutual as Kappler would describe O’Flaherty as “a fatherly friend”.
At this stage, Kappler who had been raised as Protestant, was
considering becoming a Catholic and he was influenced by his former
rival.
A nephew of the Monsignor, the former Irish Supreme Court
judge who is also called Hugh O’Flaherty, says his uncle urged Kappler
to delay his conversion until the trial was concluded.
“My uncle advised
him that it would be construed as if he was trying to curry favour,” he
says.
Kappler waited until he was sentenced and then called on
the Monsignor to visit him.
The two men prayed together and then
O’Flaherty received Kappler into the Catholic church.
In a matter
of minutes, Italy’s most notorious Nazi was welcomed into the church by
the very man he had tried to kill.
According to prison letters
discovered by the journalist Pierangelo Maurizio, it appears Kappler’s
conversion took place around 1949 but the story didn’t become public
until 1959.
Typically the modest and self-effacing Monsignor
played down the event.
He told one inquisitive reporter, “That is not
news, that is something which occurred a long time ago.”
O’Flaherty was awarded a CBE and a US Medal of Freedom for his wartime efforts.
He died in Co Kerry in 1963.
Kappler
remained in prison in Italy until 1977 when he was dramatically
smuggled out by his wife and taken back to Germany.
He died in 1978.
Their story was dramatised in the 1983 film
The Scarlet and the Black.
O’Flaherty’s and Kappler’s
rivalry was forged in wartime, and their relationship blossomed in
peacetime.
It remains one of the most fascinating stories to emerge from
the second World War.
Stephen Walker is a political reporter with BBC Northern Ireland. His book
Hide and Seek is published by HarperCollins