HIS grandmother provided the 'safe house' in Rome that gave refuge to countless escapees during World War II.
And this past week, David Sands, the grandson of Maltese widow
Henrietta Chevalier, and his wife Janice were in Co Kerry to pay their
respects to her co-conspirator, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, the Irish
priest who set up the Rome Escape Line with Col Sam Derry.
Mrs
Chevalier, a mother of eight, provided the primary safe house in Rome,
where escaping prisoners of war were housed before they could safely be
taken out of Italy.
Between them, Msgr O'Flaherty and Col Derry
are credited with saving the lives of more than 6,500 people, mainly
Allied servicemen and Jews.
They were helped by people like Mrs
Chevalier, who made her tiny third-floor apartment available to them.
Mr
Sands's mother Gemma grew up in that apartment but, according to her
son, rarely spoke of the family's exploits during the war.
Though
now suffering from dementia, he said neither his mother nor any of her
four other surviving siblings ever spoke much about the heroic exploits
of his grandmother.
"Of course it's a huge source of family pride,
but my mother could never really speak of it because it was too close
to her heart," Mr Sands told the Irish Independent.
Mr and Mrs Sands were in Killarney to take part in the Msgr Hugh O'Flaherty Memorial Week celebrations.
Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of the monsignor's death on October 30, 1963.