By chance, the journalist, de Wyss, was in the locality. The photographer with whom she worked lived on the Via Rasella and she was bringing him film to develop when a bomb went off.
There was a terrific explosion, then screams and yells. Then wild machine gun fire made me spin around and run for my life while out of the corner of my eye I saw Germans catching people who tried to escape.5
The impact of the 40 lb of dynamite was felt over a wide area, particularly in the Ministry of Corporations where the Fascist commemoration was coming to a close. Many of the senior figures of the German and Fascist organisations were present and immediately made for the scene. People who lived on the street were dragged out and lined up. An observer recorded the scene:
Germans, Italian soldiers, Fascists and Police were running without reason from one end of the street to the other, observing the roof tops and windows. Some of them were still shooting at those heights. Everyone was shouting, everyone giving orders … Germans and Fascists kept bursting into dwellings, dragging out men to the desperate cries of women and children … A German General, overcome with convulsive weeping, was running around furiously like a mortally stricken beast.6
There was an immediate clash between various high-ranking officials as to what should be done. One wanted to blow up the entire street and indeed engineers arrived to carry out this task. News of the attack reached Hitler’s Headquarters by 4.30 p. m. His initial reaction was that the entire quarter of the city, including everyone who lived there, should be blown up and for every German police officer killed they should shoot between 30 and 50 Italians.
Ongoing negotiations between the Vatican and the German Ambassador, as regards Rome becoming an open city, were then reaching a crucial stage. The forthcoming warm weather was expected to facilitate an Allied offensive which might induce Kesselring to abandon his defence in the south and re-establish a new position north of Rome. If successful, the German troops would have withdrawn from the city. The incident put an end to those hopes for the moment. The eventual instruction to Kappler from the German authorities was that for every German killed ten Italians were to be executed. Eventually, 335 were killed. The executions were carried out in the Ardeatine caves and engineers then sealed off the tunnels with explosives. On Saturday 25 March, the newspapers published a communiqué from the German high command:
On the afternoon of March 23rd criminal elements committed acts of violence by means of bombs against a German column passing through Via Rasella. In consequence, thirty two members of the German police were killed and a number of them wounded … the German High Command is determined to crush the activities of these villainous bandits. No one will be allowed to sabotage the renewed Italo-German co-operation. The Command has ordered that for every German who was murdered, ten of Badoglios communists shall be shot.
This order has been executed.7
As Mother Mary observed, a shiver of horror ran through all those who read this cold-blooded communiqué. The Irish observer of these events, MacWhite, reacted similarly:
A Gestapo Officer discussing the matter with the Swiss Chargé d’Affaires elaborated on the efficiency with which the executions were carried out. Efficiency in brutality!8
(MacWhite, 30 March 1944)
Among those killed were five of O’Flaherty’s helpers: Roazzi, Losena, Bernardini, together with Casadi and Fantini who had been captured with Br Robert. After this event, another 2,000 policemen and troops were brought into the city by the Germans to control the situation. Movement through the city now became very difficult. At the same time as the full details of the Ardeatine horror became known throughout the city, the escape organisation found more and more people now willing to help. They were available to assist even though they knew capture would mean immediate death. The CLN had always been racked by dissension and, as Kiernan observed later, the only common denominator among the various parties was their opposition to Fascism. However, this episode brought them together and they managed to agree a statement which was released to the newspapers.
Italian men and women! A crime without a name has been committed in your capital. Under the pretext of a reprisal for an act of war by Italian patriots in which it lost thirty-two of the SS, the enemy has massacred three hundred and twenty innocent persons … Rome is horrified by this unprecedented slaughter. It rises in the name of humanity and condemns to abomination the murderers, and equally their accomplices and allies. But Rome will be avenged … the blood of our martyrs must not have flowed in vain.9
The Monsignor’s nephew, Hugh, recalls with fondness two holidays he spent with his uncle in Rome in 1955 and 1959. As with all friends who visited him in the Eternal City, the Monsignor was very generous with his time and expertise in relation to escorting his nephew around the city. However, he rarely spoke of the wartime events. Moreover, there was one place he would bring no visitor to and that was the Caves, although he would arrange for somebody else to do so. His nephew surmises:
I think he had lost too many friends there and might have the idea that, if he had been captured by the Germans, he would have been consigned there too.10
We know, however, that he did make one visit. Immediately after Liberation, the Ardeatine Caves became a location of investigation and subsequently pilgrimage. The US authorities appointed a commission of American and Italian officials to investigate the crime and to exhume the bodies and identify them insofar as this was possible. When that was complete, the location was open to family members and others who wished to come. O’Flaherty came on a visit in 1947, in the company of Veronica Dunne, the renowned singer and music teacher who, at that stage, was living in Rome, as a student under his guardianship. She recalls his tears during that visit as they knelt on the floor of the caves and together recited the Rosary for those who had been murdered.
After the massacre at the Caves, more people were willing to offer their assistance. One source of additional help came through Giuseppe, who had been valuable in tipping off the organisation about the attempted snatches of Monsignor O’Flaherty, as we have seen. He had a friend who worked as a clerk in the police headquarters. This in fact was the lame Italian boy who had twice tipped off Mrs Chevalier with accurate information. Both youths wanted to enter into an arrangement, for a small payment, whereby prior notice of the routine orders for the German and Fascist Gestapo groups would be supplied to O’Flaherty and Derry. For the remainder of the time the organisation was in operation this information proved to be highly accurate and valuable. In fact, this offer of additional help came just in the nick of time as it became obvious that somebody was leaking information about the organisation. O’Flaherty’s team of priests and Simpson were kept busy travelling through the city moving people, often with only an hour or two to spare. Keeping ‘ahead of the posse’ was enormously difficult as the routine orders were published usually about midday. Then they had to be transferred to the British Legation by a circuitous route where, depending on the information supplied, Derry had to put emergency evacuation procedures into action. As well as forewarning them of moves the security forces were about to make, Giuseppe was in a position to tip off the organisation about information being supplied by those supportive of the authorities in relation to people on the run.
As a result of several denouncements, the Via Merulana is being closely watched these days since British and American ex PW are reported to be hidden there. Houses will shortly be searched. House number 181 is under suspicion … An anonymous denouncement has been filed at the central police headquarters stating the presence of a New Zealand prisoner in a house of the Via Collegio Romano.11
Even more interestingly he reports on likely sources of help. For example he supplied information to Derry in relation to one Pizzirani, head of the political office.
I am informed that PIZZIRANI … can be easily bribed since he realises that Rome will shortly fall into Allied hands and he wants to make all his various activities as lucrative as possible before he has to leave t
he capital … PIZZIRANI is willing to annul all the documents relative to the ex PW and to avoid obeying any orders for the rounding-up of ex PW – or at least to see that these orders are not carried out with the expected results desired by the German and Fascist police. He asks 50,000 Lire for this. Our informer who acts as go between wants 10,000 Lire for himself.12
Giuseppe was also able to confirm a suspicion which Derry had that the Germans were now sending out agents dressed as priests in an effort to get in touch with British escapees. Eventually de Vial made his way from the French Embassy to visit Derry and reported that Perfetti, who had met Derry when he first arrived in Rome, was the betrayer. He had been in the organisation from its earliest days and knew the whereabouts of a large number of billets. It seems he had been arrested, handed over to Koch and had cracked under torture. Not only had he guided Koch and his men to the hideouts, but he had operated the secret signal to gain admission. Within a few days, 21 escapees had been recaptured and more than a dozen Italians who were hiding them had been arrested.
By this time, John Furman had moved to live with the family of Romeo Giuliani and his wife, together with their three daughters and two sons, on the Via Buonarroti near the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, which meant he was nearer those for whom he was caring. One of the sons, Gino, eighteen years of age, became a very valuable assistant for Furman. He and his friend Memo were set the task of finding new billets. They found some outside the city but the situation was getting more difficult within it. The rationing system, which had never been very efficient, had more or less broken down completely and it was now costing a lot of money to keep escapees and evaders within Rome. Eventually additional funds were made available which relieved the situation to some extent. They secured two new billets through the help of Theresa, a friend of Mrs Chevalier, and Signor Pediconi, solicitor to Nini Pallavicini, who was still in hiding in the German College.
On hearing that Perfetti had been arrested, Gino told Furman that he knew him. Furman instantly sensed danger and moved to another location but, when nothing happened, returned to the Giuliani home on 5 April. He happened to be out on 7 April when the Fascists arrived and arrested both father and son. Again under torture, the boy cracked and began to leak information. Of all the billets he knew about, only two were not raided during this period. Simpson meanwhile, unaware of this problem, had gone to the flat which a few weeks previously had been used as a clearing house to which the Monsignor sent all new arrivals. This was located in the basement of a block of flats which the Vatican used to house some of its officials and it was located less than 100 yards from St Peter’s Square. Furman recalls:
The porter, Paolino, in his forties, was a sprightly tiny man, perhaps four feet six inches in height. His heart, however, was as big as his stature was small. Although the accommodation available for his wife and small children was extremely limited, he, nevertheless, accepted whomever the Monsignor might send him. At times, as many as seven British, Dominion or American soldiers would be in hiding there. It was part of the arrangement that no prisoner should be kept there for more than two or three nights, so that space should be available for new arrivals.13
On arrival, Furman found that the Fascists had already called and dragged Paolino away but the five British escapees were still there. In the few moments before he opened the door, Paolino had the presence of mind to put the five into a cellar and push his bed over the trapdoor entrance. Simpson immediately moved these five to other billets. Derry and O’Flaherty were very concerned to note that these arrests were moving closer to the Chevalier apartment. As a result of the increased level of activity by the security forces, an instruction was sent to Furman and Simpson to move around carefully and with extra caution. Simpson never received this message. He simply vanished. His involvement in the organisation was such that he had been ordered never to spend two successive nights at the same location. He was staying with the American lieutenant, Dukate, on 18 April when the Germans raided during the night and arrested him. By this time, Simpson was using new identity cards which O’Flaherty had provided, naming him as William O’Flynn, an Irish citizen employed in the Vatican Library. Notwithstanding this, Dukate and Simpson were placed under arrest and taken from the premises. They were put in the back seat of a German car and two German Gestapo men sat on top of them. Simpson and Dukate both had documents on them that might have proved incriminating had they been discovered. As it happened, the window of the car on Simpson’s side was partially open. He managed to extract his wallet including the documents and 8,000 lire, and push it out through the window without being seen.
I prayed that some thoroughly dishonest person would pick it up and, in order to keep the money, would not hand it over to the police. In Rome right now the prayer had a strong chance of being answered.14
In the same way he then managed to get rid of 5,000 lire and some papers which Dukate was carrying. Within a few minutes they had arrived at the Regina Coeli prison.
Giuseppe could not get any information about Simpson from his sources. By the same token, Molly Stanley’s visits to the prison had no success. Even an intervention by a film star, Flora Volpini, in whose apartment both Furman and Simspon had stayed at various times, was unsuccessful. She went to visit the Governor of the Regina Coeli prison, who was an old friend of hers, but he had no knowledge of any prisoner named Simpson. It emerged later that Simpson was using the false name from his forged identity cards.
In a letter back to the Dublin authorities, MacWhite casts a clinical eye on recent events:
In its long history and throughout its many vicissitudes it would be difficult to find a parallel for the Rome of today. It has over two million inhabitants – a fourth of whom are refugees from the war zone or from bombed out homes … the bread ration has been reduced to three and a half ounces per day and no pasta has been distributed since February. How the people live is a mystery … there are several political parties the best organised and strongest of which is the communist. A number of clandestine newspapers are also published … The average Roman is and always has been an individualist. He goes his own way indifferent to the fate of his neighbours … The Romans will tolerate any form of government or any system of tyranny for a certain time. They will accept whatever profit may be derived from them. Many a time they rallied in the Piazza Venezia to cheer the Duce then return to their favourite café where they dammed Fascism for the rest of the day. Any form of discipline is repugnant to them and that is probably the main reason why the Germans who walk on the dotted line fail to understand or subdue them. The Roman emperors were psychologists, hence their policy of panem et circenses. The Italians ate the bread, enjoyed the games but have not succeeded in doing anything particularly noteworthy since the battle of Actium …15
(MacWhite, 3 April 1944)
In these final weeks of the German occupation the mood in the city was changing, as Mother Mary notes:
German women in Rome had orders to leave the city today; a significant detail if nothing else. They say that the Gestapo is going also; is it possible?16
(Mother Mary St Luke, 29 April 1944)
Every day we expect the invasion. Every day we listen to victory talk on the wireless. Every day we notice growing tension around us, and ill-concealed hopes of the arrival of the Allies. When will they come?17
(Mother Mary St Luke, 7 May 1944)
A real event took place today: we each had our monthly ration of 3? oz. of meat for dinner. It looked and tasted like donkey meat, but it may really have been something better.18
(Mother Mary St Luke, 8 May 1944)
She and the members of her congregation, together with the evaders they were housing, numbering about 40 in all, were facing the same difficult circumstances in relation to food supply as the rest of the residents of Rome. While her diary entry of 8 May shows that she had not lost her sense of humour in dealing with this deprivation, the evidence is even stronger in the next:
Our cat ate a rat. No
, this is not turning into a kindergarten text book. He was just making history. The point is that he is, like most cats who live in houses, thoroughly spoiled. He is lordly, lazy and proud. He will only eat a mouse if it is young and tender. In the way of other eatables, what we get he shares. Today, however, his whole being rose up against a diet of macaroni, dried peas and rice, cooked in water with no cheese, no butter, no gravy, no milk. With grim determination he withdrew to the cellar, killed and ate a big rat – all except the tail, which we think he is going to appeal to the cook to make into soup for him. This historical fact that he was underlining is that food conditions are bad in Rome at present.19
(Mother Mary St Luke, 9 May 1944)
The authorities made other moves now to put O’Flaherty and Derry on the defensive. The period from mid-March to early May was very difficult and 46 men they had been catering for were either re-arrested or shot. In addition, the food situation was very difficult. Ninety per cent of supplies were now on the black market and prices had increased tenfold since November. The official ration of bread was about two slices per day. There were riots in bakeries and lorries carrying food were attacked. Strong pressure was also brought to bear on the Swiss Government by the German authorities and all aid from the Swiss Legation ceased. It had been made clear to the Swiss authorities that the Germans knew perfectly well they were assisting escaped Allied prisoners of war and, if this did not stop, their diplomatic staff would be arrested. This would have been very easy as the Swiss representatives were still in the Italian part of Rome. They had never relocated to the Vatican as it was unnecessary for them, being representatives of a neutral country. Then Ambassador von Weizsaecker made representations to the Heads of some of the religious orders in Rome, and Frs Borg, Madden and Buckley were confined to their houses. The organisation was now facing a lot of day-to-day difficulties. Frs Borg, Madden and Buckley were unable to be of assistance. Monsignor O’Flaherty was restricted to the Vatican and any departure from that arrangement represented the most incredible risk. Br Robert was in retirement and Joe Pollak was of limited assistance because of ill-health.
The Vatican Pimpernel Page 16