The originator of the Rome Organisation was an Irish Monsignor from Killarney, Fr Hugh O’Flaherty, a magnetic character, fanatically keen on golf, tall, a considerable joker, with a thick brogue and blue eyes behind round steel-rimmed spectacles – a scarlet pimpernel maybe, but no Baroness Orczy hero in appearance, in spite of cloak, sash and wide rimmed black hat.5
John Furman held him in great respect, not only for his work but for another interesting facet of his character:
Coupled with his work in the Holy Office of the Vatican, he made sufficient time to organise billets for refugees and hiding-places for aristocrats, Jews and anti-Fascists who were in danger. He found them clothes and food. Those who deserved it felt the lash of his tongue. Those who needed it received the comfort of his sympathy. Through the six months of German occupation while I was in almost daily contact with him, he never once tried to ‘sell’ me religion, another trait for which I held him in deep respect. I did not look on him as a priest but as a very good friend who made other people’s troubles his own.6
In early 1960 the Church authorities had discussed with O’Flaherty the possibility of appointing him as Papal Nuncio to Tanzania but unfortunately by the middle of the year his health began to fail him and he suffered his first stroke. He spent several weeks in the hospital in Rome before retiring officially from his post in September of that year. He returned to live in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, with his sister Bride Sheehan in that year, though occasionally he left to do some technical, legal and canonical work for the Diocese of Los Angeles. While he was limited to some extent by the effects of the stroke, he was anxious to keep working at all times. By the time he returned to live in Cahersiveen, Danny O’Connor, his former altar boy, was now working in Mrs Sheehan’s shop. Their friendship developed further and Danny began to gain a fuller picture of the Monsignor’s character, remembering him as ‘a man of strong character and determination who was at the same time very gentle and hated to see even animals hurt.’7
Danny also remembers the Monsignor’s interest in gadgetry and recollects gifts of an electric razor (a Remington) and the first transistor radio he had ever seen. As he was somewhat hampered by the effects of his stroke, any time the Monsignor wanted to go on a long journey, Danny drove him. They spent many hours together. The Monsignor never spoke about events in Rome during the War. In his chats with Danny the topics were, invariably, the fortunes of the local and county football teams and the activities of the various characters in the town. Not only did O’Flaherty love football matches but the entire experience before and afterwards, mixing with the crowd, and meeting people he knew, was always a joy to him. He loved the trips to Dublin for matches in Croke Park, meeting people on the train or in the station, meeting others on O’Connell Street or in the Gresham Hotel. It was only in later years, and from others, that Danny began to learn the nature of the work the Monsignor had been involved in while he was living in Rome. For example, he recalls Mrs Sheehan telling him that on a holiday in Rome when the Monsignor was still there she was recognised by a family of Jewish people whom he had helped. They brought her into the jewellery shop which they owned and insisted on presenting her with a piece of her choice.
The producers of the BBC TV programme This is Your Life decided in late 1962 to make a programme in tribute to the Monsignor. However, by this stage his health was failing and it was clear that it would be very inadvisable for him to travel over to London. As a result they altered the focus of the programme and decided to feature Sam Derry. He recalls that in February 1963:
I was manoeuvred into a London Television Studio, the unwitting subject of This is your Life. Before an audience of former POWs, colleagues from the British organisation in Rome came forth to share old memories. A white-haired Monsignor O’Flaherty appeared on film, sending greetings from Ireland in a halting, quavering voice, because (it was explained) doctors warned him not to travel.8
In his contribution the Monsignor recalled those difficult times:
These were dark days and I shall always remember the difficulties we had in trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. Sam, when you came to Rome you arrived at the right moment. Events were getting difficult for me. I needed a British Officer with some authority and, when I mentioned your name and when he saw you, the British Minister said to me you were the right man.9
A number of the leaders of the organisation were interviewed during the programme including John Furman and Bill Simpson. Then Norman Anderson was brought on to tell his story of his appendectomy. In keeping with the focus of the programme the presenter, the renowned Irish broadcaster Eamonn Andrews, conducted the interview with Anderson as though Sam Derry were the organiser of this entire escapade. This however was too much for the honourable Englishman and when Anderson attempted to thank him, Derry can clearly be heard in the recording, quietly but firmly, placing credit where it was due, that is with Monsignor O’Flaherty. Even though the programme was being broadcast almost twenty years after these events, it is interesting to note that the presenter felt it was imprudent to mention the embassy from which the car was supplied and so used the phrase:
A car was borrowed from a neutral embassy which we won’t name.10
As the programme came towards its end, Andrews advised Sam Derry and the audience,
We have time enough for one more guest and this is the man whose advice you relied on during those strenuous months in Rome … not on film this time but here in the flesh.11
Sam Derry remembers:
Suddenly Monsignor appeared and slowly walked on stage. Blinking in the limelight he grinned and threw his arms around me. We both wept for joy. That was our last time together.12
This must have been an emotional gathering for many in the audience, as well as for Derry and O’Flaherty. The vast majority of those who had been helped by the organisation never had the opportunity to meet either Derry or O’Flaherty. Derry was incarcerated in the Vatican and O’Flaherty was lying low for a lot of the time. Those being helped outside Rome had no chance of meeting either of them and only a fraction of those within Rome would have had the opportunity. As a consequence many in the audience now were able to express in person their gratitude to those who had assisted them.
Danny O’Connor recalls driving the Monsignor to Cork for the flight to London. He was very ill at that time but was quite determined that he would join with his friends for one last time. He died on 30 October 1963 and his funeral Mass was celebrated in the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church the following Sunday. The President, Éamon de Valera, was represented by his ADC, Lieutenant Colonel O’Reilly. The British Military Attaché attended and there were messages of sympathy and wreaths from many of his associates located all over the world. His death was reported in a wide range of national and international newspapers. An obituary notice appeared in the Mungret College Journal written by his friend, the Jesuit Fr Francis Joy.
Hugh O’Flaherty was above all a generous honest-to-God Irishman without guile. His big heart was open to any and every distress and he was lavish in his efforts to assuage suffering in any form, a facet of his character which made him an easy target for any hard luck story. His expenditure on charity must have been immense and his motto always was ‘cast your bread upon the waters’ … his life was always ordered to using his powers in fair-weather or foul for the glory of God. Can any of us hope to achieve more?13
Around the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation of Rome, family and friends arranged for a grove of trees to be planted in memory of the Monsignor at the National Park in Killarney in 1994. To mark the occasion the Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly, wrote:
There is a tree called freedom and it grows
Somewhere in the hearts of men,
Rain falls, ice freezes, wind blows,
The tree shivers, steadies itself again,
Steadies itself like Hugh O’Flaherty’s hand,
Guiding trapped and hunted people, day and night,
To what all hearts love and under
stand,
The tree of freedom upright in the light.
Mediterranean Palm, Italian Cypress, Holm Oak, Stone Pine;
A peaceful grove in honour of that man,
Commemorates all who struggled to be free,
The hurried world is a slave of time,
Wise men are victims of their shrewdest plans.
Pause, stranger. Ponder Hugh O’Flaherty’s tree.
Frank Lewis, in his Saturday Supplement programme for Radio Kerry, covered the event. Sam Derry was one of those invited to attend but unfortunately ill health prevented him. For the programme, he was interviewed on the telephone. He recounted many of the episodes in O’Flaherty’s life during the War. During the course of the interview it became clear that, in preparation, he had made some notes which he would like to share with the listeners. Clearly the Englishman, who died two years later, was taking this opportunity to pay one last tribute to his colleague:
Various things I shall always remember him for, his courage, his faith in God and people, his kindness, his devotion and his indifference to personal comfort as far as he himself was concerned. Once he had made up his mind what was right, the determination to do all in his power despite all obstacles to see the matter through to the end, driving himself both physically and mentally beyond the normal limits. His strict code of self discipline, never relaxing or neglecting the duties of his chosen profession. What had to be done, had to be done that day, and must not be left until the next day. However tired we might be after walking many many miles around Rome visiting and transporting chaps to billets, we would return to his bed study which we shared and he would say, you will have to excuse me but I have work to do. I would sleep on the settee while he would work at his desk until the early hours. Another point was his ability to see the best in people, even the vilest creatures who were capable of terrible deeds, he would feel there must be some good in them somewhere. He was quite incapable of feeling spite or a wish for revenge.14
The British authorities described the activities of the escape organisation in their archives as ‘the British Organisation in Rome for assisting Allied escaped prisoners-of-war, 1944’. During that period there were indeed a number of British officers actively involved, as we have seen. It is notable that these men who were involved in working with O’Flaherty in their own accounts of these times do not use the term ‘British Organisation’. Sam Derry’s book is entitled The Rome Escape Line, Bill Simpson’s is A Vatican Lifeline and, similarly, John Furman wrote a book entitled Be Not Fearful. The reality is that the organisation operated at two levels. On the one hand O’Flaherty, with the involvement of the British army personnel and his other colleagues, was looking after the welfare of escaped prisoners of war and other Allied Service personnel who were hiding in or around Rome. On the other hand, the Monsignor and his friends and colleagues were looking after civilians who for one reason or another were hiding from the Nazis and Fascists.
In relation to the former group, Derry set up a very detailed administrative structure. He was conscious of the fact that he was expending official government money, mainly British, on these people and he would be asked to account for it in due course. Financial support was being given to those who were housing these service personnel in order to feed and clothe them. Considerable sums of money were being expended as we have seen. Aside from Derry’s records, we know a lot about these events because of the war memoirs written by various people. At the time of the Liberation of Rome, the organisation was catering for 3,925 escapees. Of these, 1,695 were British, 896 South African, 429 Russian, 425 Greek, 185 American and the remaining 300 or so from 20 different other countries including 28 citizens of what was then the Irish Free State. Over and above that there were others, numbering many hundreds, whom the organisation had assisted to escape back to Allied Lines or neutral countries. Derry was able to arrange for many of those who were on the run to be picked up off the Adriatic coast by ships. Hundreds of others managed to make their way back to neutral Switzerland through the help of Ristic Cedomir and his colleagues.
As regards the activities on behalf of civilians not nearly as much is known. O’Flaherty was placing these in Vatican property, in religious houses and convents, and indeed in private houses. He had financial resources available to him by way of donations, as we have seen, so it was not necessary to keep ongoing accounts. In any event, ongoing financial support was not that necessary as those who hosted these evaders were willing and able, for the most part, to provide for them. Almost all of the civilians he assisted were Italians and many inevitably were Jewish. The Jewish people in Rome had their own welfare organisation, DELASEM. By the autumn of 1943, in fact, a Capuchin monk, Fr Marie-Benoît, was its President. The monk was modest about his election to this position: ‘I was the only committee member who was sufficiently unknown in the city to be able to go about freely – to the police, to the embassies, to the various Government offices. It was a case of Marie-Benoît, or no one.’15 The Capuchin had come to Rome from Nice where he had previously befriended the Jews. Initially his work was in trying to secure accommodation in Italy for Jews who were leaving Nice for fear of being captured. In September 1943, he extended this work to Italian and Roman Jews and their needs. Of course, he was not nearly as well known in Rome as O’Flaherty and so while the majority of Jews seeking help would have gone to DELASEM, there is no doubt that many went to O’Flaherty. As we have seen, there were about 5,000 Jewish people hidden on papal property either in the Vatican or in the extra-territorial convents and religious houses. It is reasonable to assume that O’Flaherty was involved in ensuring the safety of hundreds if not thousands of these.
For example, Hugh O’Flaherty (his nephew) received a letter in 1995 from Sr Noreen Dennehy, a missionary Franciscan Sister, enclosing in turn a letter she had sent on to a Jewish organisation which was researching these events:
I am very happy to tell you that I, personally, worked with Monsignor O’Flaherty in Rome during the tragic war years when he risked his life in order to help the Jews in Rome. Time after time, Monsignor came to our Franciscan Generalate, located at that time in the Via Nicola Fabrizio on the Gianiculum. He often asked us to house the persecuted Jews. Since we had a very large Generalate, we were able to accommodate as many as fourteen or fifteen at any one time. Our Superior General Mother Mary Benignus and her assistant Mother Mary Marcarius who have both since died were very much in sympathy with the Monsignor’s efforts in his noble works. It was he who gave impetus to the work: he was tireless in his efforts to help lessen the suffering of the Jewish people. He helped many people to escape hardship and inevitable death.16
Another similar situation arose in relation to an English-born nun, Sr Maria Antoniazzi. She became a Notre Dame Sister shortly before the Second World War started. The Order sent her to a poor part of Rome when the War broke out and, with support from Monsignor O’Flaherty, her convent became one of the safe houses in the city in which he located many Jewish children. As well as looking after their welfare when they were with her, she provided false papers for the children so that they could be smuggled out. She has been recognised by the Jewish authorities for her work arising out of testimony provided by the Jacobi family, one of the many whom she helped. In a letter to an Italian newspaper in April 1986, Ines Gistron recalls:
Monsignor O’Flaherty placed me and my Jewish friend in a pensione run by Canadian Nuns at Monteverde (Rome). We were given false IDs. We lived with elderly women and young ladies, completely separated from the nuns in the cloisters. After the Nazis began searching for Jews, the pensione was so filled that the Holy Father ordered the cloistered areas to be opened in order to provide for more refugees.17
We will never know how many civilians were helped by the organisation but Bill Simpson, the Monsignor’s close associate, estimates it to be about 2,000.
All in all, the Monsignor and those whom he recruited and inspired ensured the safety of more than 6,500 people. In anyone’s terms this r
epresents a great achievement and is evidence of the wide range of talents which he possessed and of great leadership qualities. It must be emphasised that all the members of the organisation which he established were volunteers, including the British. He assembled a very disparate group including many of his clerical friends – most of whom were Irish, Maltese or New Zealanders – British servicemen, and ordinary Italian men and women very aptly described in Bill Simpson’s dedication to his book as those who ‘beyond rational explanation rose during the Nazi occupation from submission to heroism without leaving home.’18
Each of those who was helping O’Flaherty knew quite clearly the risks they were taking. At the early stages imprisonment was a certainty and as time went on the Germans made it clear that execution would follow for any of those who were caught. Of course, all played their part but O’Flaherty is due great credit for his achievements. In relation to the organisation as a whole, O’Flaherty’s closest collaborator – Sam Derry – is in no doubt as to the crucial role played by the Monsignor. In the foreword to Derry’s book The Rome Escape Line, published in 1960, he comments:
This book has been written unbeknown to Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, CBE: one of the finest men it has been my privilege ever to meet. Had it not been for this gallant gentleman, there would have been no Rome Escape Organisation.19
In this context, it is quite surprising that there has been no official recognition of his humanitarian contribution by the civil authorities in Ireland at any level whereas, by contrast, half a dozen governments across the world honoured his achievements. While the Irish Government does not operate an honours system like many others do, there are of course options open to it if it wishes to pay tribute to an outstanding citizen. Much has been written in recent years about the fact that those who helped in any way in the British war effort tended to be ignored subsequently by ‘official’ Ireland. For example, the historian and broadcaster, Cathal O’Shannon, returned to Ireland after the War, having served in the RAF. He recollects that he was forbidden to wear his uniform by Irish regulation at that time. Quite understandably, he contrasts this unfavourably with the fact that a number of prominent Nazis came to live here during the decades after the War and were well received at all levels of society. Included among these were: Otto Skorzeny, who led the rescue of Mussolini from captivity and was frequently described as Hitler’s favourite soldier; Andrija Artukovic who as Nazi Minister for the Interior in Croatia oversaw the extermination of approximately one million people; and one Peter Menten who personally supervised the killing of hundreds of peasants, including children, in the Ukraine. It was not until Menten, having served ten years in prison for his war crimes, announced in 1985 that he was returning to live in Ireland that the authorities finally put a stop to this sad episode.
The Vatican Pimpernel Page 21