Page 35 - Garda Journal Winter 2019

Memorial in the Ardeatine caves, scene of an infamous Nazi massacre.
HISTORY | Hugh O’Flaherty
Monsignor O’Flaherty (centre)
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Rome just before German reinforcements arrived. They now turned to the Monsignor for help. In the next three months, he managed to hide more than 4,000 in convents, crowded apartments and nearby farms. He secured aid from monks,
“nuns, communists, a Swiss Count and Free French secret service agents.
On Oct. 16th, SS troops invaded the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, and rounded up thousands of Jews for deportation. For Romans, the Italian game of ‘forgetting’ to round up Jews was now over. The Gestapo tactics horrified prominent citizens, who had avoided conflict with the authorities and thousands of ordinary Italians who had been indifferent to the plight of the Jews. Now, even the most conservative Vatican officials were prepared help Hugh O’Flaherty and his colleagues.
The work was extremely dangerous. Hugh O’Flaherty made frequent trips outside the Vatican to co-ordinate with colleagues involved in the escape line. His new Chief of Staff was a British officer, Major Sam Derry, who was smuggled into the Vatican to meet him. Through Hugh O’Flaherty’s efforts, he was given a new identity, as Pat Derry, a journalist and translator from Dublin. Hugh O’Flaherty often appeared disguised as a beggar, a postman, a nun, even a Nazi. Almost daily, he escaped capture or death, as he moved around Rome, with the SS and Gestapo determined to shoot him on sight. One Jewish man made his way to St. Peter’s and approached O’Flaherty at his usual post on the steps. Pulling him deeper into the shadows, he unwound a solid gold chain that went twice around his waist. “My wife and I expect to be arrested at any moment”, he explained to the Monsignor, “and we have no way of escaping. If we are taken to Germany we shall
Hugh O'Flaherty began smuggling and hiding refugees in the late 1942, when the Italians were forced to intern
prominent Jews and leading anti- Fascists.''
GARDA JOURNAL 43