The 4h of June, 1944, Rome, Italy. After 9 months of brutal German occupation
characterized by hunger, unprecedent massacres and deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps,
hundreds of thousands of people celebrate the city’s liberation.
Among them are also the freed prisoners who have not been murdered by the Nazi occupants
as well as thousands of Jews who survived the occupation by hiding. However, the war is not over
for all Italians. At the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany, there is an Italian female
inmate imprisoned under the false name “von Weber” on the order of Adolf Hitler himself.
However, she is no ordinary prisoner. She is a daughter of the Italian king,
and her name is Mafalda Princess of Savoy.
Princess Mafalda was born on the 19th of November 1902 in Rome, then Kingdom of Italy.
She was the second daughter of Victor Emmanuel III who reigned as King of Italy from July 1900.
Mafalda was especially close to her mother, Elena of Montenegro - Queen consort of Italy, from whom
she inherited her sense of family and human values as well as a passion for music and art.
On the 28th July 1914 the First World War began.
During the war, Mafalda and her sisters accompanied their mother on her frequent visits to
the Italian military hospitals becoming involved in activities of comfort and care for the troops.
On the 23rd of September 1925 Mafalda married German prince Philipp of Hesse
whose uncle was the last German emperor – Wilhelm II.
Between 1926 and 1940, the couple had 4 children, 3 sons and 1 daughter.
The 1920s and 1930s were a difficult period in Europe due to the rise of authoritarian regimes
especially in Italy and Germany. While the communists were killing the nobles and taking
their wealth, fascist governments promised the aristocrats the opposite – to protect them.
This could be one of the reasons why Mafalda’s husband prince Philipp joined the Nazi Party
in 1930 and in 1932 he joined the SA. He became close friends with Hermann Göring,
the head of German Air Forces – the Luftwaffe and introduced other aristocrats to the Nazi Party.
Prince Philipp also served as intermediary between Hitler and Mussolini and acted as
an art agent for Hitler in Italy purchasing numerous important works of art for the Führer.
When Philipp realized how evil the Nazi Regime was, it was too late. On the 25th of July 1943
the fascist dictator of Italy Benito Mussolini was dismissed as the Prime Minister
and arrested on order of Mafalda’s father the King Victor Emmanuel III. Hitler believed
that Philipp and his family were complicit in Mussolini's downfall and on the 8th of September,
1943 when Italy officially surrendered to the Allies, Hitler had Philipp arrested. Hitler had
no sympathy for Mafalda either calling her the "blackest carrion in the Italian royal house".
In late August 1943, shortly before Mussolini’s dismissal and arrest of prince Philipp, Mafalda
traveled to the Kingdom of Bulgaria to attend the funeral of her sister Giovanna’s husband,
Bulgarian tsar Boris III. Tsar Boris was under strong pressure from Nazi Germany which requested
deportation of Bulgarian Jewish population to concentration camps in German-occupied Poland.
However, Boris III refused to permit the extradition claiming he needed the Jews for
the construction of roads and railways. It is believed that he knew what faith
was awaiting the Jews in the concentration camps and construction of roads and railways
were a way to save the poor Jewish people and avoid their deportations to the Nazi death camps.
In August 1943 Adolf Hitler and Tsar Boris met in Germany to discuss not only the tsar’s refusal to
deport its Jews but also to declare war on the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler became furious as
the tsar did not obey Hitler’s demands and shortly after his return to Sofia,
Tsar Boris died of an apparent heart attack on the 28th of August 1943.
However, it is believed he was poisoned on order of Adolf Hitler with a slow poison
which takes weeks to kill its victim causing the appearance of blotches on the victim’s skin.
It was while Mafalda was in Bulgaria when Italy surrendered to the Allies on the 8th of September,
1943. Adolf Hitler considered this a betrayal and started to occupy Rome the same month.
Regardless of the risks and unaware that her husband Phlipp had already been arrested and
sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp, Princess Mafalda decided to
return to Rome to join her children who had been given sanctuary in the Vatican.
Mafalda reached Nazi occupied Rome on the 22nd of September and one day later she was asked
to come to the German Embassy under the pretense of the arrival of a phone call from her husband.
However, it was a trap and Mafalda was immediately arrested and boarded on a plane to Munich
and then to Berlin for questioning. After that she was finally deported to the Buchenwald
concentration camp, where she was locked up under the false name “Frau von Weber”.
She lived in an isolated barrack and was forbidden to reveal her true identity
but the news that the daughter of the king of Italy was in Buchenwald spread anyway. Her regime
at the camp, although privileged compared to that of other prisoners, was nevertheless harsh.
Mafalda lost a lot of weight, ate very little and every time she could she made sure that the
precious little extra food that she did receive was distributed among those who needed it most.
In August 1944 the allied troops bombed an ammunition factory inside Buchenwald and Mafalda,
having been housed close to this factory, had her arm badly wounded. She also suffered severe burns
and various bruises all over her face and body. She was found still alive, under a pile of rubble,
by 2 Italian prisoners whom she told “ I’m dying. Remember me not as the princess but as
your Italian sister. “ She was hospitalized in the camp’s brothel which also served as an infirmary
but without proper care, an infection set in and her conditions worsened dramatically. After four
days of immense suffering, she developed gangrene and her arm had to be amputated.
The Nazi headquarters gave approval for the operation when it was too late. Mafalda,
the Italian king’s daughter, was finally operated on in the camp’s
brothel of Buchenwald concentration camp by a German SS doctor Gerhard Schiedlausky.
However, the operation was carried out too late and had an unusually long duration.
Mafalda was also left with no postoperative care or support, and she never regained
consciousness. She bled to death on the night of August 28, 1944 at the age of 41.
Shortly before the operation, sensing her end was coming, Mafalda had asked her friend in the camp
to do her a favor which was to say hello to her 4 children and all of Italy from the Alps to Sicily.
After Mafalda’s death, the prisoners were ordered to burn her naked body in the furnace. But because
the Italians were among them and recognized her, they arranged for her to be placed in a
wooden coffin and buried as an unknown woman in a mass grave. As an identifier, only the number 262
was affixed along with the wording - an unknown woman “ . Later, thanks to this identifier,
it was possible to locate her remains among many other anonymous wooden coffins.
The sad truth behind Mafalda’s death is that she was intentionally
operated on too late to cause her death. The method of excessively long or delayed operations
had already been applied in Buchenwald and always performed by the SS doctors
on high profile personalities that the Nazis wanted to get rid of.
Some justice was served when after the war, the SS doctor Gerhard Schiedlausky, who operated on
Mafalda and let her bleed to death, was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on May 3, 1947.
Only in 1951, since it was a Soviet controlled zone, were her remains transferred from Weimar,
the city close to Buchenwald, to the crypt of Hesse family in Kronberg Castle.
While Mafalda was born as a princess in the palace of Rome, she died in a Nazi death camp
as with millions of other victims of the criminal Nazi regime. Her tragic story as with the stories
of millions of others, who perished due to Nazi atrocities, should never be forgotten.
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