A price is put upon O’Flaherty’s head
When the Germans discovered the leader of the network was a priest, they tried to assassinate him and threatened to torture him if they should catch him. The head of the SS and Gestapo in Rome, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler, put a 30,000 lire bounty on his head.
O’Flaherty would taunt Kappler’s men in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game in which he always remained a step ahead. Kappler ordered a white line to be painted on the pavement delineating the border between the neutral Vatican and Italy, and promised to kill O’Flaherty if he should step over it. An attempt to drag him over the line and kidnap him failed utterly.
During this time, Kappler also ordered the killing of some 300 civilians chosen at random in retribution for an attach by resistance forces on German soldiers. In addition, he led the removal of many of Rome’s Jews to Auschwitz.
O’Flaherty is honored after the war
After the war Hugh O'Flaherty was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom with a Silver Palm. But he declined to use the lifetime pension that Italy had given him.
O’Flaherty converts Kappler
Colonel Herbert Kappler was tried and sentenced to life in prison in Rome for his war crimes: O'Flaherty visited him month after month in prison, and in 1959 converted him to Catholicism and baptised him.
O’Flaherty returns to Ireland
In 1960, O'Flaherty suffered a stroke while celebrating Mass in Rome and came home to Ireland to Cahersiveen where he lived with his sister, at whose home he died on October 30,1963, aged 65.
He was buried in the cemetery of the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church in Cahersiveen. There is a monument in Killarney town and a grove of Hugh O'Flaherty Trees in the Killarney National Park. Another tree stands in his honor in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Authority conferred on him the title “Righteous Among Nations.”
One of O’Flaherty’s favorite sayings was "God has no country" These words have been incorporated into his memorial in Killarney.
To learn more about Msgr. O’Flaherty:
Films
1983: Gregory Peck portrays Fr. O'Flaherty in The Scarlet and the Black, a made-for-television film, available today through NetFlix. The film,which also stars John Gielgud as Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) shows how Mgr. O'Flaherty earned the title "the Oscar Schindler of Killarney" by hiding 4,000 Jews and escaped
Allied prisoners.
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