Herbert Kappler
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Herbert Kappler (b. 23 September 1907, Stuttgart – d. 9 February 1978, Soltau), an Obersturmbannführer in the SS, was head of German police forces in Rome and then the Gestapo during WWII.
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[edit] Biography
Kappler was posted to Rome in 1939 as head of the Sicherheitsdienst and throughout the war years he cooperated closely with the Fascist police. Following the Armistice between Italy and the Allied Forces on 8 September 1943, Kappler acquired considerable power as German forces took control of the Italian capital.
The following month he helped plan the rescue of Benito Mussolini by the SS and organized the deportation of 1,007 Italian Jews to Auschwitz: only 16 survived.
Made head of the Gestapo in Rome in early 1944, he was responsible for a number of atrocities including the Ardeatine massacre. He arranged the deportation of about ten thousand Roman Jews and was responsible for the deaths of many other Italians, Jews and non-Jews, during the war.
Arrested by British forces in 1945, Kappler was turned over to Italian authorities in 1947 and the following year was tried by an Italian military tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment in the military prison of Gaeta. Terminally ill with cancer he was moved to a prison hospital in Rome in 1976. Appeals to release him were denied by the Italian government.
His wife, Anneliese Kappler, a nurse who had carried on a lengthy correspondence with Kappler before marrying him in a prison wedding in 1972, had become a frequent and familiar visitor. Because of Kappler's deteriorating condition and her nursing skills, she had been allowed almost unlimited access to him. On a prison visit in August 1977, she carried him out in a large suitcase—he weighed less than 48 kg (105 pounds)— to West Germany, assisted by apparently unwitting carabinieri.
The Italians unsuccessfully demanded that he be returned. West Germany did not prosecute him for his crimes, reportedly due to his ill health. Kappler died in 1978 at home in Soltau, aged 70. [1]
[edit] In film and drama
- Kappler was portrayed by Richard Burton in the 1973 feature film Massacre in Rome.
- Kappler was portrayed by Christopher Plummer in the 1983 TV movie The Scarlet and The Black.
- His post-war time seeking asylum in the Vatican, and his resultant friendship with Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a Vatican priest who had reputedly been targeted for assassination for his activities, was dramatised in the radio play The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican by Robin Glendinning, first broadcast on 30 November 2006 on UK BBC Radio 4. Kappler also reportedly became a Catholic under O'Flaherty's influence.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915344,00.html Time coverage of the escape]
[edit] Sources
- Minerbi, Sergio I. (1990), “Herbert Kappler”, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 2, New York: McMillan, pp. 784-785 (The Simon Wiesenthal Center has made the contents available [1])
[edit] See also
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