❀ Tribute to Princess Mafalda of Savoy, Landgravine of Hesse ❀ скачать в хорошем качестве

❀ Tribute to Princess Mafalda of Savoy, Landgravine of Hesse ❀

Princess Mafalda Maria Elisabetta Anna Romana of Savoy (English: Matilda Maria Elisabeth Anna Romana) ( 2 November 1902 -- 27 August 1944) was the second daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, the former Princess Elena Nikolaievna of Montenegro. The future King Umberto II of Italy was her younger brother. Early in September 1943, Princess Mafalda travelled to Bulgaria to attend the funeral of her brother-in-law, King Boris III. While there, she was informed of Italy's surrender to the Allied Powers, that her husband was being held under house arrest in Bavaria, and that her children had been given sanctuary in the Vatican. The Gestapo ordered her arrest, and on 23 September she received a telephone call from Hauptsturmführer Karl Hass at the German High Command; the Hauptsturmführer told Mafalda that he had an important message from her husband. On her arrival at the German embassy, Mafalda was arrested, ostensibly for subversive activities. Princess Mafalda was transported to Munich for questioning, then to Berlin, and finally to Buchenwald concentration camp. On 24 August 1944, the Allies bombed an ammunition factory inside Buchenwald. Some four hundred prisoners were killed and Princess Mafalda was seriously wounded: she had been housed in a unit adjacent to the bombed factory, and when the attack occurred she was buried up to her neck in debris and suffered severe burns to her arm. The conditions of the labour camp caused her arm to become infected, and the medical staff at the facility amputated it; she bled profusely during the operation and never regained consciousness. After the bombing of 24 August, the dying Mafalda said to two other Italian inmates of the camp, "Remember me not as an Italian princess, but as an Italian sister". Mafalda died during the night of 26--27 August 1944; her body was reburied after the war at Kronberg Castle in Hesse.