Hide & Seek, the Irish Priest in the Vatican Who Defied the Nazi Command by Stephen Walker

You know I love a good WWII book! Hide & Seek, the Irish Priest in the Vatican Who Defied the Nazi Command features a slice of the conflict about which I knew nothing.

During the Nazi occupation of Rome, 1942-1944, an Irish Monsignor named Hugh O’Flaherty ran an escape route out of neutral Vatican City, saving some 6,500 Allied POWs  and Jews. The Gestapo commander in Rome, Colonel Herbert Kappler, was well aware of O’Flaherty’s clandestine activities but could never catch him. (He did sadly catch others in O’Flaherty’s network.)

After the war, Kappler was imprisoned in Italy, and his former nemesis was a frequent visitor to the prison. Eventually O’Flaherty baptized Kappler into the Catholic faith!

If you enjoy books by Ben Macintyre or Lynne Olson, you will enjoy Hide & Seek as well.

Fascinating!

Films and novels inspired by the O’Flaherty story:

FILM The Scarlet and the Black (1983) starring Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer!!

NOVEL My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor © 2023