HEIRS TO MONARCHY MAKE ROYAL MESS OF RETURN TO ROME

UNCLAS ROME 002497 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT FOR EUR/WE, INR/EUC AND DRL/IRF E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PHUM PGOV IT SUBJECT: HEIRS TO MONARCHY MAKE ROYAL MESS OF RETURN TO ROME (U) This cable is Sensitive but Unclassified; not for Internet distribution. ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The highly publicized "official" return to Rome of the heirs to Italy's deposed monarchy was met with indifference by most Romans. The reaction within the Jewish community, though, was anything but indifferent. The family sought, and received, high-profile meetings with President Ciampi, PM Berlusconi and other symbols of the Italian state while managing to overlook until the last minute any outreach to a Jewish community that suffered heavily during the monarchy's coexistence with Mussolini. The Savoy's missteps were not particularly surprising, given the family's tone-deafness to popular sentiment throughout its long campaign for relief from its postwar exile. But the willingness of many of Italy's most senior political figures to welcome the Savoys absent meaningful acts of contrition to the Jewish community is somewhat more so. It would be possible -- and mistaken, in our view -- to categorize the episode as evidence of rising anti-Semitism in Italy, but the Jewish community here isn't drawing that linkage. Instead, it is concentrating on withholding any sign of acceptance for the Savoys until the family steps forward to close a painful chapter in Italian history. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (U) The descendants of Italy's deposed royal household -- Victor Emmanuel IV, son of the deposed king, and his wife and son -- concluded May 19 their first "official" visit to Rome (the third to Italy) since Parliament abolished the constitutional provision preventing all male heirs to the Savoy throne from setting foot in Italy. Two prior visits were built around an audience with the Pope and a visit to Naples. ¶3. (SBU) Although they insisted they were just average citizens, the Savoys were received more in the manner of a head of state, with calls on President Ciampi, Prime Minister Berlusconi, Senate President Pera and Chamber President Casini. Their five-day program also included prayers at the Pantheon tomb of Italy's first king and visits to Monte Cassino monastery (where the Savoy family archives were stored during the war) and to a war memorial honoring fallen members of the first Italian military units to fight with Allied forces. In short, it was a schedule heavy with symbolic stops designed simultaneously to recognize the Savoy's role in Italy's creation and years as its rulers, while also attempting to clean up the family's tarnished image stemming from its coexistence with Mussolini and subsequent flight from Rome when the regime collapsed in ¶1943. ¶4. (SBU) Given this apparent emphasis on image rehabilitation, it was all the more surprising that the visit lacked any encounter with Italy's or Rome's Jewish community. Italian Jewish Union President Amos Luzzato told the media he was disturbed by the Savoy's failure to reach out to the Jewish community. Luzzato deemed "insufficient" Victor Emmanuel IV's comments last fall (in which he described the Fascist-era racial laws against Jews, implemented under the then-King's authority, as an "indelible stain"),contrasting those cursory remarks with Deputy Prime Minister Fini's earlier thorough, contrite repudiation of his National Alliance Party's Fascist predecessors. ¶5. (U) In reaction, the Savoys claimed to have sought a meeting with Chief Rabbi Di Segni at the main synagogue shortly before their arrival; it had never occurred to them to contact Luzzatto as head of the Italian Jewish community. The Savoys claimed they had been unable to contact the synagogue earlier because they had lacked confirmation from President Ciampi (although that does not appear to have stopped the family and its supporters from making plans and arrangements for other portions of their program). Rabbi Di Segni acknowledged receiving a call and fax the day of the Savoy's arrival; the Rabbi said he had declined to meet with the family, saying "it's too early for such an encounter." Di Segni expressed his hope that such a meeting would occur, but the Jewish Community felt that it should be preceded by more concrete acts on the part of the Savoys to demonstrate their contrition and to show a clear break from the past behavior of the royal house. ¶6. (U) The Savoys added an impromptu visit to the Ardeatine Caves in southern Rome, a mass grave site where the Nazis executed 335 Italians, many of them Jews, in retaliation for partisan attacks; the prince reportedly wept during the visit. The visit sparked mixed reactions from the Jewish community. Prof. Luzzato welcomed it as another useful, if insufficient, step towards full contrition, but some families of the Jewish victims charged the visit "profaned" the site. ¶7. (SBU) COMMENT: If exile taught the Savoys anything, it did not include the value of savvy public relations. At a minimum, they are guilty of gross insensitivity. Whether this stems from indifference to, or willful disregard of, their responsibilities as the representatives of the former monarchy is unclear. For all their talk of just being "private citizens" ("call me Mr. Savoy," Victor Emmanuel IV has said),the former royals appear to live in a sheltered world of wealthy friends and royalist sympathizers with little connection to the wider, democratic Italian society they profess to hold dear. They want it both ways -- to have access to Italy and their wide circle of friends here without coming completely to terms with the monarchy's checkered role during the Fascist and wartime periods. But the Jewish community appears determined to prevent that from happening and to ensure that the Savoys eventually speak to the issue. SEMBLER NNNN 2003ROME02497 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED