Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
03ROME2497
2003-06-05 15:36:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Rome
Cable title:  

HEIRS TO MONARCHY MAKE ROYAL MESS OF RETURN TO ROME

Tags:  PHUM PGOV IT 
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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.

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.
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2003ROME02497 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED