In August 1944, inside the Buchenwald concentration camp, a 41-year-old princess met a horrific end. Mafalda of Savoy was the second daughter of the King of Italy. Her death was not a simple execution, but a slow and brutal tragedy caused by Nazi doctors and the chaos of war.
Mafalda Maria Elisabetta Anna Romana was born in Rome in November 1902. As a princess, she was close to her mother, Queen Elena, and shared her love for the arts and music. During World War I, she visited Italian military hospitals near the front lines with her mother, earning her a special place in the hearts of the Italian people.
After the war, she traveled across Europe and met many royal figures. In September 1925, she married Prince Philip of Hesse, a grandson of German Emperor Frederick III. This marriage gave her German citizenship but she remained an Italian princess. Her husband and his brother were members of the Nazi Party, and Philip worked as a mediator between the Nazis and Mussolini’s fascist government in Italy.
Through her marriage, Mafalda moved in high Nazi circles. In March 1935, she attended a diplomatic dinner hosted by Hitler at Hermann Göring’s home in Berlin. She sat next to Anthony Eden, then the British Foreign Secretary. She and her husband were also regular guests at Göring’s luxurious hunting lodge, Karinhall, where they mingled with the wives of top Nazi officials.
As World War II broke out, Hitler’s opinion of Mafalda soured dramatically. He reportedly called her the “foulest corpse in the Italian royal house.” His propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, also made crude remarks about her. The reasons for this shift are unclear, but tensions grew as her husband, Prince Philip, tried to leave his position working for Hitler. When he was refused, Philip began working against the Nazis, even obtaining passports for persecuted people to escape the Reich. This was considered high treason.
Italy’s war effort was failing. When Italy surrendered to the Allies, Mafalda was told her husband was under house arrest and her children had been moved to the Vatican for safety. Hitler believed Mafalda was involved in the surrender negotiations. He ordered the Gestapo to arrest her. She went to the German embassy, where she was detained and accused of spying for the enemy.
She was sent to Munich for questioning, then to a Gestapo interrogation center in Berlin. She gave up little information, frustrating the Nazis. She was then transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp. Upon arrival, other Italian prisoners recognized her, shocked to see a princess among them as an ordinary inmate. She was known for her kindness, often sharing her extra food rations with fellow prisoners.
Her fate was sealed on August 24, 1944. Allied planes bombed a munitions factory located within the Buchenwald complex. The attack killed 400 prisoners. Mafalda was in a cell near the factory. The building collapsed on her, covering her in debris and severely burning her left arm. As prisoners helped remove the rubble, she reportedly said, “I am dying. Do not remember me as a princess, but as your Italian sister.”
Her arm became badly infected due to the filthy conditions of the camp. Nazi SS doctors decided to amputate it rather than treat the infection. Little to no anesthetic was used for prisoners during operations. During the procedure, Mafalda bled heavily, and the doctors could not stop the bleeding. Some fellow prisoners believed she was initially denied treatment, as it was convenient for the SS to let her die on the operating table.
Accounts of her body differ. One says it was smuggled out and buried in a Weimar cemetery in a coffin marked with the number 262, later moved to Kronberg Castle. Another claims her body was thrown out, identified, and cremated by fellow prisoners who saved a lock of her hair to send to her relatives.
Her imprisonment was effectively a death sentence. The bombing caused catastrophic injuries, but the refusal to provide proper medical care allowed infection and gangrene to spread. From the moment she was injured, there was little chance she would leave the camp alive. Her death was a brutal and tragic end, carried out with the approval of the Nazi regime.