US embassy cable - 03ROME2497

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