page_title: 1946 British Embassy bombing
section_title: Bombing
hierarchical_section_title: 1946 British Embassy bombing / Bombing
caption_attribution_description: English: British Embassy in Rome Italiano: Ambasciata britannica a Roma
context_page_description: The bombing of the British Embassy at Porta Pia in Rome was a terrorist action perpetrated by the Irgun that occurred on 31 October 1946. Two timed explosives encased in suitcases were planted by the Embassy's front entrance; the resulting blast injured two people and damaged the building's residential section beyond repair. The Irgun targeted the Embassy because they considered it an obstacle to illegal Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine. One of the Irgun's intended targets, ambassador Noel Charles, was away on leave during the attack. It was quickly determined that foreign militants from Mandatory Palestine were behind the attack and under pressure from Great Britain, the Italian police, Carabinieri and the Allied Police Force rounded up numerous members of the Betar organization, which had recruited militants from among the displaced refugees. Confirming fears of the expansion of Jewish terrorism beyond Mandatory Palestine, the bombing of the Embassy was the first attack against British personnel by the Irgun on European soil.
context_section_description: By November 1945 alone, it was calculated that some 15,000 Jewish refugees had managed to enter Italy over the preceding six months since the termination of hostilities; the country's geographical location was favorable for the traffic of refugees to Palestine. In September 1945, already engaged for several years in an insurgency against the British Mandatory authorities and army in Palestine, the Irgun high command dispatched a mission to Europe whose aim was to organize the flow of displaced Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to Palestine, recruit soldiers, engage in sabotage against Great Britain and coordinate activities among Zionist organizations sympathetic to the cause.
  Eli Tavin, nicknamed Pesach, was appointed head of operations in the diaspora and set up the first logistical base for the group in Italy. Tavin found strong support there among Italian antifascist resistance groups, and, recruiting many members of the Betar organization among the refugees, many of the latter of whom, residing in camps run by UNRRA were also eager to participate, set up cells through the country, while establishing two schools to train commandos for operations at Tricase and Ladispoli. Already in March 1946, several refugees, Dov Gurwitz(Roumenian), Aba Churman (Polish), assisted by several others – Natan Rzepkowicz (Polish), Tiburzio Deitel (Fiume), Chono Steingarten (Polish) and Girsh Guta (Polish), had established an office of Jewish correspondence in via Sicilia 135, near the Allied Intelligenced offices, and this was chosen to become the central office for Irgun operations in Italy.  The British Embassy in Italy was considered by the Irgun to be a centre of operations hindering Jewish migration to Palestine, and thus was singled out as a target.  Planning for the operation was completed by early October. Before the war Zeev Jabotinsky's Betar movement had obtained permission from Mussolini to have militants train at a Naval College established in Civitavecchia under the auspices of the Italian fascist authorities. According to the historian of fascism Giuseppe Parlato, the Irgun had purchased from the post-war neofascist terrorist group FAR the explosives used for the attempt via the offices of its co-founder Pino Romualdi a fascist who had set up a secret repository of army munitions and explosives after war's end. Furio Biagini states that the material was taken from deposits located in a center administered by UNRRA.
  On the night of 31 October 1946, Irgun operatives divided into two squads: one daubed a large swastika on the front wall of the British Consulate, and the other planted two explosives, amounting to 40 kilos of TNT encased in suitcases and rigged to a timer on the steps of the Embassy's front entrance in Via XX Settembre. A driver, working for the embassy, noticed the suitcases and entered the rear of the building to report them. A few moments later, at 02:43, the explosives detonated. The report of the explosion echoed throughout the entire city and was sufficiently powerful to shatter all the windows of the houses and apartments within a distance of one kilometer. The 350-children school of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart was "badly damaged." The Embassy's residential section was destroyed by the blast which created a gaping hole in the entranceway. Noel Charles–the British ambassador and main target of the attack–was away on leave though his quarters were heavily damaged. No British personnel were harmed but two Italians, one a soldier who happened to be passing by and the other the Embassy's concierge, suffered severe wounds that left them in a critical condition.
caption: British Embassy in Rome in 2011
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