The relationship between Prince Philipp and Hitler was beginning to sour by the spring of 1943. Although he initially worked for Hitler, Prince Philipp tried to resign, but he was prevented. The
Gestapo ordered her arrest, and on 23 September she received a telephone call from
Hauptsturmführer Karl Hass at the
German High Command, who told her that he had an important message from her husband. Some four hundred prisoners were killed and Princess Mafalda was seriously wounded: she had been housed in a unit adjacent to the bombed factory, and when the attack occurred she was buried up to her neck in debris and suffered severe burns to her left arm. her body was reburied after the war at
Kronberg Castle in Hesse.
Eugen Kogon, author of
The Theory and Practice of Hell – The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them (1950), adds more details of Mafalda's death – some of it in conflict with the previous account. After the air raid of 24 August 1944, the princess was wounded in the arm and Dr. Schiedlausky, camp medical office, performed the arm amputation, but his patient did not survive due to loss of blood. Her naked body was dumped into the crematorium, where Father Joseph Thyl dug it out of the body heap, covered her up, and arranged for speedy cremation. Thyl cut off a lock of the princess's hair, which was smuggled out of camp to be kept in Jena, until it could be sent on to her German relatives. Her death was not confirmed until after Germany's surrender to the Allies in 1945. == Legacy ==