Clara Petacci while trying to escape. Clara Petacci Clara Petacci, known as Claretta Petacci (; 28 February 1912 – 28 April 1945), was a mistress of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and was executed with him by partisans. Petacci had a long-standing relationship with Mussolini while he was married to Rachele Mussolini. Petacci was 28 years younger than him. Part of their correspondence is still the subject of a dispute with the National Archives, based on privacy. On 27 April 1945, Mussolini and Petacci were captured by partisans while traveling with a convoy of Italian Social Republic members. On 28 April, she
Clara Katharina Pollaczek incorporation into Nazi Germany, she crossed to Prague where she lived for a while. When, in 1939, the Germans completed their occupation of Czechoslovakia, she was visiting friends in Switzerland. She stayed in Switzerland, receiving financial support from relatives, till war ended in 1945. During this period she became a Roman Catholic. (The last practicing Jew in her family had been her grandfather.) In 1945 she joined her son Karl who had ended up in Gillingham in England, but he was married with children: the home was cramped and, unlike her younger son, Clara did not feel settled in England.