Benito Mussolini January 1945 by Madeleine Mollier, a few months before he was captured and executed by Italian anti-fascist partisans, he stated flatly: "Seven years ago, I was an interesting person. Now, I am little more than a corpse." He continued: On 25 April 1945, allied troops were advancing into northern Italy, and the collapse of the Salò Republic was imminent. Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci set out for Switzerland, intending to board a plane and escape to Spain. Two days later on 27 April, they were stopped near the village of Dongo (Lake Como) by communist partisans Valerio and Bellini
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.