OBITUARIES / PASSINGS / Paul Hofmann

Paul Hofmann, 96, an Austrian who informed on his Nazi commanders in occupied Rome and later became a New York Times correspondent and author, died Tuesday in Rome, said his son, Alexander Hofmann-Lord.

An ardent opponent of Nazism, Hofmann fled Vienna for Rome after German troops occupied his homeland.

Hofmann eventually was drafted into the German Army and posted to Rome, where he worked as the personal interpreter for two successive Nazi commanders, Gen. Rainer Stahel and Gen. Kurt Maelzer, the New York Times reported.

After befriending members of Rome’s anti-Fascist Resistance, Hofmann passed information gleaned from his work to the underground, including intelligence on the deportation of Jews from Rome and the killing of 335 Italians at the Ardeatine Caves on the outskirts of Rome, the Times reported. That March 24, 1944, massacre was in retaliation for an attack by Italian resistance fighters that killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.

Hofmann eventually deserted, hiding his family in a convent and later a safe apartment, the Times reported.

In November 1944, he was tried in absentia by a German military court in occupied northern Italy and sentenced to death for desertion and treason.

After the war, Hofmann became a news assistant in the Times’ Rome bureau. He remained with the paper for nearly half a century, covering Africa, the Middle East, Brazil and the United Nations, as well as Italy and the Vatican.