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History knows many heroes who risked their lives during the war to save others. Among others, a group of Italian doctors who saved dozens of human lives in their hospital showed a heroic attitude. The Jews in a special infectious disease ward suffered from a disease that terrified the Nazis who occupied Rome. A disease that was completely made up.
- In 1943, at the Fatebenefratelli hospital in Rome, a group of refugees from the nearby Jewish ghetto was admitted, on which the Nazis organized a raid
- Doctors gave the Jews shelter. To justify their presence in the hospital, it was said that they suffered from an extremely contagious disease – syndrome K
- The hospital was regularly inspected by SS men, but they were terrified of the mysterious disease, “guarding” the sick from behind the door of the ward – thanks to this, the action of hiding Jews could continue
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Syndrome K – a mysterious infectious disease
She was serious, threatening, and neurologically aggressive. Most importantly, however, it is very contagious. She required strict isolation, and contact with the sick was allowed only at your own risk. It manifested as a persistent cough, nausea, vomiting, and sometimes even paralysis. However, no one specifically asked about the ailments of Jewish patients. For the SS men who kept order in one of the Roman hospitals, it was enough for them to be affected by a disturbing, mysterious disease. The perfect version of the man each of them made himself up to be. Their fear was exactly what doctors treating patients with K syndrome wanted to achieve – the only disease in medical history that was desired and from which patients did not want to heal.
Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Rome is located on the west side of the Tiber Island. Established in the second half of the 1656th century, the clinic was (and is now) run by the Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God, known as the Brothers. For centuries, two-track activities were carried out here: healing and charity. During the plague epidemic in Rome (1657-XNUMX), the hospital was one of the main centers for the treatment of disease and for research that we would today call epidemiological. Thanks to special training of staff on how to deal with the epidemic, several years later, when cholera outbreaks appeared in the city, Fatebenefratelli came to the rescue again.
The next challenge during the war years, however, went much further than the use of medical knowledge and experience in the treatment of infectious diseases. Hospital staff were subjected to a moral test that, if the failure could cost them their lives.
It was 1943. The situation in Italy was getting worse almost overnight. World War II was going on and Rome was controlled by the Nazis. Jews had long been excluded from civic and social life, open persecution had become a fact. There are arrests and mass deportations of people of Jewish origin to concentration camps. One of them, Vittorio Emanuele Sacerdoti, works at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital. Few know his true identity. When two years ago his uncle, Professor Marco Alamjà, asked his student, Giovanni Borromeo to hire him at his center, he already had new personal information bought by the family. He is the first to reach out to the refugees who, on October 16 this year – after the Nazi raid on the nearby ghetto – are looking for shelter. The doctor opens the hospital door for 27 people. It does not know when that number doubles and then almost triples. Borromeo, as the head of the facility, does not object, although he senses trouble. However, the solution is supposed to be temporary.
It quickly turns out that not only will there not be, but also cannot be, because the situation of Jews in Rome is dramatic. Doctors come up with a plan – they will keep the fugitives in the hospital under the pretext of treating them. Therapy must have a solid foundation, therefore it is necessary to make an appropriate diagnosis. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the creators of the new “disease entity” allow themselves to make a risky joke. They call the disease with the first letter of the surnames of two hated Nazis – Albert Kesselring, commander of German troops on the Mediterranean front, and Herbert Kappler, SS-Obersturmbannführer, head of the SD and Gestapo in Rome. Just in case, the name could also be easily derived from the name of the German bacteriologist Robert Koch, who discovered the cure for tuberculosis (the association with this contagious disease was the hospital’s hand) or the noun “der Krebs”, meaning cancer, cancer.
It is not known who first came up with the idea of diagnosing the K.but then it doesn’t really matter. It is important that there is a disease that can be attributed to a larger group of people and that causes fear in those who were to believe in it.
Borromeo allocates part of the hospital to a new infectious disease ward and completely isolates it from the rest of the facility. There he brings in all the Jews hiding in the clinic.
– Syndrome K was entered on the patient cards to indicate that the patient was not sick at all, but was a Jew. We created these cards for Jews as if they were ordinary patients, and when we had to say what disease they suffered from, we said it was the K. Syndrome K syndrome, meaning “I am accepting a Jew” – recalled Adriano Ossicini, one of the doctors working at the facility .
A documentary directed by Stephen Edwards was made on the Kw 2020 syndrome. Survivors, as well as a doctor who worked in a Roman outpost and helped save Jews, speak out about the production. Trailer below:
The Nazis fled the K syndrome “like rabbits”
The news of the life-saving disease quickly reached the Jews seeking shelter. It happened many times that people who asked to be admitted to the ward were sent to the facility. In most cases, they were fine, and when asked what they were doing here, they said that they suffered from K. For doctors, it was a double signal – confirming that they were needed, but also a warning, because the more people outside knew about the fake disease, the more likely it was that this knowledge would reach the police and SS security services. And then everyone will suffer the highest consequences of their bravado.
The threat was real, because the hospital was under the supervision of the services. Although at the beginning the SS men did not dare to enter the “K ward” and listened to a violent cough from behind the door (Sacerdoti recalled years later that they were sure that they were dealing with tuberculosis or cancer and “ran away from there like rabbits”), but their reports had to give food for thought to the management. It did not lose its vigilance.
The staff became convinced of this when one day they received a message that two SS cars were approaching the facility. There was panic in the ward, but it was not the healthy patients that were the biggest problem. This one was located a few meters below the department, in the basement, where the mini-command center was located. Doctors had a radio there, through which they communicated with local partisans and eavesdropped on German communications, as well as a makeshift printing house where they forged medical records. An accident meant that one of the cars did not reach the hospital, and the driver of the other one turned back to check what had happened. Doctors gained an hour to hide the equipment and train patients how to behave during the raid.
The head of the clinic personally showed the SS men around the hospital, explaining in detail what the patient was suffering from. The Nazis wanted to check that there were no people in the wards who pretended to be ill, so they took an interpreter with them to study the documentation provided. This one, however, was flawless. The printing house in the basement of the hospital served its purpose – the papers were reliable, had an official seal.
Eventually the “delegation” reached the “branch K”. Borromeo was to say:
«The patients who lie here suffer from a terrible disease that is contagious and causes neurological damage with dramatic consequences. If you want, we can come in ».
The SS members entered, but as soon as they heard the patients coughing horribly, they immediately headed for the exit, terrified that they would contract a mysterious disease.
Syndrome K – great improvisation
The raid was a clear message for the doctors from Fatebenefratelli: we are watching you. The risk grew even greater. The staff worked under pressure of fear, and the patients in the infectious ward – although safe – were full of anxiety about what tomorrow would bring. The halls were filled to the brim, supplies were exhausted at an express pace. Patients exchanged – those who “felt better” were allowed to leave the hospital. Their names were changed in the forged disease cards and they were sent to nearby monasteries.
The entire operation of hiding Jews in the hospital on the island lasted almost until the end of the war. Nazi searches were regular, but thanks to the vigilance of the medical staff and cooperation with the partisans, they all ended happily for the escapees. Even the last raid, when the Nazis caught five patients on the balcony of one of the sick rooms, went without any casualties – the arrested survived, because Rome was liberated just a month later.
The exact number of people saved by the Fatebenefratelli staff is unknown. According to the accounts of the survivors, it could have been from 27 to even 100 people of Jewish origin. But there were others too. Giovanni Borromeo, together with the prior of the Order of Brothers Hospitallers – Fr. Maurycy Białek, he also sheltered members of the resistance movement and open anti-fascists, he welcomed the wounded and the sick who, due to their origin or views, could not find a place in public hospitals.
All this was possible thanks to the fact that the Roman hospital was a private institution. In line with the agreement between the Catholic Church and the fascist regime, Fatebenefratelli was declared a private hospital and thus somewhat “detached” from state regulations. This is why the post of director could be held here by Borromeo, who had previously resigned twice as head of a public hospital due to the necessity to join the party instead. As a staunch anti-fascist, he was happy to hire medics in Fatebenefratelli who were discriminated against by the regime for various reasons. Years later, for his work, he was recognized by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Martyrs and Heroes in Jerusalem as Righteous Among the Nations (the highest civil award given to non-Jews for saving a person or persons of Jewish origin – ed.).
To this day, it is not known whether the invention of the K syndrome was a precisely planned strategy to save Jews, or a spontaneous initiative, improvisation, which even exceeded its scope and results even by its authors. It is certain that the three Italian doctors, together with the staff of the clinic on the island of Tiber, unknown to this day, used their medical knowledge and the opportunities offered by working in a hospital to save human lives – the highest goal that should have a doctor and a man in general.
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