Coughing, paralysis then death - doctors made up disease to save Jews from Nazis

When the knock on the door came, the doctors were ready. Uniformed Naziguards were outside, demanding entry to the wards of Fatebenefratelli Hospital to track down any Jews who had escaped the raiding of the Jewish ghetto on October 16, 1943.

But three brave doctors stood firm, telling the thugs that a new, fatal illness had taken hold of the wards and nobody would be allowed in for fear the disease could spread.

For seven months, doctors at the 540-year-old hospital, located on a small island in the middle of Rome’s Tiber River, managed to conceal surviving Jews - passing them on to safe houses to smuggle them out of the Nazi-occupied capital.

Hitler’s troops stormed the Italian city on September 8, 1943, after the collapse of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, and quickly made life worse for the occupants.

Jews who had already had their rights severely restricted under the Fascists suddenly found themselves at the mercy of the Nazis, who had already sent millions of their kin to the gas chambers.

Forced to live in the cramped, inhumane conditions of the Jewish ghetto, just a stone’s throw across the water from Fatebenefratelli, its occupants had just a few weeks to get used to their new normal before the Gestapo arrived.

On September 26, Gestapo and SS commander in Rome Herbert Kappler instructed the Jewish community to hand over a ransom of 110lb of gold by midday on September 28. If they failed to do so, he warned, 200 senior Jewish males would be deported.

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“They demanded a huge amount of gold,” says Sarah Freethy, author of WWII novel The Seeker of Lost Paintings, which is set in Rome during the Nazi occupation, is out next week. “All the Jewish citizens of Rome came to the synagogue and they gave their rings, watches, their cups - anything they had that was gold.

“There’s something to suggest that the Pope, Pius XII, contributed quite a significant amount of gold from the Vatican’s reserves, but because the Vatican is such a closed shop in terms of what they will confirm and deny, we can’t say with certainty that he did.

“They were told if they presented this ransom to the Nazis then they would be left alone. They managed to bring a significant amount of gold to the table and they were left alone for a few weeks. And then the Germans staged a very early-morning raid on the ghetto.”

Gestapo officers went from house to house rounding up every occupant they could find. Some managed to escape by fleeing over rooftops, but the Germans still took 363 men, 689 women, and 207 children and loaded them on to Holocaust trains to Auschwitz.

Those who escaped the brutality made their way across the river to seek sanctuary within the ancient stone walls of the hospital.

Fatebenefratelli’s director Professor Giovanni Borromeo was known for his anti-Fascist stance. He had refused to join the party under Mussolini and his Catholic hospital had become a safe haven for Jews, resistance fighters and army deserters fleeing from Fascist forces.

Borromeo had even allowed Jewish doctors, like 28-year-old Vittorio Sacerdoti, to work on his wards using false papers to keep him under the radar, after laws restricting Jews from certain occupations put many out of work.

He had also installed in the hospital basement an illegal radio transmitter and receiver, to keep in contact with local partisans who were instrumental in causing trouble for the occupying forces.

Having opened his doors to the Jews, Borromeo knew the Gestapo wouldn’t be far behind.

He, Sacerdoti and another doctor named Adriano Ossicini quickly hatched an ingenious plan.

Any Jew seeking refuge at the hospital would be admitted as a patient suffering with a new, highly contagious disease they called ‘Il Morbo di K’, or ‘Syndrome K’ - so named after Gestapo head Kappler and Albert Kesserling, the Nazi commander in charge of the German troops in Rome.

Of course, no such Syndrome K existed, but the symptoms - as they explained to the Nazis - were grim. Patients with the contagious neurological illness suffered from convulsions, paralysis and ultimately death.

The set-up had to be convincing enough to fool the Nazis, so Syndrome K patients were told to cough violently, should German soldiers ever inspect the hospital. News spread quickly among the decimated Jewish population, who were also told by Borromeo to bring genuine patients from the ghetto’s hospital to Fatebenefratelli, so they could receive better care.

Unsurprisingly, when the Nazis arrived at the hospital entrance to search for Jews, they quickly declined the invitation to come inside upon hearing about Syndrome K.

“The Nazis thought it was cancer or tuberculosis, and they fled like rabbits,” Dr Sacerdoti told the BBC in 2004.

His 10-year-old cousin Luciana Sacerdoti was one of the Syndrome K ‘patients’ admitted to the hospital, which saved her life. Dr Sacerdoti’s actions on that day saved a further 45 Jews from certain death in Auschwitz’s gas chambers.

“The day the Nazis came to the hospital, someone came to our room and said: ‘You have to cough, you have to cough a lot because they are afraid of the coughing, they don’t want to catch an awful disease and they won’t enter’,” he added.

For seven months the ruse worked, with every member of the hospital staff keeping the secret from their occupiers. One single slip-up would have cost the brave doctors and all of their patients their lives.

“They were incredible people and they risked so much,” says Sarah.

While keeping them safe for the next seven months, Borromeo and his trusted colleagues were in communication with Italian partisans,working out how to move the Jewish stowaways to safe houses - and out of the Nazis’ clutches.

Dr Sacerdoti was often sent to the woods surrounding Rome to treat wounded partisans, and a group of physicians at the hospital secretly organised to give medical assistance to resistance fighters.

By the time the Nazis came back to raid the hospital in May 1944, so slick was the operation, that only five Polish Jews were caught hiding on a balcony. These five survived the war when Rome was liberated by the Allies a month later.

But they were a lucky few.

Of the more than 1,200 Jews rounded up in the ghetto raid, only 16 survived Auschwitz and returned to the city.

The bravery of doctors Borromeo, Ossicini and Sacerdoti saved the lives of up to 100 Jews.

And in 2004, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, recognised Borromeo as Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honour given to non-Jews who risked their own lives to save Jewish ones.

At the time, 96-year-old Dr Ossicini told Italian newspaper La Stampa: “The lesson of my experience was that we have to act not for the sake of self-interest, but for principles.

“Anything else is a shame.”

• The Seeker of Lost Paintings by Sarah Freethy (Simon & Schuster) is out on September 11, available from all good bookshops