September 5, 2023 • 41 mins
In WWII, Italy went through its own Jewish Holocaust, terrible at first then horrific as the Nazis took over the country. In Rome, a group of doctors hid Jewish refugees in plain sight in their hospital by giving them a highly contagious, highly fictitious disease.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff
you should know the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's right with a sort of a lesser known story
I think, I think probably most people know, thanks to
Steven Spielberg, the story of Oscar Schindler saving about twelve
hundred Jews from the Nazis. But this is a smaller
story where Italian doctors saved probably about fifty to one
(00:41):
hundred Jews.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, depending on who you ask. And yeah, that is
certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Now ask the families of those people, you know.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Oh, yeah, for sure, you know. Yeah. Before we get
any further, Chuck, I have to I want to give
a hat tip to a listener named Jesselyne Baldwin who
wrote in Many Moons Go and suggested this. I had
not heard of syndrome K before.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I had neither.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And there's a pretty it's surprising because there's a pretty
decent little hour long documentary on it too.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, it was a good one.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So yeah, it's a it's a pretty neat, little overlook story.
And I love. Those are some of my favorites. Getting
to tell people something they had no idea about.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So this is just in general, like Italy and what
happened in Italy and what Italy did during World War
Two was always just kind of been a blank to me.
I knew Minnilini was the leader. I knew they were
on the side with the.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Nazis the access I knew that too.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And that's about it, honestly, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I'm with you, man, I don't know. I feel like
the I feel like Japan and Germany for some reason,
get probably because of Pearl Harbor, and then Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and then the Germans because of you know, obvious reasons.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And I also did not know a lot about Italy
and World War Two until the past few days.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, And Italy at the time too was, as you know,
for a few decades before World War Two is a
pretty large regional power, had a lot of stakes in
other countries, either by just basically conquering the country or
having some sort of say over its doings, usually by
(02:25):
conquering it like Ethiopia, Libya. I think Albania. They had
just just overrun, like right before World War Two. They
did what Europeans did, especially fascist Europeans, because that was
what Mussolini was. He was a fascist. He was one
of the firsts. He was a fascist before Hitler even,
And as a fascist is like, you want to basically
(02:47):
make everybody else a fascist too, so you invade other
countries typically.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, and I'd love the Europeans and Europe as a whole.
I hope that didn't come across as like, that's what
Europeans do, but that's what many European entries did for
many hundreds of years.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, no, it's true. It's the facts, Chuck. Okay, so
there are a couple of things we have to talk about.
In the lead up to World War Two. Mussolini was
appointed prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel the Second, who
was the King of Italy. Another thing, I did not
(03:22):
realize that the king appointed Mussolini.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Okay, did you. I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well. I think we should just point out everything we
didn't know throughout this entire episode every chance we get.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Okay, Yeah, it'd be really interesting. Nineteen twenty two. I
didn't know it was that year.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, he was the prime minister as of nineteen twenty two.
He very quickly put together essentially a huge fascist power
that seemed to kind of live alongside the monarchy's power.
In Italy. There was almost like two governments, and Mussolini's
fascists were very powerful at the time. By the end
(04:01):
of the nineteen twenties early nineteen thirties, he was pretty
solidly in control.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, And of course this is all in a lead
up to the syndrome case story, but it just sort
of paints a nice picture of what was going on
there at the time. Italy had spent a lot of
Italian soldiers' lives and campaigns Furthered campaigns in Libya in
the nineteen twenties and Ethiopia in the nineteen thirties, kind
(04:32):
of concentrating on places in Northern Africa and the Mediterranean
where Italy had these colonies set up. Like everyone was
trying to get their little piece of other places, like
you said, and a lot of Italy's was in Northern Africa.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, there are a couple other things we need to
touch upon that become kind of part of the fabric
or the backdrop of this story one took place in
nineteen twenty nine. It's when the Italian government made a
treaty with the Vatican, with the Pope and all the
Pope's dudes. Yeah, that was called the Lateran Treaty, and
(05:09):
it basically said the Vatican and Vatican City is an
independent state within Rome. It still is today. It's the
smallest independent nation according to the syndroom K documentary by
population and by size, it's like one hundred acres or
something really small, like Winnie the Poo's woods were bigger
than Vatican City.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah. I walked around it by accident one time because
we did not know, my friend and I that it
was like there wasn't a cutthrough or we just kept
doing that thing. And actually you can check this out
in your what to Do when you get lost in
your stuff. You should know stuff kids should know book.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But we just figured, well, let's just keep going this
way and it's bound to do something, and it didn't.
We just kept walking until we came all the way around.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
You didn't paint like a fluorescent orange blaze onto one
of the pillars or called that you came across.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
No, we should have. But yeah, so they recognize Vatican City.
What this did was, you know, if it didn't necessarily
make the Vatican beholden to Mussolini, it did create a
situation where they couldn't just kind of freely say like, hey,
don't commit as much genocide. That's not cool.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, they had a huge they had something huge to lose.
It was very new and very fragile still, and they
had gotten it from the people they would be opposing
in this case, right.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The other thing was it took place nine years later,
and this was I just want to point out another
thing I didn't realize Italy had done in World War Two.
They enacted their own anti Semitic race laws starting in
nineteen thirty eight, and they just kind of they started
pretty badly, like they were basically like if you're Jewish,
you can't like work in the government, you can't teach
(06:52):
in schools, and then it just got progressively worse until
it was like if you're Jewish, you can't own this
house and you can't have this bank account. It just
got worse and worse and worse, and excluded the Jewish Romans,
who were the oldest Jewish population in Europe from what
I understand a couple thousand year old population from being
(07:13):
a part of Italy in Italian life.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, absolutely, they were called an Italian, the Leggi Brazziali,
very nice. And it was not only Jews in Italy,
but you know those same native Africans in the north
that we were talking about in the Italian colonies. So
these racial laws were kind of subjugating all these people,
like literally banning books and seizing property and stuff like
(07:37):
that stuff fascists do. Yeah, exactly. They stopped short of,
you know, stuff like rounding people up for gas chambers
like the Germans did, but it was still like a
pretty terrible subjugation.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That's a big point though. The this is such a
sticky thing to talk about because the country enacted under
Mussolini anti Jewish laws. They were enforced to some degree.
There were Italian people who forced their Jewish neighbors out
of their homes and forced them to hand over their
bank accounts. This actually happened, but it does bear comparing
(08:16):
to the Nazis version of the same thing. Sure, and
the fact that it wasn't genocidal is a big deal.
And the fact that when the Germans came in to
start taking over Italy. It was in part because the
Italians were kind of dragging their feet on. They weren't
showing enough enthusiasm in their genocide against Jewish people in Italy.
(08:41):
They were kind of doing it lackadaisically. And from what
I saw, if you were Jewish and you made it
to southern Italy into one of their concentration camps, an
Italian concentration camp, you were pretty much safe for the
war and your kids were going to go to school.
It was just a different jam. But at the end
of the day, they still had anti Semitic race laws
(09:03):
that were enforced for a period during the late thirties
and early forties.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Right, but you know, many tens of thousands of more
were not exterminated, right like they would have been had
Germany been in charge. Yes, all right, So nineteen thirties,
Mussolini and Hitler eventually cozy up. They get together with
what was called the Pact of Steel, and the Nazis
(09:29):
invaded Poland in like September October nineteen thirty nine. Italy
was still not in the war at this point. It
didn't take them too long to jump in there, though,
because Mussolini basically was like, you know what, we have
some some area in North Africa and around the Mediterranean,
but we can probably expand on that because of war. However,
(09:50):
their military and his military because of Ethiopian because the
further invasion of Libya, were not decimated, but they were
fairly taxed at this point laughing about the ten percent thing. Yeah,
we'll probably get e meals. It was decimated times four
times four, and you know, the Brits were putting up
(10:11):
a pretty big fight in North Africa. Eventually, the US
would declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, and Mussolini
would in turn declare war right back on the United
States because he was like, I got to get on
on this, you know, on the full axis action here
and it probably you know, I have a feeling it'll
be a pretty quick affair. But it was not.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, and by that time Mussolini was in too deep
to do anything about it except keep fighting. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
The problem is is by this time, by I think
nineteen forty three, he had sacrificed enough Italian lives, not
just in World War Two, remember in those campaigns prior
to World War Two, which is a good lesson against adventurism,
any stuff. You should know a listener out there, if
you ever become head of a nation state, don't go
(11:01):
off and try to conquer other neighbors because you never
know if there's a world warrior. Need to have your
resources for right around the corner.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That's a great lesson.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And so that's exactly what happened to Mussolini. So he
fell out of favor just he had just problem after
problem after problem, embarrassment after embarrassment, failure after failure. That
finally the Italian people are like, you're done, dude.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
That's right. September nineteen forty three. September eighth, specifically, is
when Italy technically surrenders to the Allies. However, that didn't
mean Italy was just awesome all of a sudden previous
to this, And I believe the spring of nineteen forty three,
Hitler kind of saw the riding on the wall, didn't
fully trust Italy or Mussolini, and was like, you know what,
(11:47):
if Italy falls into the hands of the Allies, that's
really bad news for us. So they started sort of
arming up and sending troops in the spring of nineteen
forty three, and they're run up to the surrender that
Mussolini finally, like I said in September, underwent, and so
(12:08):
takeaway here is Germans were in Italy and well armed
and basically occupying Italy at the time of their surrender
in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, and yeah, Italy had not only surrendered, they had
now switched sides. They're like, we're with you, allies. We've
declared war on Germany, even though the Germans are occupying
us right now, even though our dictator is in jail.
It's a weird situation, but that was the situation in
nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Like you say, yeah, well they were, you know, still
allies until the surrender. But it was a precarious thing
because like, Germany is like seriously occupying Italy in the
run up to the surrender, and it was just I
think everyone was pretty nervous at that point in Italy,
like certainly the citizens.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yes, but they were also mad because they had gotten
rid of Mussolini and now they had the Germans, who
were just like out of the frying pan into the fire.
And by this time they had said, yeah, we're at
war with Germany. We don't want to have this, so
there was a pretty strong underground resistance that did like
attack German Nazi soldiers who were stationed in Italy. They
didn't have an easy time of it in Italy. I
(13:14):
guess I should.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Say absolutely, maybe we should take a break. Yeah, that's
a good geographical warlike setup, and then we can come
back and sort of talk about some of the key
people players in this story.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Right after this, So, Chuck, you mentioned a couple of
(13:58):
people who are of prominent players in this The first
two are despicable sobs. They were Nazis. One of them
was named Albert kessel Ring, the smiling Nazi general. I
saw he was. I saw he was Hitler's go to
guy in Southern European theater. He was in charge of
the Mediterranean, he was, by default then in charge of Italy.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
He was.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
A terrible person who ordered all sorts of terrible atrocities
to be done to civilians. Anything that happened to civilians,
it was under his watch.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, and he was a guy that was kind of
enacting the racial laws in northern Africa.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yes, so yeah, I think we should say. I don't
know if we really got that point across. When the
Nazis took over Italy. They said, these racial laws are
now being enforced for reels, right, people are going to
start really getting deported. We're in charge now. And this
was the guy who was in.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Charge, that's right. So that's Kesserling. There's also another k
Herbert Kapler. He was an SS guy. He was the
German chief of police in Rome during the occupation and
he's notable for a lot of things he was. He's
an awful human and many atrocities committed under him, including
(15:16):
a very famous one called and I got to get
the pronunciation right here, the ardi Atina massacre. Okay, you
don't agree.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, no, I think you nailed it. Actually that's not
what I would have said, but I would have gotten
it wrong. I think you got it. It's a R
D E A T I N E.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Well, and this is also, you know, going by what
some pronunciation person says.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I would have added a syllable in there. I'm trying
to figure out a warrior.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Who who knows if they're ever correct, But that's what
I'm gonna call him. And that was a situation dealing
with the Atina Caves where they rounded up three hundred
and and this Is in retaliation for an attack on them.
But they rounded up they were told around up three
hundred and thirty Italians. They instead got three hundred and
(16:09):
thirty five Italians and they took them to these caves
and five at a time, made them get on their
knees and shot them in the back of the head.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, and then they dynamited the cave afterward so that
people couldn't get to them. That was like really par
for the course for the Nazim in Italy. The Italian
resistance would stage an attack on Nazi soldiers occupying their country,
and the Nazis would in turn kill ten times the
(16:39):
civilians something like that, just murdering cold blood, just hundreds
of civilians at a time. And do you realize, Chuck,
the resolve it takes for a resistance group to just
be like knowing that hundreds of people are going to
die because of the thing you're about to do the
Nazis and still having resolved to keep fighting. It's just
(17:02):
again bounding. So that was the plan, was the playbook,
and it happened all throughout Italy, especially from Rome up
to in the northern Italy under the watch of kessel
Ring and Kapler again, terrible, terrible human beings.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
All right. So that's the situation. The Nazis are in Rome,
the Italians don't like the Nazis. The Vatican is sort
of there, not being able to say a whole lot.
They can't really get into the Nazis business, of course,
because again that same precarious situation with Vatican cities. Well
(17:39):
not stateship. What would you call it?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Just independence?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah. Independence. So now we got to set a little
geography up. The Tiber River goes through Rome and there's
a tiny little island called Tiber Island. I think it's
the only island in the Rome area of the Tiber River,
and it is very small. It's about nine hundred feet
by two hundred and twenty feet and it's been around
(18:04):
forever and has been used throughout you know, the years
for various things, monasteries, I can't remember those, a couple
of other things, but it's connected, you know, by bridges
on both sides. And in the fifteen hundreds, for our story,
there was a Catholic order called the Hospitaller Order of
the Brothers of Saint John of God, who established a
(18:27):
hospital there where the monastery was and the hospital became
known as the Fata Beina Fratelli.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Not bet Yeah, yeah, okay, not bed.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
What does that mean? Do good brothers?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yes? Do fate bene good Fratelli brothers, do good brothers.
And the Ed helped us out with this, and he
makes a point like, does it mean do good brothers
or they're the do good brothers like the Doobie Brother's
original name.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, that sounds more like a duo wop group.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It does.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So the upshot of this is that in the fifteen hundreds,
this group of friars, Catholic friars, had a hospital up
and running on this island in the Tiber River, and
it remained in operation basically ever since that time. It
passed in and out of the Vatican's hands. But for
the purposes of our story, during nineteen forty three, the
(19:22):
Vatican was, I guess owned that hospital. It was operating
under Vatican control.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, And as such it became a sanctuary. Even though
you know, Jewish people and Catholic people had different faiths,
it did become a bit of a sanctuary for all
kinds of people because it was the Catholic Church and
they you know, have long had a history of welcoming
and helping people when they can well.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Also took it like geographically speaking, it linked the Jewish
ghetto in Rome, yeah, and the Vatican. On one side
of the bridge. It was the like, just across bridge
was the Jewish Ghetto. Just across the other bridge was
the Vatican. So it was it had its feet in
two different worlds and brought them all together kind of.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Absolutely. There was a guy there who ran the place,
a clergyman named a father Maurzio Bialec, and he was
in charge of the hospital. He was an anti fascist.
And as you'll see here what this guy does, it's
pretty amazing. He kind of very quietly and he was
sort of an anti fascist on the downlow because he
didn't want to cause a big stir, but he quietly
(20:33):
stocked the sort of the doctors and the staff with
anti fascists doctors and staff members. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
He put together like a Justice League but medical yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And I wonder if it was I wonder if his
reasoning was because he thought they they could eventually do
something like this, or if he was just like, hey, listen,
I'm anti fascist and I want to hire people like minded,
people like me.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
That or he was like, I am not spending eight
hours a day around fascists. I'll tell you exactly. It
was one of those. But the fact is this guy
was in charge. He was the hospital administrator. And one
of his first hires, very important hire, was a guy
named Giovanni Borromeo. He was a doctor and he was
(21:21):
very in step with father Biolick. He had very similar views,
and in fact he would he refused to join the
Fascist Party, and that really narrowed a lot of his
career prospects. He didn't necessarily get turned down by other hospitals,
but those hospitals required that he joined the Fascist Party.
(21:42):
He said thanks anyway. Finally, I don't know how he
was found by father Bilic, but he was, and he
was recruited and he was now the doctor in charge
of the hospital.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, so they team up, they kind of fill out
the staff with more anti fascists. Hooray. They bring the
facility into the modern age, which was you know again
at you know, nineteen thirty four modern for those times,
and they didn't have like laser surgery and stuff, is
what I'm saying. They weren't time travelers. Sure, so after
(22:15):
these racial laws, kind of kick in. In nineteen thirty eight.
This hospital, like we already said it was, you know,
it was a bit of a haven for all kinds
of people and certainly Jewish people, but it became even
more of a haven. And there was another guy who
was named Vittorio Sacra dootia animea.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Anytime in Italian there's a C followed directly by a vowel,
it makes a chiss sound. Oh okay, and then strangely,
the cch makes a cuss sound, so like okay, choo
ci or capiche, which is really interesting. I guess you
could say, I think.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I think the uh. I think the O is supposed
to be in size too doty on you said bora Mayo.
I think it's Boutromeo.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh is that right?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I think, but I'm not positive again. And you know,
the funny thing is, we just had a guy right
in saying he was our biggest Italian and did you
see that? And he said, uh, he said, chuck, knock
it off with those semi offensive Italian accents a little bit.
(23:28):
I emailed them back. I'm so sorry, I said, I
didn't know that I was offending anyone. I'm just having
fun and he was just like, it's all okay, and
he's like, I'm so glad you emailed back, and I
wasn't really offended.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh that was nice.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So I don't even know what to think now.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, we're all up in the air. But I can't
tell you that a sea followed by a vowel in
Italian is okay.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So you have such a doughty and Boromeo okay or
Borromeo that sounds more Middle Eastern to me Boro Mayo
in my mind it does.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yet I'm not catching that.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Boro Mao era meic.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, I wouldn't think.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Anyway. Here's the key though, is Borromeo wasn't Jewish. But
say the other guy's name satru Dodi. Satur Dody was
Jewish and he was one of the ones that was
fired for being Jewish during those racial laws.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So think about this father Biallick is putting together. He's
got like an anti fascist lead doctor. He has another
doctor's Jewish posing as a Catholic working at a Catholic hospital.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's a dream team.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
He has another guy, Adriano O Cichini because there's a
ci chuck. He is basically an anti fascist warrior who
also volunteers at the hospital, and all of these guys
are working together to form basically an anti fascist medical
committee to figure out what they can do. And one
(24:58):
of the first things they do is I don't know
where the the radio came from, but they had a
secret underground radio that was used by partisans and by
military leaders to contact other people secretly from a secret radio,
not something you wanted to be caught with. That was
a tremendous risk just to have that in the hospital,
(25:18):
and they had it in there for years. Apparently. That
was just one of the many things these guys did.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, it was a little anti fascist headquarters operating out
of this hospital.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Secret.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah. Well, of course October of that year, nineteen forty three, Kapler,
who we were talking about, he's the very bad SS
officer under orders from Kesselring. He was the other bad
man in charge. They said, all right, here's what we're
going to do. We are going to round him up
German style, and we are going and these were like,
(25:50):
I think there was like thirty thousand Ish Jewish people
living in Rome at the time.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I saw ten thousand.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Oh really, I saw perhaps more than the third So
I guess the range is pretty wide, and there were
about a thousand that they rounded up initially, and this
was I would guess that just the first wave of
this sent to Auschwitz, sent to the gas chambers. All
of this you can see from the Vatican. It's all
(26:19):
happening outside their windows on the streets where Nazis would
literally come to your door in the middle of the night,
bang them the door, and you know, say come out here,
get some things. That it was a bit of a
trick to say gather some stuff, because that would lead
you to believe that, oh, we're just being relocated or
something and maybe detained. But that was all a ruse
to keep them passive and to not fight back, because
(26:42):
if they showed up and said, don't bother bringing anything,
then they would surely know that they're on their way
to their death and they would probably fight back.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah. And then on top of that, the Nazis in
Rome had added deception. They had negotiated with the Jewish
community in Rome to accept fifty kilograms of gold in
exchange for protection of the Jewish community in Rome. So
the members of the Jewish community in Rome were under
(27:10):
the impression that they were going to be excluded from
roundups and deportations and concentration camps because they had a deal.
And then on top of it, like you said, they said,
you know, bring some personal items. It's just despicable stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
All right. So the stage is super duper set if
it was set before the first break, and then we're
going to come back and finally get to Syndrome K
right after this. All right, super duber set stage. The
(28:05):
Nazis are in Rome, they're in Italy are the citizens
are not happy. There are a lot of Jews flaying
to Catholic churches all over the place trying to find refuge,
including this hospital. But here's the deal. You show up
at a church and it's pretty obvious what to do
with somebody. You hide them. It's a church, it's a
place of refuge. Anyway, You show up at a hospital
(28:27):
that is an active hospital treating sick people, and they're like, well,
what do we do in this situation? Because the Nazis
are probably going to sniff this one out pretty quick.
So they created this plot to basically invent a fake disease,
specifically a Jewish disease, and they would hide these people
under the guise of being stricken with this very highly
(28:50):
contagious disease that the Nazis certainly did not want and
did not want to be around. It was ingenious, Actually.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
It was super ingenious. I saw just in passing. One
of the people interviewed in the documentary mentioned this and
they I didn't see it anywhere else, but he said
that he had heard one of the the Jewish people
who showed up at the hospital looking for help in
October when they the Jewish community was being rounded up.
(29:17):
They were like, what's you know? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (29:20):
What?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
What do you have? And the guy said, I've got
Kepler syndrome and that that is potentially where the name
came from, syndrome K. And that's what they named, this
fictitious disease that they attributed to people who were Jewish
who were hiding out in the hospital or needed to
be hidden. They hid them in plain sight.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, and apparently it was Borromeo's idea. Depending you know,
when you watch a documentary, Satadode and Osachini were both
saying like, I'm the one who let people in first,
but I think they I think they both probably did.
It wasn't like everyone showed up at once it was
a trickle of people. They were letting them in under
(30:02):
this guise once again of being sick. So they were like,
all right, we need some symptoms about you know, something
sort of generic like vomiting, nausea, headache, You should cough
a lot, We should say it's super contagious and that
your death will be a really bad one. You basically
die by asphyxiation. Right, it looked like some other diseases.
(30:22):
It wasn't too far off from things like tuberculosis or polio,
so it wasn't like some big, unbelievable new thing that
they would be like, wait a minute, that sounds fishy.
And so that was the plan. Is to put them
in their own wing basically where they were sequestered. They
had to wear a sign around their neck that said
syndrome K or I guess in Italian it was ill
(30:44):
morbo DK d IK And they said, hey, you know,
ham it up and look like you're super sick and
they won't want anything to do with you.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, the name also syndrome K. There's a lot of
explanations in addition to that one. What the case stood for.
It could have stood for kessel ring or Kapler. There's
a German word for tumor is creb's crank height, right, yeah, sure,
and then cribs kronkite, Yeah, like Walter kar I was
(31:18):
gonna say that. And then there was another one. This
was a really big one. Apparently in Germany, tuberculosis is
referred to as coke or cock disease ko H, after
the scientists from Germany who discovered the bacterium that creates tuberculosis.
So I think they would sometimes use that term as well.
(31:40):
That really drove it home to the Nazis that this
is like some sort of hyper terrible tuberculosis that we
don't want to catch.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, And there's a lot of stories because they weren't
just like, you know, we should write all this down
right to be discovered by the Nazis. So that's what
happens in history. Stories sort of get changed around. But
they have these people, like I said, in their own wing.
The troops would come around, they would you know, do
the thing that they did, which is investigate and see
what's going on. And the doctors would walk them by
(32:09):
and say, you don't want to go in there, trust me,
they've got syndrome K and you know, it's super contagious,
it'll kill you dead. It's a Jewish disease that I mentioned,
and and it worked. They raided the hospital a few times.
I believe they did find some people in hiding, but
they did not. I don't think they were in the
Syndrome k.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Way, they were not. They were I think four six
Polish refugees who were discovered, like you said, actually hiding. Yeah,
they also so because everybody in Rome was really unhappy
with the German occupiers, it was not hard to be
warned ahead of time that the Germans were heading your way.
And there was one night where the Germans, I guess,
(32:50):
had figured out that there was a radio somewhere around
that island and they got just enough warning to dump
it into the river. Again, it's really hard to get
a cross like what like that is way different from
being caught hiding some refugees in a hospital a radio.
It was like, you're actively part of the resistance, right,
(33:11):
So it was great that they didn't get caught with that,
I guess what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, absolutely, so while they were there in hiding faking
this disease, it wasn't supposed to be some permanent thing.
So it wasn't like they had, you know, some sort
of lavish situation was it was sort of like a
midway station, and they would get people in and out
of there as quickly as possible. They would sneak them out,
just a few at a time. They would give them
(33:37):
false papers, they would issue false death certificates in case
the Nazis were like, well, wait a minute, you only
have you know, fifteen patients here, you had twenty yesterday,
that kind of thing, and they're like, well they died
and here's their papers, and they never it seems like
they never even became suspicious.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
So yeah, I didn't get the impression that they actually
became suspicious. They were suspicious of the hospital just because
of its close proximity to the Jewish ghetto, but they
the syndrome k thing. From what I could tell, they
were so dedicated to the Ruse that like they took
it just as seriously as they would have if it
(34:15):
was an actual real thing, like just the documentation and
all that stuff. So yeah, it was just imperceptible. Apparently,
when the Nazis came through for one of their raids,
they brought a doctor with them, a German doctor, and
even the doctor was like, this all checks out, you know, right,
So they definitely did. They were very dedicated to this
and they did it the right way because they were
(34:38):
very anti fascists and they were also very intelligent.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
That's right. Everyone knows how this story plays out. Eventually,
the Nazis left Italy and American troops entered in June
of forty four without even any fighting. They were greeted
as liberators. And as for the cast of characters here,
he died in nineteen sixty one, but was honored by
(35:03):
Yad Vashim, an organization that basically said we're going to
bestow upon you the title of Righteous among Nations in
two thousand and four. So obviously a much posthumous award,
much posthumous. Posthumous is posthumous. Sure, it was many years so.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
It doesn't get trying to say more posthumous.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
But it can be posthumous ten minutes later, right.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Technique, it's it either is or it isn't posthumous.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Exactly, but anyway, many many years later, and that is
an award for non Jews who helped rescue Jews turn
the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, who else?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Well, your buddy sat your dode. He lived until the
early two thousand and I think lived in the Jewish
ghetto in Rome and worked as a doctor for that
whole time.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
And then Osuccini, the young partisan, who was also a
volunteer at the hospital. He ended up being elected to
the Italian Senate for decades and I think went on
to be I'm a psychologist too, And he lived until
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
And if you're wondering what happened to the Nazis and Mussolini,
I did a little following up on that Kessel ring.
He was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death
in nineteen forty seven. That was commuted to a life
sentence and he was released in nineteen fifty two, which sucks.
But he died in nineteen sixty Kapler. They brought the
(36:25):
hammer down on him. He was convicted. I don't think
he was sentenced. They handed him over to the Italians
who sentenced him. They send him to life in an
Italian military prison. They served thirty years until nineteen seventy seven.
And the only reason he got out is because he
was in a military hospital on the verge of death
(36:46):
and his wife showed up from Germany and smuggled him out,
lowering down out of the window with ropes and smuggled
him back to West Germany because she vowed he would
not die in captivity. She thought of him as a
christ like figure, apparently, was a quote of hers according
to the New York Times. Oh bit, so he died
after thirty years in prison. Kind of got his the Mussolini.
(37:08):
He was deposed, remember Chuck, when you're deposed, like you're
kind of under arrest basically, and the Nazi SS paratroopers
were sent in to free him, and they took him
up to northern Italy, which is where the Italian fascists
and the Nazis kind of staged their last stand as
(37:29):
we saw. But he was eventually arrested along with his
inner circle at Lake Cuomo. Lake Como. I just want
to say Cuomo because of rivers Cuomo, but it's just
Lake Como where George what's his name Cooney? Yeah, where
he lives, right, Okay, Yeah, So they were arrested there.
(37:49):
They were executed, I don't know, maybe on the spot
and strung up by their legs in the piazza in
Milan for all to see. That was the end of Mussolini.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
That was the end.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So at least the bad guys kind of got theirs.
And you know, really, this whole thing is about celebrating
that amazing il Morbo di CKay.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
That's right, Syndrome K.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (38:12):
No, maybe there's not enough for a movie here, but
it should be a should be an episode of a
of an anthology historical anthology show.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Great idea.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
You could get a really good hour out of this.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Sad for sure, we just almost did.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
I know, I look at us thirty nine minutes.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
If you want to know more about Syndrome K, you
can search the internet for that. There's a lot of
really interesting articles out there. There's also a really great documentary.
I think it's just called Syndrome K. And since I
said Syndrome K twice, that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
You know, I'm gonna go ahead and read Marco's email
because it's just fittings appropriate. Yeah, Hey guys, I'm Marco.
I'm an Italian guy born in the Deep South, Calabria
and currently living in Rome. I've been listening to Stuff
Should Know for the last two years. I love your show.
You're amazing. Most likely I'm your biggest fan in Italy.
I know that is pretemptious.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
I'm not sure I think he meant pretentious or presumptuous.
Oh okay, maybe he just kind of came up with
a brand new awesome word. May not presuming something.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
He goes on to say, as you see, my English
is better than the average English spoken and written by
the average Italian people, which honestly is really bad. That's
what he says. By the way, well, I have to
thank you for this. You're the main reason why my
English is not bad.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Three exclamation nice. Just one thing, if I may, guys,
one little thing. Sometimes you say some Italian words he
says Josh more often than Chuck. But I think he
just has this swapped out gotta be got be trying
to replicate the way Italians talk. Yeah, that's that's I'm
Chuck Marco. A lot of people get that wrong. It's fine.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
I know we got blamed just for be in your orbit.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
I know, guys, really we don't speak like that. We
are not even close to that. To be honest, it's
a little bit offensive. But he did the crying laughing face.
I don't mean to be a pain in the butt
except Marco Cus. Oh really, July, he's the A word anyway.
Thanks for so much, Thanks so much for your show.
I really hope to have the chance to see you
(40:23):
live someday.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Chao, Marco, very nice, Chuck. You didn't do a single
semi offensive Italian impression in that whole email.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I tried not well.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Thanks a lot, Marco, Thank you for setting us straight. Sadly,
I think that might be the end of Chuck's Italian impressions.
Maybe we'll see everybody's stay tuned and we'll all find out.
If you want to be like Marco and take us
to task over something and do it nicely like he did,
you can send us an email. It's stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff
you should know the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's right with a sort of a lesser known story
I think, I think probably most people know, thanks to
Steven Spielberg, the story of Oscar Schindler saving about twelve
hundred Jews from the Nazis. But this is a smaller
story where Italian doctors saved probably about fifty to one
(00:41):
hundred Jews.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, depending on who you ask. And yeah, that is
certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Now ask the families of those people, you know.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Oh, yeah, for sure, you know. Yeah. Before we get
any further, Chuck, I have to I want to give
a hat tip to a listener named Jesselyne Baldwin who
wrote in Many Moons Go and suggested this. I had
not heard of syndrome K before.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I had neither.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And there's a pretty it's surprising because there's a pretty
decent little hour long documentary on it too.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, it was a good one.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So yeah, it's a it's a pretty neat, little overlook story.
And I love. Those are some of my favorites. Getting
to tell people something they had no idea about.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So this is just in general, like Italy and what
happened in Italy and what Italy did during World War
Two was always just kind of been a blank to me.
I knew Minnilini was the leader. I knew they were
on the side with the.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Nazis the access I knew that too.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And that's about it, honestly, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I'm with you, man, I don't know. I feel like
the I feel like Japan and Germany for some reason,
get probably because of Pearl Harbor, and then Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and then the Germans because of you know, obvious reasons.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And I also did not know a lot about Italy
and World War Two until the past few days.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, And Italy at the time too was, as you know,
for a few decades before World War Two is a
pretty large regional power, had a lot of stakes in
other countries, either by just basically conquering the country or
having some sort of say over its doings, usually by
(02:25):
conquering it like Ethiopia, Libya. I think Albania. They had
just just overrun, like right before World War Two. They
did what Europeans did, especially fascist Europeans, because that was
what Mussolini was. He was a fascist. He was one
of the firsts. He was a fascist before Hitler even,
And as a fascist is like, you want to basically
(02:47):
make everybody else a fascist too, so you invade other
countries typically.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, and I'd love the Europeans and Europe as a whole.
I hope that didn't come across as like, that's what
Europeans do, but that's what many European entries did for
many hundreds of years.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, no, it's true. It's the facts, Chuck. Okay, so
there are a couple of things we have to talk about.
In the lead up to World War Two. Mussolini was
appointed prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel the Second, who
was the King of Italy. Another thing, I did not
(03:22):
realize that the king appointed Mussolini.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Okay, did you. I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well. I think we should just point out everything we
didn't know throughout this entire episode every chance we get.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Okay, Yeah, it'd be really interesting. Nineteen twenty two. I
didn't know it was that year.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, he was the prime minister as of nineteen twenty two.
He very quickly put together essentially a huge fascist power
that seemed to kind of live alongside the monarchy's power.
In Italy. There was almost like two governments, and Mussolini's
fascists were very powerful at the time. By the end
(04:01):
of the nineteen twenties early nineteen thirties, he was pretty
solidly in control.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, And of course this is all in a lead
up to the syndrome case story, but it just sort
of paints a nice picture of what was going on
there at the time. Italy had spent a lot of
Italian soldiers' lives and campaigns Furthered campaigns in Libya in
the nineteen twenties and Ethiopia in the nineteen thirties, kind
(04:32):
of concentrating on places in Northern Africa and the Mediterranean
where Italy had these colonies set up. Like everyone was
trying to get their little piece of other places, like
you said, and a lot of Italy's was in Northern Africa.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, there are a couple other things we need to
touch upon that become kind of part of the fabric
or the backdrop of this story one took place in
nineteen twenty nine. It's when the Italian government made a
treaty with the Vatican, with the Pope and all the
Pope's dudes. Yeah, that was called the Lateran Treaty, and
(05:09):
it basically said the Vatican and Vatican City is an
independent state within Rome. It still is today. It's the
smallest independent nation according to the syndroom K documentary by
population and by size, it's like one hundred acres or
something really small, like Winnie the Poo's woods were bigger
than Vatican City.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah. I walked around it by accident one time because
we did not know, my friend and I that it
was like there wasn't a cutthrough or we just kept
doing that thing. And actually you can check this out
in your what to Do when you get lost in
your stuff. You should know stuff kids should know book.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But we just figured, well, let's just keep going this
way and it's bound to do something, and it didn't.
We just kept walking until we came all the way around.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
You didn't paint like a fluorescent orange blaze onto one
of the pillars or called that you came across.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
No, we should have. But yeah, so they recognize Vatican City.
What this did was, you know, if it didn't necessarily
make the Vatican beholden to Mussolini, it did create a
situation where they couldn't just kind of freely say like, hey,
don't commit as much genocide. That's not cool.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, they had a huge they had something huge to lose.
It was very new and very fragile still, and they
had gotten it from the people they would be opposing
in this case, right.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The other thing was it took place nine years later,
and this was I just want to point out another
thing I didn't realize Italy had done in World War Two.
They enacted their own anti Semitic race laws starting in
nineteen thirty eight, and they just kind of they started
pretty badly, like they were basically like if you're Jewish,
you can't like work in the government, you can't teach
(06:52):
in schools, and then it just got progressively worse until
it was like if you're Jewish, you can't own this
house and you can't have this bank account. It just
got worse and worse and worse, and excluded the Jewish Romans,
who were the oldest Jewish population in Europe from what
I understand a couple thousand year old population from being
(07:13):
a part of Italy in Italian life.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, absolutely, they were called an Italian, the Leggi Brazziali,
very nice. And it was not only Jews in Italy,
but you know those same native Africans in the north
that we were talking about in the Italian colonies. So
these racial laws were kind of subjugating all these people,
like literally banning books and seizing property and stuff like
(07:37):
that stuff fascists do. Yeah, exactly. They stopped short of,
you know, stuff like rounding people up for gas chambers
like the Germans did, but it was still like a
pretty terrible subjugation.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That's a big point though. The this is such a
sticky thing to talk about because the country enacted under
Mussolini anti Jewish laws. They were enforced to some degree.
There were Italian people who forced their Jewish neighbors out
of their homes and forced them to hand over their
bank accounts. This actually happened, but it does bear comparing
(08:16):
to the Nazis version of the same thing. Sure, and
the fact that it wasn't genocidal is a big deal.
And the fact that when the Germans came in to
start taking over Italy. It was in part because the
Italians were kind of dragging their feet on. They weren't
showing enough enthusiasm in their genocide against Jewish people in Italy.
(08:41):
They were kind of doing it lackadaisically. And from what
I saw, if you were Jewish and you made it
to southern Italy into one of their concentration camps, an
Italian concentration camp, you were pretty much safe for the
war and your kids were going to go to school.
It was just a different jam. But at the end
of the day, they still had anti Semitic race laws
(09:03):
that were enforced for a period during the late thirties
and early forties.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Right, but you know, many tens of thousands of more
were not exterminated, right like they would have been had
Germany been in charge. Yes, all right, So nineteen thirties,
Mussolini and Hitler eventually cozy up. They get together with
what was called the Pact of Steel, and the Nazis
(09:29):
invaded Poland in like September October nineteen thirty nine. Italy
was still not in the war at this point. It
didn't take them too long to jump in there, though,
because Mussolini basically was like, you know what, we have
some some area in North Africa and around the Mediterranean,
but we can probably expand on that because of war. However,
(09:50):
their military and his military because of Ethiopian because the
further invasion of Libya, were not decimated, but they were
fairly taxed at this point laughing about the ten percent thing. Yeah,
we'll probably get e meals. It was decimated times four
times four, and you know, the Brits were putting up
(10:11):
a pretty big fight in North Africa. Eventually, the US
would declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, and Mussolini
would in turn declare war right back on the United
States because he was like, I got to get on
on this, you know, on the full axis action here
and it probably you know, I have a feeling it'll
be a pretty quick affair. But it was not.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
No, and by that time Mussolini was in too deep
to do anything about it except keep fighting. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
The problem is is by this time, by I think
nineteen forty three, he had sacrificed enough Italian lives, not
just in World War Two, remember in those campaigns prior
to World War Two, which is a good lesson against adventurism,
any stuff. You should know a listener out there, if
you ever become head of a nation state, don't go
(11:01):
off and try to conquer other neighbors because you never
know if there's a world warrior. Need to have your
resources for right around the corner.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That's a great lesson.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And so that's exactly what happened to Mussolini. So he
fell out of favor just he had just problem after
problem after problem, embarrassment after embarrassment, failure after failure. That
finally the Italian people are like, you're done, dude.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
That's right. September nineteen forty three. September eighth, specifically, is
when Italy technically surrenders to the Allies. However, that didn't
mean Italy was just awesome all of a sudden previous
to this, And I believe the spring of nineteen forty three,
Hitler kind of saw the riding on the wall, didn't
fully trust Italy or Mussolini, and was like, you know what,
(11:47):
if Italy falls into the hands of the Allies, that's
really bad news for us. So they started sort of
arming up and sending troops in the spring of nineteen
forty three, and they're run up to the surrender that
Mussolini finally, like I said in September, underwent, and so
(12:08):
takeaway here is Germans were in Italy and well armed
and basically occupying Italy at the time of their surrender
in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, and yeah, Italy had not only surrendered, they had
now switched sides. They're like, we're with you, allies. We've
declared war on Germany, even though the Germans are occupying
us right now, even though our dictator is in jail.
It's a weird situation, but that was the situation in
nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Like you say, yeah, well they were, you know, still
allies until the surrender. But it was a precarious thing
because like, Germany is like seriously occupying Italy in the
run up to the surrender, and it was just I
think everyone was pretty nervous at that point in Italy,
like certainly the citizens.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yes, but they were also mad because they had gotten
rid of Mussolini and now they had the Germans, who
were just like out of the frying pan into the fire.
And by this time they had said, yeah, we're at
war with Germany. We don't want to have this, so
there was a pretty strong underground resistance that did like
attack German Nazi soldiers who were stationed in Italy. They
didn't have an easy time of it in Italy. I
(13:14):
guess I should.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Say absolutely, maybe we should take a break. Yeah, that's
a good geographical warlike setup, and then we can come
back and sort of talk about some of the key
people players in this story.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Right after this, So, Chuck, you mentioned a couple of
(13:58):
people who are of prominent players in this The first
two are despicable sobs. They were Nazis. One of them
was named Albert kessel Ring, the smiling Nazi general. I
saw he was. I saw he was Hitler's go to
guy in Southern European theater. He was in charge of
the Mediterranean, he was, by default then in charge of Italy.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
He was.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
A terrible person who ordered all sorts of terrible atrocities
to be done to civilians. Anything that happened to civilians,
it was under his watch.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, and he was a guy that was kind of
enacting the racial laws in northern Africa.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yes, so yeah, I think we should say. I don't
know if we really got that point across. When the
Nazis took over Italy. They said, these racial laws are
now being enforced for reels, right, people are going to
start really getting deported. We're in charge now. And this
was the guy who was in.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Charge, that's right. So that's Kesserling. There's also another k
Herbert Kapler. He was an SS guy. He was the
German chief of police in Rome during the occupation and
he's notable for a lot of things he was. He's
an awful human and many atrocities committed under him, including
(15:16):
a very famous one called and I got to get
the pronunciation right here, the ardi Atina massacre. Okay, you
don't agree.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, no, I think you nailed it. Actually that's not
what I would have said, but I would have gotten
it wrong. I think you got it. It's a R
D E A T I N E.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Well, and this is also, you know, going by what
some pronunciation person says.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I would have added a syllable in there. I'm trying
to figure out a warrior.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Who who knows if they're ever correct, But that's what
I'm gonna call him. And that was a situation dealing
with the Atina Caves where they rounded up three hundred
and and this Is in retaliation for an attack on them.
But they rounded up they were told around up three
hundred and thirty Italians. They instead got three hundred and
(16:09):
thirty five Italians and they took them to these caves
and five at a time, made them get on their
knees and shot them in the back of the head.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, and then they dynamited the cave afterward so that
people couldn't get to them. That was like really par
for the course for the Nazim in Italy. The Italian
resistance would stage an attack on Nazi soldiers occupying their country,
and the Nazis would in turn kill ten times the
(16:39):
civilians something like that, just murdering cold blood, just hundreds
of civilians at a time. And do you realize, Chuck,
the resolve it takes for a resistance group to just
be like knowing that hundreds of people are going to
die because of the thing you're about to do the
Nazis and still having resolved to keep fighting. It's just
(17:02):
again bounding. So that was the plan, was the playbook,
and it happened all throughout Italy, especially from Rome up
to in the northern Italy under the watch of kessel
Ring and Kapler again, terrible, terrible human beings.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
All right. So that's the situation. The Nazis are in Rome,
the Italians don't like the Nazis. The Vatican is sort
of there, not being able to say a whole lot.
They can't really get into the Nazis business, of course,
because again that same precarious situation with Vatican cities. Well
(17:39):
not stateship. What would you call it?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Just independence?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah. Independence. So now we got to set a little
geography up. The Tiber River goes through Rome and there's
a tiny little island called Tiber Island. I think it's
the only island in the Rome area of the Tiber River,
and it is very small. It's about nine hundred feet
by two hundred and twenty feet and it's been around
(18:04):
forever and has been used throughout you know, the years
for various things, monasteries, I can't remember those, a couple
of other things, but it's connected, you know, by bridges
on both sides. And in the fifteen hundreds, for our story,
there was a Catholic order called the Hospitaller Order of
the Brothers of Saint John of God, who established a
(18:27):
hospital there where the monastery was and the hospital became
known as the Fata Beina Fratelli.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Not bet Yeah, yeah, okay, not bed.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
What does that mean? Do good brothers?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yes? Do fate bene good Fratelli brothers, do good brothers.
And the Ed helped us out with this, and he
makes a point like, does it mean do good brothers
or they're the do good brothers like the Doobie Brother's
original name.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, that sounds more like a duo wop group.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It does.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So the upshot of this is that in the fifteen hundreds,
this group of friars, Catholic friars, had a hospital up
and running on this island in the Tiber River, and
it remained in operation basically ever since that time. It
passed in and out of the Vatican's hands. But for
the purposes of our story, during nineteen forty three, the
(19:22):
Vatican was, I guess owned that hospital. It was operating
under Vatican control.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, And as such it became a sanctuary. Even though
you know, Jewish people and Catholic people had different faiths,
it did become a bit of a sanctuary for all
kinds of people because it was the Catholic Church and
they you know, have long had a history of welcoming
and helping people when they can well.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Also took it like geographically speaking, it linked the Jewish
ghetto in Rome, yeah, and the Vatican. On one side
of the bridge. It was the like, just across bridge
was the Jewish Ghetto. Just across the other bridge was
the Vatican. So it was it had its feet in
two different worlds and brought them all together kind of.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Absolutely. There was a guy there who ran the place,
a clergyman named a father Maurzio Bialec, and he was
in charge of the hospital. He was an anti fascist.
And as you'll see here what this guy does, it's
pretty amazing. He kind of very quietly and he was
sort of an anti fascist on the downlow because he
didn't want to cause a big stir, but he quietly
(20:33):
stocked the sort of the doctors and the staff with
anti fascists doctors and staff members. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
He put together like a Justice League but medical yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And I wonder if it was I wonder if his
reasoning was because he thought they they could eventually do
something like this, or if he was just like, hey, listen,
I'm anti fascist and I want to hire people like minded,
people like me.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
That or he was like, I am not spending eight
hours a day around fascists. I'll tell you exactly. It
was one of those. But the fact is this guy
was in charge. He was the hospital administrator. And one
of his first hires, very important hire, was a guy
named Giovanni Borromeo. He was a doctor and he was
(21:21):
very in step with father Biolick. He had very similar views,
and in fact he would he refused to join the
Fascist Party, and that really narrowed a lot of his
career prospects. He didn't necessarily get turned down by other hospitals,
but those hospitals required that he joined the Fascist Party.
(21:42):
He said thanks anyway. Finally, I don't know how he
was found by father Bilic, but he was, and he
was recruited and he was now the doctor in charge
of the hospital.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, so they team up, they kind of fill out
the staff with more anti fascists. Hooray. They bring the
facility into the modern age, which was you know again
at you know, nineteen thirty four modern for those times,
and they didn't have like laser surgery and stuff, is
what I'm saying. They weren't time travelers. Sure, so after
(22:15):
these racial laws, kind of kick in. In nineteen thirty eight.
This hospital, like we already said it was, you know,
it was a bit of a haven for all kinds
of people and certainly Jewish people, but it became even
more of a haven. And there was another guy who
was named Vittorio Sacra dootia animea.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Anytime in Italian there's a C followed directly by a vowel,
it makes a chiss sound. Oh okay, and then strangely,
the cch makes a cuss sound, so like okay, choo
ci or capiche, which is really interesting. I guess you
could say, I think.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I think the uh. I think the O is supposed
to be in size too doty on you said bora Mayo.
I think it's Boutromeo.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh is that right?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I think, but I'm not positive again. And you know,
the funny thing is, we just had a guy right
in saying he was our biggest Italian and did you
see that? And he said, uh, he said, chuck, knock
it off with those semi offensive Italian accents a little bit.
(23:28):
I emailed them back. I'm so sorry, I said, I
didn't know that I was offending anyone. I'm just having
fun and he was just like, it's all okay, and
he's like, I'm so glad you emailed back, and I
wasn't really offended.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh that was nice.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So I don't even know what to think now.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, we're all up in the air. But I can't
tell you that a sea followed by a vowel in
Italian is okay.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So you have such a doughty and Boromeo okay or
Borromeo that sounds more Middle Eastern to me Boro Mayo
in my mind it does.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yet I'm not catching that.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Boro Mao era meic.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, I wouldn't think.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Anyway. Here's the key though, is Borromeo wasn't Jewish. But
say the other guy's name satru Dodi. Satur Dody was
Jewish and he was one of the ones that was
fired for being Jewish during those racial laws.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So think about this father Biallick is putting together. He's
got like an anti fascist lead doctor. He has another
doctor's Jewish posing as a Catholic working at a Catholic hospital.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's a dream team.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
He has another guy, Adriano O Cichini because there's a
ci chuck. He is basically an anti fascist warrior who
also volunteers at the hospital, and all of these guys
are working together to form basically an anti fascist medical
committee to figure out what they can do. And one
(24:58):
of the first things they do is I don't know
where the the radio came from, but they had a
secret underground radio that was used by partisans and by
military leaders to contact other people secretly from a secret radio,
not something you wanted to be caught with. That was
a tremendous risk just to have that in the hospital,
(25:18):
and they had it in there for years. Apparently. That
was just one of the many things these guys did.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, it was a little anti fascist headquarters operating out
of this hospital.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Secret.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah. Well, of course October of that year, nineteen forty three, Kapler,
who we were talking about, he's the very bad SS
officer under orders from Kesselring. He was the other bad
man in charge. They said, all right, here's what we're
going to do. We are going to round him up
German style, and we are going and these were like,
(25:50):
I think there was like thirty thousand Ish Jewish people
living in Rome at the time.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I saw ten thousand.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Oh really, I saw perhaps more than the third So
I guess the range is pretty wide, and there were
about a thousand that they rounded up initially, and this
was I would guess that just the first wave of
this sent to Auschwitz, sent to the gas chambers. All
of this you can see from the Vatican. It's all
(26:19):
happening outside their windows on the streets where Nazis would
literally come to your door in the middle of the night,
bang them the door, and you know, say come out here,
get some things. That it was a bit of a
trick to say gather some stuff, because that would lead
you to believe that, oh, we're just being relocated or
something and maybe detained. But that was all a ruse
to keep them passive and to not fight back, because
(26:42):
if they showed up and said, don't bother bringing anything,
then they would surely know that they're on their way
to their death and they would probably fight back.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah. And then on top of that, the Nazis in
Rome had added deception. They had negotiated with the Jewish
community in Rome to accept fifty kilograms of gold in
exchange for protection of the Jewish community in Rome. So
the members of the Jewish community in Rome were under
(27:10):
the impression that they were going to be excluded from
roundups and deportations and concentration camps because they had a deal.
And then on top of it, like you said, they said,
you know, bring some personal items. It's just despicable stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
All right. So the stage is super duper set if
it was set before the first break, and then we're
going to come back and finally get to Syndrome K
right after this. All right, super duber set stage. The
(28:05):
Nazis are in Rome, they're in Italy are the citizens
are not happy. There are a lot of Jews flaying
to Catholic churches all over the place trying to find refuge,
including this hospital. But here's the deal. You show up
at a church and it's pretty obvious what to do
with somebody. You hide them. It's a church, it's a
place of refuge. Anyway, You show up at a hospital
(28:27):
that is an active hospital treating sick people, and they're like, well,
what do we do in this situation? Because the Nazis
are probably going to sniff this one out pretty quick.
So they created this plot to basically invent a fake disease,
specifically a Jewish disease, and they would hide these people
under the guise of being stricken with this very highly
(28:50):
contagious disease that the Nazis certainly did not want and
did not want to be around. It was ingenious, Actually.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
It was super ingenious. I saw just in passing. One
of the people interviewed in the documentary mentioned this and
they I didn't see it anywhere else, but he said
that he had heard one of the the Jewish people
who showed up at the hospital looking for help in
October when they the Jewish community was being rounded up.
(29:17):
They were like, what's you know? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (29:20):
What?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
What do you have? And the guy said, I've got
Kepler syndrome and that that is potentially where the name
came from, syndrome K. And that's what they named, this
fictitious disease that they attributed to people who were Jewish
who were hiding out in the hospital or needed to
be hidden. They hid them in plain sight.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, and apparently it was Borromeo's idea. Depending you know,
when you watch a documentary, Satadode and Osachini were both
saying like, I'm the one who let people in first,
but I think they I think they both probably did.
It wasn't like everyone showed up at once it was
a trickle of people. They were letting them in under
(30:02):
this guise once again of being sick. So they were like,
all right, we need some symptoms about you know, something
sort of generic like vomiting, nausea, headache, You should cough
a lot, We should say it's super contagious and that
your death will be a really bad one. You basically
die by asphyxiation. Right, it looked like some other diseases.
(30:22):
It wasn't too far off from things like tuberculosis or polio,
so it wasn't like some big, unbelievable new thing that
they would be like, wait a minute, that sounds fishy.
And so that was the plan. Is to put them
in their own wing basically where they were sequestered. They
had to wear a sign around their neck that said
syndrome K or I guess in Italian it was ill
(30:44):
morbo DK d IK And they said, hey, you know,
ham it up and look like you're super sick and
they won't want anything to do with you.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, the name also syndrome K. There's a lot of
explanations in addition to that one. What the case stood for.
It could have stood for kessel ring or Kapler. There's
a German word for tumor is creb's crank height, right, yeah, sure,
and then cribs kronkite, Yeah, like Walter kar I was
(31:18):
gonna say that. And then there was another one. This
was a really big one. Apparently in Germany, tuberculosis is
referred to as coke or cock disease ko H, after
the scientists from Germany who discovered the bacterium that creates tuberculosis.
So I think they would sometimes use that term as well.
(31:40):
That really drove it home to the Nazis that this
is like some sort of hyper terrible tuberculosis that we
don't want to catch.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, And there's a lot of stories because they weren't
just like, you know, we should write all this down
right to be discovered by the Nazis. So that's what
happens in history. Stories sort of get changed around. But
they have these people, like I said, in their own wing.
The troops would come around, they would you know, do
the thing that they did, which is investigate and see
what's going on. And the doctors would walk them by
(32:09):
and say, you don't want to go in there, trust me,
they've got syndrome K and you know, it's super contagious,
it'll kill you dead. It's a Jewish disease that I mentioned,
and and it worked. They raided the hospital a few times.
I believe they did find some people in hiding, but
they did not. I don't think they were in the
Syndrome k.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Way, they were not. They were I think four six
Polish refugees who were discovered, like you said, actually hiding. Yeah,
they also so because everybody in Rome was really unhappy
with the German occupiers, it was not hard to be
warned ahead of time that the Germans were heading your way.
And there was one night where the Germans, I guess,
(32:50):
had figured out that there was a radio somewhere around
that island and they got just enough warning to dump
it into the river. Again, it's really hard to get
a cross like what like that is way different from
being caught hiding some refugees in a hospital a radio.
It was like, you're actively part of the resistance, right,
(33:11):
So it was great that they didn't get caught with that,
I guess what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, absolutely, so while they were there in hiding faking
this disease, it wasn't supposed to be some permanent thing.
So it wasn't like they had, you know, some sort
of lavish situation was it was sort of like a
midway station, and they would get people in and out
of there as quickly as possible. They would sneak them out,
just a few at a time. They would give them
(33:37):
false papers, they would issue false death certificates in case
the Nazis were like, well, wait a minute, you only
have you know, fifteen patients here, you had twenty yesterday,
that kind of thing, and they're like, well they died
and here's their papers, and they never it seems like
they never even became suspicious.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
So yeah, I didn't get the impression that they actually
became suspicious. They were suspicious of the hospital just because
of its close proximity to the Jewish ghetto, but they
the syndrome k thing. From what I could tell, they
were so dedicated to the Ruse that like they took
it just as seriously as they would have if it
(34:15):
was an actual real thing, like just the documentation and
all that stuff. So yeah, it was just imperceptible. Apparently,
when the Nazis came through for one of their raids,
they brought a doctor with them, a German doctor, and
even the doctor was like, this all checks out, you know, right,
So they definitely did. They were very dedicated to this
and they did it the right way because they were
(34:38):
very anti fascists and they were also very intelligent.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
That's right. Everyone knows how this story plays out. Eventually,
the Nazis left Italy and American troops entered in June
of forty four without even any fighting. They were greeted
as liberators. And as for the cast of characters here,
he died in nineteen sixty one, but was honored by
(35:03):
Yad Vashim, an organization that basically said we're going to
bestow upon you the title of Righteous among Nations in
two thousand and four. So obviously a much posthumous award,
much posthumous. Posthumous is posthumous. Sure, it was many years so.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
It doesn't get trying to say more posthumous.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
But it can be posthumous ten minutes later, right.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Technique, it's it either is or it isn't posthumous.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Exactly, but anyway, many many years later, and that is
an award for non Jews who helped rescue Jews turn
the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, who else?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Well, your buddy sat your dode. He lived until the
early two thousand and I think lived in the Jewish
ghetto in Rome and worked as a doctor for that
whole time.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
And then Osuccini, the young partisan, who was also a
volunteer at the hospital. He ended up being elected to
the Italian Senate for decades and I think went on
to be I'm a psychologist too, And he lived until
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
And if you're wondering what happened to the Nazis and Mussolini,
I did a little following up on that Kessel ring.
He was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death
in nineteen forty seven. That was commuted to a life
sentence and he was released in nineteen fifty two, which sucks.
But he died in nineteen sixty Kapler. They brought the
(36:25):
hammer down on him. He was convicted. I don't think
he was sentenced. They handed him over to the Italians
who sentenced him. They send him to life in an
Italian military prison. They served thirty years until nineteen seventy seven.
And the only reason he got out is because he
was in a military hospital on the verge of death
(36:46):
and his wife showed up from Germany and smuggled him out,
lowering down out of the window with ropes and smuggled
him back to West Germany because she vowed he would
not die in captivity. She thought of him as a
christ like figure, apparently, was a quote of hers according
to the New York Times. Oh bit, so he died
after thirty years in prison. Kind of got his the Mussolini.
(37:08):
He was deposed, remember Chuck, when you're deposed, like you're
kind of under arrest basically, and the Nazi SS paratroopers
were sent in to free him, and they took him
up to northern Italy, which is where the Italian fascists
and the Nazis kind of staged their last stand as
(37:29):
we saw. But he was eventually arrested along with his
inner circle at Lake Cuomo. Lake Como. I just want
to say Cuomo because of rivers Cuomo, but it's just
Lake Como where George what's his name Cooney? Yeah, where
he lives, right, Okay, Yeah, So they were arrested there.
(37:49):
They were executed, I don't know, maybe on the spot
and strung up by their legs in the piazza in
Milan for all to see. That was the end of Mussolini.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
That was the end.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So at least the bad guys kind of got theirs.
And you know, really, this whole thing is about celebrating
that amazing il Morbo di CKay.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
That's right, Syndrome K.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (38:12):
No, maybe there's not enough for a movie here, but
it should be a should be an episode of a
of an anthology historical anthology show.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Great idea.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
You could get a really good hour out of this.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Sad for sure, we just almost did.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
I know, I look at us thirty nine minutes.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
If you want to know more about Syndrome K, you
can search the internet for that. There's a lot of
really interesting articles out there. There's also a really great documentary.
I think it's just called Syndrome K. And since I
said Syndrome K twice, that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
You know, I'm gonna go ahead and read Marco's email
because it's just fittings appropriate. Yeah, Hey guys, I'm Marco.
I'm an Italian guy born in the Deep South, Calabria
and currently living in Rome. I've been listening to Stuff
Should Know for the last two years. I love your show.
You're amazing. Most likely I'm your biggest fan in Italy.
I know that is pretemptious.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
I'm not sure I think he meant pretentious or presumptuous.
Oh okay, maybe he just kind of came up with
a brand new awesome word. May not presuming something.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
He goes on to say, as you see, my English
is better than the average English spoken and written by
the average Italian people, which honestly is really bad. That's
what he says. By the way, well, I have to
thank you for this. You're the main reason why my
English is not bad.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Three exclamation nice. Just one thing, if I may, guys,
one little thing. Sometimes you say some Italian words he
says Josh more often than Chuck. But I think he
just has this swapped out gotta be got be trying
to replicate the way Italians talk. Yeah, that's that's I'm
Chuck Marco. A lot of people get that wrong. It's fine.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
I know we got blamed just for be in your orbit.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
I know, guys, really we don't speak like that. We
are not even close to that. To be honest, it's
a little bit offensive. But he did the crying laughing face.
I don't mean to be a pain in the butt
except Marco Cus. Oh really, July, he's the A word anyway.
Thanks for so much, Thanks so much for your show.
I really hope to have the chance to see you
(40:23):
live someday.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Chao, Marco, very nice, Chuck. You didn't do a single
semi offensive Italian impression in that whole email.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I tried not well.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Thanks a lot, Marco, Thank you for setting us straight. Sadly,
I think that might be the end of Chuck's Italian impressions.
Maybe we'll see everybody's stay tuned and we'll all find out.
If you want to be like Marco and take us
to task over something and do it nicely like he did,
you can send us an email. It's stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com