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