Stuff You Should Know - The Made-up Disease of Syndrome K

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

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.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck Cier-2 and Jerry Cier-2 and this is Stuff You Should Know of the podcast. That's right. With a sort of a lesser known story, I think probably most people know, thanks to Steven Spielberg, the story of Oscar Schindler saving about 1200 Jews from the Nazis, but this is a smaller story where Italian doctors saved probably about 50 to 100 Jews. Yeah, depending on who you ask, And that is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

No, ask the families of those people, you know? Oh yeah, for sure. You know? Yeah. Before we get any further chuck, I want to give a hat tip to a listener named Jessel and Baldwin, who wrote in many moons ago and suggested this. I had not heard of syndrome K before.

I had neither. And there's a pretty, it's surprising because there's a pretty decent little hour long documentary on it too. Yeah, it was a good one. So, yeah, it's a pretty neat little overlook story. And I love those. This is some of my favorites, getting to tell people something they had no idea about. That's right. So, this is, just in general, like Italy and what happened in Italy and what Italy did during World War II was always just kind of been a blank to me. I knew Mussolini was the leader. Yeah. I knew they were on the side with the Nazis, the Axis. I knew that too. And that's about it, honestly, to tell you the truth. 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. Yeah. But I don't know. I also did not know a lot about Italy and World War II until the past few days. No. Italy at the time, too, for a few decades before World War II, was a pretty large regional power. Had a lot of stakes in other countries, either by basically conquering the country or having some sort of say over its doings, usually by conquering it, like Ethiopia, Libya,

think Albania, they had just just a overrun like right before World War II. 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 make everybody else 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 make everybody else a fascist too. So you invade other countries

typically. Yeah. And I'd love the Europeans and Europe as a whole. I hope that didn't come across. It's like, that's what Europeans do. But that's what many European countries did for many hundreds of years. Yeah. Oh, 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 II. Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel II, who was the King of Italy. Another thing I did not realize

that the king appointed Mussolini. Okay. Did you? I don't think I knew that. Well, I think we should just point out everything we didn't know throughout this entire episode. Every chance we get, okay? Yeah, it would be really interesting. 1922, I didn't know it was that year. Yeah, he was, he was the, the Prime Minister as of 1922, he very quickly put together essentially a huge fascist power that seemed to kind of live alongside the monarchies power in Italy. There was almost like two governments, and Mussolini's fascists were very powerful at the time by the end of the 1920s, early 1930s, he was pretty solidly in control. Yeah, and of course this is all an elite 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 in campaigns, a further campaigns in Libya in the 1920s, and Ethiopia in the 1930s, kind 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.

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 1929. It's when the Italian government made a treaty with the Vatican, with the Pope and all the Pope's dudes, that it was called the Lateran Treaty. And it basically said the Vatican and Vatican City is an independent state within Rome. It's still as today.

It's the smallest independent nation, according to the Syndrome K documentary by population and by size. It's like a hundred acres or something really small. Like when do the poos boards were bigger than Vatican City? 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 cut through

or we just kept doing that thing and actually you can check this out and you're, what to do when you get lost and your stuff you should know. Stuff kid should know book. Nice. 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. You didn't paint like a fluorescent orange blaze onto one of the pillars or columns that you came across?

No, we should have. But yeah, so they recognized 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. 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? Yeah. The other thing was it took place nine years later, and this was, I just wanna point out, another thing I didn't realize Italy had done in World War II,

they enacted their own anti-Semitic race laws, starting in 1938, 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 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 a part of Italy in Italian life. Yeah, absolutely. They were called in Italian, the leggi, razziali. Very nice. And it was not only Jews in Italy italy but you know the same uh... native africans in the north that we were talking about in the italian colony so these racial laws were uh... kind of subjugating all these people like literally banning books and

seizing property and stuff like that stuff fascists too yeah exactly uh... they stop short of uh... you know stuff like rounding people up for gas chambers like the germans did but it was still like a pretty terrible subjectation that's a big point though the the it's such a sticky thing to talk about because

the country enacted under Mussolini anti-Jewish laws they were in force to some degree there were ital Italian people who like forced their Jewish neighbors out of their homes and forced them to hand over the bank accounts. This actually happened. But it does bear comparing 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. Right. 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 in 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 that were enforced for a period during the late thirties and early forties. Right, but many tens of thousands of more were not exterminated. Right. They would have been had Germany been in charge. Yes. All right, so 1930s, Mussolini and Hitler eventually cozy up They get together with what was called the Pact of Steel

And the Nazis invaded Poland and like September October 1939 Italy was still not in the war at this point Didn't take them too long to jump in there though because Mussolini basically was like, you know what I we have some Some area in North Africa and around the Mediterranean, but we can probably expand on that because of war. However, their military and his military because of Ethiopian, because of the further invasion of Libya were not decimated, but they were fairly taxed at this point. Laughing about the're laughing about the 10% thing. Yeah. We'll probably get emails. It was decimated times four.

Times four. And the Brits were putting up 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 No, and by that time Mussolini was in too deep to do anything about it except keep fighting right?

Yeah, the problem is is by this time by I think 1943 fighting, right? The problem is, is by this time by I think 1943, he had sacrificed enough Italian lives, not just from World War II, remember in those campaigns prior to World War II, which is a good lesson against adventurism. Any stuff you should know, listen out there, if you ever become head of a nation state, don't go off and try to conquer other neighbors because you never know if there's a world war you'll need to have your resources for right around the corner. That's a great lesson. And so that's exactly what happened to Mussolini.

So he fell out of favor, he had just problem after problem after problem embarrassment, after embarrassment, failure after failure, that finally the Italian people are like, you're done, done dude That's right September 1943 September 8th Specifically is when Italy technically surrenders to the allies However, that didn't mean Italy was just awesome all of a sudden Right previous to this and I believe the spring of 1943

Hitler kind of saw the riding on the wall, didn't fully trust Italy or Mussolini, and was like, you know what, 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 1943 and then run up to the surrender that Mussolini finally like I said in September underwent and so Take away here is Germans were in Italy and well armed and Basically occupying Italy at the time of their surrender in 1943 Yeah, and yeah Italy had not only surrendered. They had now switched sides They're like we're with you allies where we've declared on Germany, even though the Germans are occupying us right now,

even though our dictators in jail, it's a weird situation, but that was the situation in 1943, 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 and 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. Yes, but they were also mad because they got rid of Mussolini and now they had the Germans who were 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 guess I should say. Absolutely. Maybe we should take a break. Yeah. That's a good geographical war like setup. And then we can come back and sort of talk about some of the key people players in this story right after this. On his new podcast, Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon joined Kevin for inspiring conversations

with celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like musical artist, Jewel. And what an equal opportunist misery is, it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless, if you are raised in misery systems, it's perpetual. Kevin is the founder of the nonprofit organization, 6-Degrees.org. Now he's meeting with like-minded actors who share a passion for change, like Mark Ruffalo. They're all in the wrong track helping you down the right track.

If you're on the right track, let's help them double down on that and see the opportunities stay on the right track for success in the future. These conversations between Kevin and activist Matthew McConaughey will have you ready to lean in, learn, and inspire to act. You know, I found myself moving upstate in the middle of this fracking fight and I'm trying to raise kids there and my neighbors like willing to poison my water. Listen to six degrees with Kevin Bacon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts. I'm the Wizard of Oz, I'm the one making everything happen. Real housewife of Salt Lake City Star Jen Shaw is running the scam of the century. We probably will never be able to be retired, glad for working to work anymore. Living a fat million dollar lifestyle on the backs of thousands of elderly victims. She turned up their lives for what a fake Fendi bag? Congrats, girl. When you have her confronted, instead of stopping, she finds ways to be sneaky

or about it and keeps going. I remember one time, Stuart lost, like, like about 8 million, and General was very upset and she came down to the office late at night. With Coach, yelling at Screaming at him, asking him where their money is. Would you call her a con artist? I would just call her a con,

she's not very much of an artist. Listen to Queen of the Con, season four, the Unreal Housewife, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, this is Big Long, check out my podcast, It's Sopta. Each and every Monday, it's Sopta of Podcasts brings a conversation get your podcasts. like Brandy Marshall, Lil Baby, Shalimane and Gar. Like imagine that Wendy was Wendy, right?

And she had this young girl to Jay, named Shalimane, from South Carolina, that she put her arm around and then that person became who he is. Who he is. Yo, there's nothing flying in that. And that's the most flashy. Like, like, like, you can grow a tree, but the illest thing is to have mad fruit from that tree.

From lifestyle insights to bridging that knowledge to money gap, real-your-weekly dose of high-value entertainment, laugh, cry, and soaking in game with every episode. Join us on Monday. Listen to us up there podcasts on the Black-Effect Podcast Network. I heart Radio L, Apple Podcast, or whatever you get your podcast. couple of people who are kind of prominent players in this. The first two were despicable SOBs. They were Nazis. One of them was named Albert Kesselring,

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. He was a default then in charge of Italy. He was 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. Yeah, and he was a guy that was kind of enacting the racial laws in northern Africa. Yeah, so yeah, I think we should say, I don't if we really got that point across when the when the Nazis took over Italy

They said these racial laws are now being enforced for reels. Right people are gonna start really getting deported We're in charge now and this was the guy who was in charge. That's right So that's Kesslerling. There's also another K Herbert Kapler. He was an SS guy other case 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 an awful human and many atrocities committed under him, including a very famous one called, and I've got to get the pronunciation right here. The Ardeatina Massacre. Okay. You don't agree? 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 ARDATIN. Well, and this is also, you know, going by what some pronunciation person says. I would have added a syllable in there. I'm trying to figure out where.

Who knows if they're ever correct. But that's why I'm going to call them. And that was a situation dealing with the Ardia, Atina Caves, where they rounded up 300 and this is in retaliation for an attack on them, but they were told around up 330 Italians. They instead got 335 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. Yeah, and then they dine-minded the cave afterward so that people couldn't get to them. That was like really par for the course for the Nazi MO in Italy. The Italian resistance would stage an attack on Nazi soldiers occupying their country. And the Nazis would in turn kill 10 times the civilians, something like that. Just murder and 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 the resolve to keep fighting. It's just astounding. So that was the playbook, and it happened all throughout Italy, especially from Rome up to into Northern Italy under the watch of Kesselring and Kapler. Again, terrible, terrible human beings. 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, not state ship, what would you call it? Just independence? Yeah, independence. So now we gotta 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 900 feet by 220 feet. And it's been around forever and it's been used throughout the years for various things, monasteries. I can't remember, there was a couple of other things, but it's connected by bridges on both sides.

And in the 1500s for our story, there was a Catholic order called the hospitaler Order of the Brothers of St. John of God who established a hospital there where the monastery was and that hospital became known as the Fata Bina Fratelli. Not bad. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Not bad. What does that mean? Do good brothers? Yes. Do Fate Benne Good for Tally Brothers. Do good brothers. And that helps 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 do be brothers original name. Yeah.

That sounds more like a do-op group. It does. Yeah. So, the upshot of this is that in the 1500s, this group of fryers, Catholic fryers, had a hospital up and running on this island in the Tyber 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 1943, the Vatican was, I guess, owned that hospital. It was operating under Vatican control.

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 a sanctuary for all kinds of people, because it was the Catholic church, and they have long had a history of welcoming and helping people when they can. Well, also, Chuck, geographically speaking, it linked the Jewish ghetto in Rome and the Vatican. On one side of the bridge, it was just across the bridge, was the Jewish ghetto, just across the other bridge, was the like just across the 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 absolutely uh there was a guy there who ran the place uh clear German name of father morizio biallek 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 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 a anti-fascist on the down low because he didn't want to cause a big stir. But he quietly stocked the sort of the doctors and the staff with anti-fascist doctors and staff members.

Yeah, he put together like a justice league, but medical. Yeah, and I wonder if it was, I wonder if his reasoning was because he thought 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, like, mind to people like me. That, or he was like, I am not spending eight hours a day around fascists, I'll tell you. What? 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 very in step with father Bialic. He had very similar views and in fact 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 parties that thanks anyway. Finally, I don't know how he was found by father Bialic,

but he was, and he was recruited, and he was now the doctor in charge of the hospital. Yeah, so they team up, they kind of fill out the staff with more anti-fascist, hooray. They bring the facility into the modern age which was again in 1934, modern for those times and they didn't have laser surgery and stuff is what I'm saying. They weren't time travelers. So after these racial laws kind of kick in in 1938, this hospital, like we already said, 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 Sacradorti. Satcher. Anytime in Italian, there's a C followed directly by a vowel, it makes a C sound. And then strangely, the C-H makes a Ch sound. So like, Chow, C-I, or Kapiche, which is really Kapiche. I guess you could say. I think the O is supposed to be emphasized too. Doty? On, you said Boremeo. I think it's Boreme be emphasized too. Doty? On, you said Boramail.

I think it's Boromail. Oh, is that right? 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. Mm-hmm. And did you see that? And he said Chuck, knock it off with those

semi-offensive Italian accents. Is that why I've been so tame today? A little bit. I emailed him back, so 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.

Oh, that was nice. So I don't even know what to think now. Yeah, we're all up in the air. But I can't tell you that a C followed by a vowel in Italian is... Okay, so you have such a doti and boro mio. Okay, or boro mio. That sounds more Middle Eastern to me.

Boro mio? In my mind it does, yeah. I'm not catching that Boromio era mayic Yeah, I wouldn't think that was Anyway, here's a key though is Boromio wasn't Jewish but Say the other guy's name. Such a Dodie. Such a Dodie was Jewish and he was one of the ones that was fired for being Jewish during those racial laws. So think about this. I'm father Bialek 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. It's a dream team. He has another guy, Adriano O.C. Cheney, because there's a C.I. 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 of the first things they do is, I don't know where 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. And they had it in there for years, apparently. That was just one of the many things these guys did. Yeah, it was a little anti-fascist headquarters operating out of this hospital. Secret? Yeah, well, of course. October of that year, 1943, 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 gonna do. We are going to round them up, German style, and we are going... And these were like, I think there was like 30,000-ish Jewish people living in Rome at the time. That's about 10,000. Oh, really? I saw it, I saw perhaps more than 30. Okay. I guess the range is pretty wide. And there were about 1,000 that they rounded up initially. And this was, I would guess 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 happening outside their windows on the streets where Nazis would literally come to your door in the middle of the night, bang on the Vatican. It's all happening outside their windows on the streets where Nazis would literally come to your door in the middle of the night, bang on the door, and say, come out here, get some things. It was a bit of a trick to say, gather some stuff. That would lead you to believe that, oh, we're just being relocated or something and maybe detained. That was all the ruse to keep them passive and to not fight back because if they showed up and said don't bother bringing anything

Then they would surely know that they're on the way to their death and they would probably fight back Yeah, and then on top of that the Nazis in Rome had a added deception They had negotiated with the Jewish community in Rome to accept 50 kilograms of gold in Exchange for protection of the Jewish community in Rome to accept 50 kilograms of gold in exchange for protection of the Jewish community in Rome. So the members of the Jewish community in Rome were under 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.

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. On his new podcast, Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon joined Kevin for inspiring conversations with celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like musical artist, Jewel. And what an equal opportunist misery is, it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless, if you are raised in misery systems, it's perpetual. Kevin is the founder of the nonprofit organization,

six degrees.org. Now he's meeting with like-minded actors who share a passion for change, like Mark Ruffalo. They're all in the wrong track, helping you don't get on the right track. If you're on the right track, let's help them double down on that and see the opportunities stay on the right track for success in the future.

These conversations between Kevin and activist Matthew McConaughey will have you ready to lean in, learn, and inspire to act. You know, I found myself moving up state in the middle of this fracking fight and I'm trying to raise kids there and my neighbors like willing to poison my water. Listen to six degrees with Kevin Bacon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm the Wizard of Oz, I'm the one making everything happen. Real housewife of Salt Lake City Star Jen Shaw is running the scam of the century.

We probably will never be able to be retired left working to work anymore. Living a fat million dollar lifestyle on the backs of thousands of elderly victims. She turned up their lives for what a fake Fendi bag? Congrats, girl. When you have her confronted, instead of stopping, she finds ways to be sneaky or about it and keeps going. I remember one time, Stuart lost like about 8 million and General was very upset and she came down to the office late at night with coach

Yall is screaming at him asking him where their money is Would you call her a con artist? I would just call her a con. She's not very much of an artist Listen to Queen of the Con season 4, the Unreal Housewife on the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in-depth dialogue with a level of understanding for everyone. Bringing you interviews from your favorites, like Brandy Marshall, Lil Baby, Shalamey Gawd.

Like imagine that Wendy was Wendy, right? And she had this young girl to Jay, named Shalamey, from South Carolina, that she put her arm around, and then that person became who he is. Who he is. Yo, there's nothing flying in that. And that's the most flashy. Like, like, like, forget what you can grow a tree,

but the illest thing is to have mad fruit from that tree. From lifestyle insights to bridging that knowledge to money gap, real your weekly dose of high value entertainment, laugh, cry, and soak in game with every episode. Join us on Monday. Listen to us up there podcasts on the Black Effect Podcast network. I heart, radio, Apple Podcast Podcast or whatever you get your podcast.

All right, super duper set stage. The Nazis are in Rome, they're in Italy, the citizens are not happy. There are a lot of Jews fleeing 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 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 contagious disease very deadly that the Nazis Certainly did not want and did not want to be around right it was ingenious actually it was super ingenious I saw just Impassing one of the people interviewed in the documentary mentioned this. And I didn't see it anywhere else, but he said that he had heard one of the Jewish people who showed up at the hospital looking for help in October when the Jewish community was being rounded up. They were like, what's wrong with you?

What do you have? And the guy said, I've got Kapler syndrome. And that that is potentially where the name came from. Syndrome Tay. 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.

Yeah, and apparently it was Borromino's idea, depending on when you watch a documentary, a setrodoti and Osecini were both saying, like, I'm the one who let people in first, but 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 this guise, once again, of being sick. So they were like, all right, we need some symptoms. How 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 really bad when you basically die by a fixation. Right. It looked like some other diseases. It wasn't too far off from things like tuberculosis or polio. So it wasn't like some unbelievable new thing that they would be like, wait a minute, it

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 an Italian, it was ill-morbod decay, diK. And they said, hey, ham it up and look like you're super sick and they won't want anything to do with you. Yeah.

The name also, syndrome K, there's a lot of explanations in addition to that one. What the K stood for, it could have stood for Kesselringer Kapler. There's a German word for tumor is Krebskrank height, right? Yeah, sure. And the Kronkite. Krebskrank height? Yeah. Like Walter Kronkite.

Right, let's get into that. And then there's another one. This was a really big one. Apparently in Germany, tuberculosis is referred to as Koch or Koch disease, K-O-C-H, after the scientists from Germany who discovered the bacterium that creates tuberculosis. So I think they would sometimes use that term as well 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. Yeah, and there's a lot of stories because they weren't just like, you know, we should

write all this down 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 do the thing that they did, which is investigate and see what's going on. And the doctors would walk them by and say,

you don't wanna go in there. Trust me, they've got syndrome K. And it's super contagious, it'll kill you dead. It's a Jewish disease that I mentioned. 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 They were not they were I think four or six Polish refugees who were discovered like you said actually hiding

Yeah, they also So because everybody in 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, 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 across. Like, that is way different from being caught hiding some refugees in a hospital. A radio was like, you're actively part of the resistance, right? So it was great that they didn't get caught with that. I guess what I'm trying to say. 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 some sort of lavish situation. 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 false papers, they would issue false death certificates in case, the Nazis were like, oh wait a minute

You only have you know 15 patients here. You had 20 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. 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 the syndrome cating it from what I could tell, they were so dedicated to the ruse that they took it just as seriously as they would

if it 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? So they definitely did, they were, they were very dedicated to this and they did it the right way because they were very antifascist and they were also very intelligent. That's right. Everyone knows how this story plays out. Eventually, the Nazis left Italy

and American troops entered in June of 44 without even any fighting. They were greeted as liberators. As for the cast of characters here, Boromio, he died in 1961, but was honored by Yad Vashem, an organization that basically said, we're going to bestow upon you the title of righteous among nations in 2004. So obviously, much posthumous award. Much posthumous? Posthumous is posthumous. Sure.

It was many years later. It doesn't get more posthumous. No, but it can beus is Post-Germus. Sure. It was many years later. It doesn't get more Post-Germus. No, but it can be Post-Germus 10 minutes later. Right. Technic. It either is or it isn't Post-Germus. Exactly. But anyway, many, many years later,

and that is an award for non-Jews who helped rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Yeah. Who else? Well, your buddy, Satya Dotyoty he lived until the early 2000 and I think lived in the Jewish ghetto in Rome and worked as a doctor for that whole time Mm-hmm, and then Ocecini 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 become a psychologist too And he he lived until 2019. Amazing. And if you're wondering what happened to the Nazis and Mussolini, I did a little following up on that. Kesselring, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death in 1947. That was commuted to a life sentence.

And he was released in 1952, which sucks, but he died in 1960. Kapler, they brought the 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 sentenced him to life in an Italian military prison.

They served 30 years until 1977. The only reason he got out is because he was in a military hospital on the verge of death 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 was 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, O'Bitt. So he died after 30 years in prison, kind of got his. The Mussolini. 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 we saw But he was eventually arrested along with his inner circle at Lake Cuomo, Lake Cuomo I was want to say Cuomo because of Rivers Cuomo, but it's just Lake Cuomo where George What's his name? Cuny, yeah, where he lives. Right? Cuny, I was kidding.

Okay. Yeah. So they were arrested there. They were executed. I don't know, maybe on the spot and strung up by their legs in the piata and Milan for all to see. That was the end of Mussolini. That was the end.

So at least the bad guys kind of got theirs. And you know, really this whole thing is about celebrating that amazing Il Mourbaud de Kay. That's right, syndrome Kay. You got anything else? No, maybe there's not enough for a movie here, but it should be an episode of an anthology, historical anthology show. Great idea. You could get a really good historical anthology show. Great idea.

You could get a really good hour out of this. For sure. We just almost did. I know, look at us, 39 minutes. 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 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. You know, I'm gonna go ahead and read Marco's email, because it's just fitting, right? It's appropriate, yeah. Hey guys, I'm Marco. I'm an Italian guy born in the deep south,

a calabria, and currently living in Rome. I've been listening to stuff you should know for the last two years. I love your show. You're amazing. Uh, most likely I'm your biggest fan in Italy. I know that is pretentious. I'm not sure. I think you met pretentious or presumptuous. Oh, okay. Maybe he just came up with a brand new awesome word. Maybe so. But not too presuming something. 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. Well, 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 a swapped out.

Gotta be. Gotta be. Trying to replicate the way Italian's talk. Yeah, that's I'm Chuck, Marco. A lot of people get that wrong. It's fine. It's fine. I just got blamed just for being in your orbit.

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 cussed. Oh, really? He's the A-word.

Anyway, thanks so much for your show. I really hope to have the chance to see you live someday. Anyway, thanks for so much, thanks so much for your show. I really hope to have the chance to see you live someday. Ciao, Marco. Very nice Chuck, you didn't do a single semi-offensive Italian impression in that whole email. I tried that. Well thanks a lot Marco, thank you for setting us straight. Sadly, I think that might be the end of Chuck's Italian impressions. Think that might be the end of Chuck's Italian impressions. Maybe. We'll see. Everybody 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 you did, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On his new podcast, six degrees with Kevin Bacon, join Kevin for inspiring conversations with his friends and fellow celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like actor Matthew McConaughey.

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