In October 1943, when the SS began rounding up Roman Jews for deportation to Auschwitz, a number took refuge in the Fatebenefratelli hospital, located on an island in the Tiber across from the city’s historic ghetto. They were immediately diagnosed with an illness called “Syndrome K,” and placed in a special ward, as Caitln Hu writes:
The disease did not exist in any medical textbook or physician’s chart. In fact, it didn’t exist at all. It was a codename invented by the doctor and anti-fascist activist Adriano Ossicini, to help distinguish between real patients and healthy hideaways. (Political dissidents and a revolutionary underground radio station were also sheltered there from Italy’s Fascist regime.)
The fake illness was vividly imagined: rooms holding Syndrome-K sufferers were designated as dangerously infectious—dissuading Nazi inspectors from entering—and Jewish children were instructed to cough, in imitation of tuberculosis [patients], when soldiers passed through the hospital. . . .
On June 21, Fatebenefratelli was honored as a “House of Life” by the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a U.S. organization dedicated to honoring heroic acts during the Holocaust. . . .
“The lesson of my experience was that we have to act not for the sake of self-interest, but for principles,” said Ossicini [in a recent interview]. “Anything else is a shame.”
Read more on Quartz: http://qz.com/724169/an-italian-doctor-explains-syndrome-k-the-fake-disease-he-invented-to-save-jews-from-the-nazis/