The details of the disease are sketchy, but the symptoms include persistent coughing, paralysis and death.
The disease was said to be highly contagious.
The 16th-century Fatebenefratelli Hospital has a history of infectious diseases.
Fatebenefratelli Hospital on the Tiber river Island, Rome.
Photo credit:4thebirds/Shutterstock.com
But Syndrome K was different.
It sounded similar to Koch Syndrome, which was tuberculosis, a terribly frightening disease at that time.
None of them dared to go in.
And thats how at least a hundred Jews who were taking refugee at the hospital escaped death.
Syndrome K was a made up disease.
Borromeo began providing Jews a safe haven in the hospital from 1938, the year Italy introduced antisemitic laws.
Ossicini, along with many other doctors, ran a semi-clandestine resistance base at the Fatebenefratelli.
The refugees were given a new fatal diseaseSyndrome Kin order to identify them from the actual patients.
The letter K was chosen after German officer Albert Kesselring, who led the troops in Rome.
K was also the initial of the last name of a Nazi officer in Rome, Herbert Kappler.
Just what it might be was left for interpretation.
The idea to call it Syndrome K, like Kesserling or Kappler, was mine.
He died in 1961 at his own hospital.
He was posthumously recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government.
Aerial view of Fatebenefratelli Hospital.
