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These Doctors Invented a Fake Disease to Save Italian Jews
(JTA) Stephen Silver - The new documentary, "Syndrome K," by filmmaker Stephen Edwards, tells the story of how three doctors at a hospital in Rome shielded dozens of Jews from the Nazis in 1943 and 1944 by inventing a fake infectious disease called Syndrome K. The prospect of catching the disease kept the Nazis, who were occupying Rome following the fall of Mussolini, away from the hospital until the Allies liberated the city in June 1944. The three doctors were Vittorio Sacerdoti, who was Jewish, and Catholics Adriano Ossicini and Giovani Borromeo, who is recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. When Edwards first began working on the film in 2018, he learned that Ossicini was still alive at age 98 and interviewed him. The film also includes an interview with Sacerdoti from 2000, shortly before his death.