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How’s this for an intriguing topic that in some way escaped public consideration for 79 years till it made its means right into a latest documentary movie? Towards the tip of the Second World Battle, three physicians at a hospital in Rome cooked up an infectious illness to defend Jews.
Titled Syndrome Ok, the movie, which was launched in August, is the brainchild of Stephen Edwards. It tells the story of Adriano Ossicini, Giovani Borromeo and Vittorio Sacerdoti, docs at Rome’s Fatebenefratelli Hospital, who invented a pretend illness they named “Ok Syndrome” in late 1943 to stop Nazis from discovering Jewish “sufferers” they categorized as affected by the uncommon fictitious illness.
![(Photo by Dguendel—own work, CC-BY-3.0)](/FURL/imagecache/cropfit@w=710@cr=259,12,1196,897@qa=85/blob/images/articles/d/7/d7f294bb-2f1c-11ed-955e-42010a47c121/by-dguendel.jpg)
Fearing that they might catch the an infection, the Nazis didn’t dare enter the hospital ward housing the Jewish refugees they believed had been affected by a situation whose title referred to as to thoughts Koch Syndrome—an actual illness brought on by the tuberculosis bacillus. The Jews remained within the ward till the Allies liberated Rome in 1944.
Edwards, who was raised Catholic however grew up in a largely Jewish group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, obtained the concept for the movie after seeing a meme concerning the “Ok Syndrome” story on Fb. He was shocked when he realized that no one had ever made a documentary concerning the three Italian docs whose intelligent thought saved the lives of quite a few Jewish refugees. Of the trio, Sacerdoti was Jewish. The opposite two had been Catholic.
Exactly what number of Jews had been saved stays unknown, in response to the movie, which is narrated by Ray Liotta, the famend actor who died earlier this yr at 67 earlier than the movie’s launch. A 2019 article in Historical past Right now journal says lots of of Jews who had been welcomed to the “Ok Syndrome” hospital ward had been saved from focus camps.
“That’s why I believe it’s such a secret story—the docs didn’t crow about what they did, or speak about it lots,” Edwards mentioned in an article revealed by the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
In truth, the saga remained so obscure that it isn’t even talked about in The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, September 1943–June 1944, an authoritative e book by the historian Robert Katz concerning the Nazi occupation of Rome.
When Edwards took on his documentary venture, he realized that Ossicini, then 98, was nonetheless alive. He flew to Rome and interviewed the physician after an Italian-Jewish journalist, Ariela Piattelli, put the 2 in contact. Edwards additionally interviewed two brothers who survived as youngsters within the “Ok Syndrome” ward. As well as, he talked with Pietro Borromeo, the son of Giovani Borromeo.
The older Borromeo protected the household of one among his Jewish mentors, an motion for which he was awarded the Righteous Among the many Nations medal at Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Heart positioned in Jerusalem. Each Ossicini and the youthful Borromeo died inside a yr of their interviews.
Edwards, a Second World Battle buff, remembers studying concerning the Holocaust. “Once I was most likely 12 or 13 years previous, I used to be watching TV on a Saturday morning…after I noticed one among these documentaries concerning the Holocaust, the place it confirmed all of the atrocities and horrors,” he recalled.
“And I used to be simply horrified—I had no thought.”
For the filmmaker, the main focus of this documentary was how the Italians responded to the specter of atrocities. He factors out that 80 p.c of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust, in sharp distinction to the Jews in most of Europe.
“This can be a story about folks being their very, easiest, within the face of individuals being their very, very worst,” Edwards mentioned, “and that’s what actually attracted me to it.”
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