In The Fall Of 1943, A Group Of Italian Doctors (left To Right)—Giovanni Borromeo, Adriano Ossicini,

In the fall of 1943, a group of Italian doctors (left to right)—Giovanni Borromeo, Adriano Ossicini, and Vittorio Sacerdoti—got together to come up with a fake disease called Syndrome K.

Their goal was to save the Jewish people of Rome who had fled to their hospital seeking protection by spreading rumors of a deadly, disfiguring disease that was so contagious that the Nazis would want to be nowhere near the vicinity of the patients.

Concocting a fake disease also allowed the Italian doctors and hospital staff to easily distinguish actual patients from the Jewish people who were seeing refuge. “Syndrome K was put on patient papers to indicate that the sick person wasn’t sick at all, but Jewish. We created those papers for Jewish people as if they were ordinary patients, and in the moment when we had to say what disease they suffered? It was Syndrome K, meaning ‘I am admitting a Jew,’ as if he or she were ill, but they were all healthy ... The idea to call it Syndrome K, like Kesselring or Kappler, was mine," said Ossicini in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa in 2016.

"Kesselring" was a reference to Albert Kesselring, the Nazi commander who was in charge of the occupation of Italy. "Kappler" was a reference to Herbert Kappler, a Nazi police chief in Rome who was responsible for the killings of 335 hostages (including 57 Jews) during World War 2.

There were special rooms designated for those infected with Syndrome K and Jewish children were encouraged to cough to discourage Nazi inspectors from entering. “The Nazis thought it was cancer or tuberculosis, and they fled like rabbits,” said Vittorio Sacerdoti in an interview with BBC in 2004.