Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's here too, and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know the podcast.
That's right with a sort of a lesser known story I think, I think probably most people know, thanks to Steven Spielberg, the story of Oscar Schindler saving about twelve hundred Jews from the Nazis. But this is a smaller story where Italian doctors saved probably about fifty to one hundred Jews.
Yeah, depending on who you ask. And yeah, that is certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Now ask the families of those people, you know.
Oh, yeah, for sure, you know. Yeah. Before we get any further, Chuck, I have to I want to give a hat tip to a listener named Jesselyne Baldwin who wrote in Many Moons Go and suggested this. I had not heard of syndrome K before.
I had neither.
And there's a pretty it's surprising because there's a pretty decent little hour long documentary on it too.
Yeah, it was a good one.
So yeah, it's a it's a pretty neat, little overlook story. And I love. Those are some of my favorites. Getting to tell people something they had no idea about.
That's right.
So this is just in general, like Italy and what happened in Italy and what Italy did during World War Two was always just kind of been a blank to me. I knew Minnilini was the leader. I knew they were on the side with the.
Nazis the access I knew that too.
And that's about it, honestly, to tell you the truth.
I'm with you, man, I don't know. I feel like the I feel like Japan and Germany for some reason, get probably because of Pearl Harbor, and then Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then the Germans because of you know, obvious reasons.
Yeah, but I don't know.
And I also did not know a lot about Italy and World War Two until the past few days.
No, And Italy at the time too was, as you know, for a few decades before World War Two is a pretty large regional power, had a lot of stakes in other countries, either by just basically conquering the country or having some sort of say over its doings, usually by conquering it like Ethiopia, Libya. I think Albania. They had just just overrun, like right before World War Two. They did what Europeans did, especially fascist Europeans, because that was
what Mussolini was. He was a fascist. He was one of the firsts. He was a fascist before Hitler even, And as a fascist is like, you want to basically make everybody else a fascist too, so you invade other countries typically.
Yeah, and I'd love the Europeans and Europe as a whole. I hope that didn't come across as like, that's what Europeans do, but that's what many European entries did for many hundreds of years.
Yeah, no, it's true. It's the facts, Chuck. Okay, so there are a couple of things we have to talk about. In the lead up to World War Two. Mussolini was appointed prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel the Second, who was the King of Italy. Another thing, I did not realize that the king appointed Mussolini.
Okay, did you. I don't think I knew that.
Well. I think we should just point out everything we didn't know throughout this entire episode every chance we get.
Okay, Yeah, it'd be really interesting. Nineteen twenty two. I didn't know it was that year.
Yeah, he was the prime minister as of nineteen twenty two. He very quickly put together essentially a huge fascist power that seemed to kind of live alongside the monarchy's power. In Italy. There was almost like two governments, and Mussolini's fascists were very powerful at the time. By the end of the nineteen twenties early nineteen thirties, he was pretty solidly in control.
Yeah, And of course this is all in a lead up to the syndrome case story, but it just sort of paints a nice picture of what was going on there at the time. Italy had spent a lot of Italian soldiers' lives and campaigns Furthered campaigns in Libya in the nineteen twenties and Ethiopia in the nineteen thirties, kind of concentrating on places in Northern Africa and the Mediterranean
where Italy had these colonies set up. Like everyone was trying to get their little piece of other places, like you said, and a lot of Italy's was in Northern Africa.
Yes, there are a couple other things we need to touch upon that become kind of part of the fabric or the backdrop of this story one took place in nineteen twenty nine. It's when the Italian government made a treaty with the Vatican, with the Pope and all the Pope's dudes. Yeah, that was called the Lateran Treaty, and it basically said the Vatican and Vatican City is an
independent state within Rome. It still is today. It's the smallest independent nation according to the syndroom K documentary by population and by size, it's like one hundred acres or something really small, like Winnie the Poo's woods were bigger than Vatican City.
Yeah. I walked around it by accident one time because we did not know, my friend and I that it was like there wasn't a cutthrough or we just kept doing that thing. And actually you can check this out in your what to Do when you get lost in your stuff. You should know stuff kids should know book.
Nice.
But we just figured, well, let's just keep going this way and it's bound to do something, and it didn't. We just kept walking until we came all the way around.
You didn't paint like a fluorescent orange blaze onto one of the pillars or called that you came across.
No, we should have. But yeah, so they recognize Vatican City. What this did was, you know, if it didn't necessarily make the Vatican beholden to Mussolini, it did create a situation where they couldn't just kind of freely say like, hey, don't commit as much genocide. That's not cool.
Yeah, they had a huge they had something huge to lose. It was very new and very fragile still, and they had gotten it from the people they would be opposing in this case, right.
Yeah.
The other thing was it took place nine years later, and this was I just want to point out another thing I didn't realize Italy had done in World War Two. They enacted their own anti Semitic race laws starting in nineteen thirty eight, and they just kind of they started pretty badly, like they were basically like if you're Jewish, you can't like work in the government, you can't teach in schools, and then it just got progressively worse until it was like if you're Jewish, you can't own this
house and you can't have this bank account. It just got worse and worse and worse, and excluded the Jewish Romans, who were the oldest Jewish population in Europe from what I understand a couple thousand year old population from being a part of Italy in Italian life.
Yeah, absolutely, they were called an Italian, the Leggi Brazziali, very nice. And it was not only Jews in Italy, but you know those same native Africans in the north that we were talking about in the Italian colonies. So these racial laws were kind of subjugating all these people, like literally banning books and seizing property and stuff like
that stuff fascists do. Yeah, exactly. They stopped short of, you know, stuff like rounding people up for gas chambers like the Germans did, but it was still like a pretty terrible subjugation.
That's a big point though. The this is such a sticky thing to talk about because the country enacted under Mussolini anti Jewish laws. They were enforced to some degree. There were Italian people who forced their Jewish neighbors out of their homes and forced them to hand over their bank accounts. This actually happened, but it does bear comparing to the Nazis version of the same thing. Sure, and the fact that it wasn't genocidal is a big deal. And the fact that when the Germans came in to
start taking over Italy. It was in part because the Italians were kind of dragging their feet on. They weren't showing enough enthusiasm in their genocide against Jewish people in Italy. They were kind of doing it lackadaisically. And from what I saw, if you were Jewish and you made it to southern Italy into one of their concentration camps, an Italian concentration camp, you were pretty much safe for the war and your kids were going to go to school.
It was just a different jam. But at the end of the day, they still had anti Semitic race laws that were enforced for a period during the late thirties and early forties.
Right, but you know, many tens of thousands of more were not exterminated, right like they would have been had Germany been in charge. Yes, all right, So nineteen thirties, Mussolini and Hitler eventually cozy up. They get together with what was called the Pact of Steel, and the Nazis invaded Poland in like September October nineteen thirty nine. Italy
was still not in the war at this point. It didn't take them too long to jump in there, though, because Mussolini basically was like, you know what, we have some some area in North Africa and around the Mediterranean, but we can probably expand on that because of war. However, their military and his military because of Ethiopian because the further invasion of Libya, were not decimated, but they were fairly taxed at this point laughing about the ten percent thing. Yeah,
we'll probably get e meals. It was decimated times four times four, and you know, the Brits were putting up a pretty big fight in North Africa. Eventually, the US would declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, and Mussolini would in turn declare war right back on the United States because he was like, I got to get on on this, you know, on the full axis action here and it probably you know, I have a feeling it'll be a pretty quick affair. But it was not.
No, and by that time Mussolini was in too deep to do anything about it except keep fighting. Right.
Yeah.
The problem is is by this time, by I think nineteen forty three, he had sacrificed enough Italian lives, not just in World War Two, remember in those campaigns prior to World War Two, which is a good lesson against adventurism, any stuff. You should know a listener out there, if you ever become head of a nation state, don't go off and try to conquer other neighbors because you never know if there's a world warrior. Need to have your resources for right around the corner.
That's a great lesson.
And so that's exactly what happened to Mussolini. So he fell out of favor just he had just problem after problem after problem, embarrassment after embarrassment, failure after failure. That finally the Italian people are like, you're done, dude.
That's right. September nineteen forty three. September eighth, specifically, is when Italy technically surrenders to the Allies. However, that didn't mean Italy was just awesome all of a sudden previous to this, And I believe the spring of nineteen forty three, Hitler kind of saw the riding on the wall, didn't fully trust Italy or Mussolini, and was like, you know what, if Italy falls into the hands of the Allies, that's
really bad news for us. So they started sort of arming up and sending troops in the spring of nineteen forty three, and they're run up to the surrender that Mussolini finally, like I said in September, underwent, and so takeaway here is Germans were in Italy and well armed and basically occupying Italy at the time of their surrender in nineteen forty three.
Yeah, and yeah, Italy had not only surrendered, they had now switched sides. They're like, we're with you, allies. We've declared war on Germany, even though the Germans are occupying us right now, even though our dictator is in jail. It's a weird situation, but that was the situation in nineteen forty three.
Like you say, yeah, well they were, you know, still allies until the surrender. But it was a precarious thing because like, Germany is like seriously occupying Italy in the run up to the surrender, and it was just I think everyone was pretty nervous at that point in Italy, like certainly the citizens.
Yes, but they were also mad because they had gotten rid of Mussolini and now they had the Germans, who were just like out of the frying pan into the fire. And by this time they had said, yeah, we're at war with Germany. We don't want to have this, so there was a pretty strong underground resistance that did like attack German Nazi soldiers who were stationed in Italy. They didn't have an easy time of it in Italy. I guess I should.
Say absolutely, maybe we should take a break. Yeah, that's a good geographical warlike setup, and then we can come back and sort of talk about some of the key people players in this story.
Right after this, So, Chuck, you mentioned a couple of people who are of prominent players in this The first two are despicable sobs. They were Nazis. One of them was named Albert kessel Ring, the smiling Nazi general. I saw he was. I saw he was Hitler's go to guy in Southern European theater. He was in charge of the Mediterranean, he was, by default then in charge of Italy.
He was.
A terrible person who ordered all sorts of terrible atrocities to be done to civilians. Anything that happened to civilians, it was under his watch.
Yeah, and he was a guy that was kind of enacting the racial laws in northern Africa.
Yes, so yeah, I think we should say. I don't know if we really got that point across. When the Nazis took over Italy. They said, these racial laws are now being enforced for reels, right, people are going to start really getting deported. We're in charge now. And this was the guy who was in.
Charge, that's right. So that's Kesserling. There's also another k Herbert Kapler. He was an SS guy. He was the German chief of police in Rome during the occupation and he's notable for a lot of things he was. He's an awful human and many atrocities committed under him, including a very famous one called and I got to get the pronunciation right here, the ardi Atina massacre. Okay, you don't agree.
Yeah, no, I think you nailed it. Actually that's not what I would have said, but I would have gotten it wrong. I think you got it. It's a R D E A T I N E.
Well, and this is also, you know, going by what some pronunciation person says.
I would have added a syllable in there. I'm trying to figure out a warrior.
Who who knows if they're ever correct, But that's what I'm gonna call him. And that was a situation dealing with the Atina Caves where they rounded up three hundred and and this Is in retaliation for an attack on them. But they rounded up they were told around up three hundred and thirty Italians. They instead got three hundred and thirty five Italians and they took them to these caves and five at a time, made them get on their knees and shot them in the back of the head.
Yeah, and then they dynamited the cave afterward so that people couldn't get to them. That was like really par for the course for the Nazim in Italy. The Italian resistance would stage an attack on Nazi soldiers occupying their country, and the Nazis would in turn kill ten times the civilians something like that, just murdering cold blood, just hundreds
of civilians at a time. And do you realize, Chuck, the resolve it takes for a resistance group to just be like knowing that hundreds of people are going to die because of the thing you're about to do the Nazis and still having resolved to keep fighting. It's just again bounding. So that was the plan, was the playbook, and it happened all throughout Italy, especially from Rome up to in the northern Italy under the watch of kessel Ring and Kapler again, terrible, terrible human beings.
All right. So that's the situation. The Nazis are in Rome, the Italians don't like the Nazis. The Vatican is sort of there, not being able to say a whole lot. They can't really get into the Nazis business, of course, because again that same precarious situation with Vatican cities. Well not stateship. What would you call it?
Just independence?
Yeah. Independence. So now we got to set a little geography up. The Tiber River goes through Rome and there's a tiny little island called Tiber Island. I think it's the only island in the Rome area of the Tiber River,
and it is very small. It's about nine hundred feet by two hundred and twenty feet and it's been around forever and has been used throughout you know, the years for various things, monasteries, I can't remember those, a couple of other things, but it's connected, you know, by bridges
on both sides. And in the fifteen hundreds, for our story, there was a Catholic order called the Hospitaller Order of the Brothers of Saint John of God, who established a hospital there where the monastery was and the hospital became known as the Fata Beina Fratelli.
Not bet Yeah, yeah, okay, not bed.
What does that mean? Do good brothers?
Yes? Do fate bene good Fratelli brothers, do good brothers. And the Ed helped us out with this, and he makes a point like, does it mean do good brothers or they're the do good brothers like the Doobie Brother's original name.
Yeah, that sounds more like a duo wop group.
It does.
Yeah.
So the upshot of this is that in the fifteen hundreds, this group of friars, Catholic friars, had a hospital up and running on this island in the Tiber River, and it remained in operation basically ever since that time. It passed in and out of the Vatican's hands. But for the purposes of our story, during nineteen forty three, the Vatican was, I guess owned that hospital. It was operating under Vatican control.
Yeah, And as such it became a sanctuary. Even though you know, Jewish people and Catholic people had different faiths, it did become a bit of a sanctuary for all kinds of people because it was the Catholic Church and they you know, have long had a history of welcoming and helping people when they can well.
Also took it like geographically speaking, it linked the Jewish ghetto in Rome, yeah, and the Vatican. On one side of the bridge. It was the like, just across bridge was the Jewish Ghetto. Just across the other bridge was the Vatican. So it was it had its feet in two different worlds and brought them all together kind of.
Absolutely. There was a guy there who ran the place, a clergyman named a father Maurzio Bialec, and he was in charge of the hospital. He was an anti fascist. And as you'll see here what this guy does, it's pretty amazing. He kind of very quietly and he was sort of an anti fascist on the downlow because he didn't want to cause a big stir, but he quietly stocked the sort of the doctors and the staff with anti fascists doctors and staff members. Yeah.
He put together like a Justice League but medical yeah. Yeah.
And I wonder if it was I wonder if his reasoning was because he thought they they could eventually do something like this, or if he was just like, hey, listen, I'm anti fascist and I want to hire people like minded, people like me.
That or he was like, I am not spending eight hours a day around fascists. I'll tell you exactly. It was one of those. But the fact is this guy was in charge. He was the hospital administrator. And one of his first hires, very important hire, was a guy named Giovanni Borromeo. He was a doctor and he was very in step with father Biolick. He had very similar views, and in fact he would he refused to join the Fascist Party, and that really narrowed a lot of his
career prospects. He didn't necessarily get turned down by other hospitals, but those hospitals required that he joined the Fascist Party. He said thanks anyway. Finally, I don't know how he was found by father Bilic, but he was, and he was recruited and he was now the doctor in charge of the hospital.
Yeah, so they team up, they kind of fill out the staff with more anti fascists. Hooray. They bring the facility into the modern age, which was you know again at you know, nineteen thirty four modern for those times, and they didn't have like laser surgery and stuff, is what I'm saying. They weren't time travelers. Sure, so after these racial laws, kind of kick in. In nineteen thirty eight.
This hospital, like we already said it was, you know, it was a bit of a haven for all kinds of people and certainly Jewish people, but it became even more of a haven. And there was another guy who was named Vittorio Sacra dootia animea.
Anytime in Italian there's a C followed directly by a vowel, it makes a chiss sound. Oh okay, and then strangely, the cch makes a cuss sound, so like okay, choo ci or capiche, which is really interesting. I guess you could say, I think.
I think the uh. I think the O is supposed to be in size too doty on you said bora Mayo. I think it's Boutromeo.
Oh is that right?
I think, but I'm not positive again. And you know, the funny thing is, we just had a guy right in saying he was our biggest Italian and did you see that? And he said, uh, he said, chuck, knock it off with those semi offensive Italian accents a little bit. I emailed them back. I'm so sorry, I said, I didn't know that I was offending anyone. I'm just having fun and he was just like, it's all okay, and he's like, I'm so glad you emailed back, and I wasn't really offended.
Oh that was nice.
So I don't even know what to think now.
Yeah, we're all up in the air. But I can't tell you that a sea followed by a vowel in Italian is okay.
So you have such a doughty and Boromeo okay or Borromeo that sounds more Middle Eastern to me Boro Mayo in my mind it does.
Yet I'm not catching that.
Boro Mao era meic.
Yeah, I wouldn't think.
Anyway. Here's the key though, is Borromeo wasn't Jewish. But say the other guy's name satru Dodi. Satur Dody was Jewish and he was one of the ones that was fired for being Jewish during those racial laws.
So think about this father Biallick is putting together. He's got like an anti fascist lead doctor. He has another doctor's Jewish posing as a Catholic working at a Catholic hospital.
It's a dream team.
He has another guy, Adriano O Cichini because there's a ci chuck. He is basically an anti fascist warrior who also volunteers at the hospital, and all of these guys are working together to form basically an anti fascist medical committee to figure out what they can do. And one of the first things they do is I don't know where the the radio came from, but they had a secret underground radio that was used by partisans and by military leaders to contact other people secretly from a secret radio,
not something you wanted to be caught with. That was a tremendous risk just to have that in the hospital, and they had it in there for years. Apparently. That was just one of the many things these guys did.
Yeah, it was a little anti fascist headquarters operating out of this hospital.
Secret.
Yeah. Well, of course October of that year, nineteen forty three, Kapler, who we were talking about, he's the very bad SS officer under orders from Kesselring. He was the other bad man in charge. They said, all right, here's what we're going to do. We are going to round him up German style, and we are going and these were like, I think there was like thirty thousand Ish Jewish people living in Rome at the time.
I saw ten thousand.
Oh really, I saw perhaps more than the third So I guess the range is pretty wide, and there were about a thousand that they rounded up initially, and this was I would guess that just the first wave of this sent to Auschwitz, sent to the gas chambers. All of this you can see from the Vatican. It's all happening outside their windows on the streets where Nazis would literally come to your door in the middle of the night, bang them the door, and you know, say come out here,
get some things. That it was a bit of a trick to say gather some stuff, because that would lead you to believe that, oh, we're just being relocated or something and maybe detained. But that was all a ruse to keep them passive and to not fight back, because if they showed up and said, don't bother bringing anything, then they would surely know that they're on their way to their death and they would probably fight back.
Yeah. And then on top of that, the Nazis in Rome had added deception. They had negotiated with the Jewish community in Rome to accept fifty kilograms of gold in exchange for protection of the Jewish community in Rome. So the members of the Jewish community in Rome were under the impression that they were going to be excluded from roundups and deportations and concentration camps because they had a deal. And then on top of it, like you said, they said,
you know, bring some personal items. It's just despicable stuff.
All right. So the stage is super duper set if it was set before the first break, and then we're going to come back and finally get to Syndrome K right after this. All right, super duber set stage. The Nazis are in Rome, they're in Italy are the citizens are not happy. There are a lot of Jews flaying to Catholic churches all over the place trying to find refuge, including this hospital. But here's the deal. You show up at a church and it's pretty obvious what to do
with somebody. You hide them. It's a church, it's a place of refuge. Anyway, You show up at a hospital that is an active hospital treating sick people, and they're like, well, what do we do in this situation? Because the Nazis are probably going to sniff this one out pretty quick.
So they created this plot to basically invent a fake disease, specifically a Jewish disease, and they would hide these people under the guise of being stricken with this very highly contagious disease that the Nazis certainly did not want and did not want to be around. It was ingenious, Actually.
It was super ingenious. I saw just in passing. One of the people interviewed in the documentary mentioned this and they I didn't see it anywhere else, but he said that he had heard one of the the Jewish people who showed up at the hospital looking for help in October when they the Jewish community was being rounded up. They were like, what's you know? What's wrong with you?
What?
What do you have? And the guy said, I've got Kepler syndrome and that that is potentially where the name came from, syndrome K. And that's what they named, this fictitious disease that they attributed to people who were Jewish who were hiding out in the hospital or needed to be hidden. They hid them in plain sight.
Yeah, and apparently it was Borromeo's idea. Depending you know, when you watch a documentary, Satadode and Osachini were both saying like, I'm the one who let people in first, but I think they I think they both probably did. It wasn't like everyone showed up at once it was a trickle of people. They were letting them in under
this guise once again of being sick. So they were like, all right, we need some symptoms about you know, something sort of generic like vomiting, nausea, headache, You should cough a lot, We should say it's super contagious and that your death will be a really bad one. You basically die by asphyxiation. Right, it looked like some other diseases.
It wasn't too far off from things like tuberculosis or polio, so it wasn't like some big, unbelievable new thing that they would be like, wait a minute, that sounds fishy. And so that was the plan. Is to put them in their own wing basically where they were sequestered. They had to wear a sign around their neck that said syndrome K or I guess in Italian it was ill morbo DK d IK And they said, hey, you know, ham it up and look like you're super sick and they won't want anything to do with you.
Yeah, the name also syndrome K. There's a lot of explanations in addition to that one. What the case stood for. It could have stood for kessel ring or Kapler. There's a German word for tumor is creb's crank height, right, yeah, sure, and then cribs kronkite, Yeah, like Walter kar I was gonna say that. And then there was another one. This
was a really big one. Apparently in Germany, tuberculosis is referred to as coke or cock disease ko H, after the scientists from Germany who discovered the bacterium that creates tuberculosis. So I think they would sometimes use that term as well. That really drove it home to the Nazis that this is like some sort of hyper terrible tuberculosis that we don't want to catch.
Yeah, And there's a lot of stories because they weren't just like, you know, we should write all this down right to be discovered by the Nazis. So that's what happens in history. Stories sort of get changed around. But they have these people, like I said, in their own wing. The troops would come around, they would you know, do the thing that they did, which is investigate and see
what's going on. And the doctors would walk them by and say, you don't want to go in there, trust me, they've got syndrome K and you know, it's super contagious, it'll kill you dead. It's a Jewish disease that I mentioned, and and it worked. They raided the hospital a few times. I believe they did find some people in hiding, but they did not. I don't think they were in the Syndrome k.
Way, they were not. They were I think four six Polish refugees who were discovered, like you said, actually hiding. Yeah, they also so because everybody in Rome was really unhappy with the German occupiers, it was not hard to be warned ahead of time that the Germans were heading your way. And there was one night where the Germans, I guess, had figured out that there was a radio somewhere around that island and they got just enough warning to dump
it into the river. Again, it's really hard to get a cross like what like that is way different from being caught hiding some refugees in a hospital a radio. It was like, you're actively part of the resistance, right, So it was great that they didn't get caught with that, I guess what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, absolutely, so while they were there in hiding faking this disease, it wasn't supposed to be some permanent thing. So it wasn't like they had, you know, some sort of lavish situation was it was sort of like a midway station, and they would get people in and out of there as quickly as possible. They would sneak them out,
just a few at a time. They would give them false papers, they would issue false death certificates in case the Nazis were like, well, wait a minute, you only have you know, fifteen patients here, you had twenty yesterday, that kind of thing, and they're like, well they died and here's their papers, and they never it seems like they never even became suspicious.
So yeah, I didn't get the impression that they actually became suspicious. They were suspicious of the hospital just because of its close proximity to the Jewish ghetto, but they the syndrome k thing. From what I could tell, they were so dedicated to the Ruse that like they took it just as seriously as they would have if it was an actual real thing, like just the documentation and
all that stuff. So yeah, it was just imperceptible. Apparently, when the Nazis came through for one of their raids, they brought a doctor with them, a German doctor, and even the doctor was like, this all checks out, you know, right, So they definitely did. They were very dedicated to this and they did it the right way because they were very anti fascists and they were also very intelligent.
That's right. Everyone knows how this story plays out. Eventually, the Nazis left Italy and American troops entered in June of forty four without even any fighting. They were greeted as liberators. And as for the cast of characters here, he died in nineteen sixty one, but was honored by Yad Vashim, an organization that basically said we're going to bestow upon you the title of Righteous among Nations in two thousand and four. So obviously a much posthumous award,
much posthumous. Posthumous is posthumous. Sure, it was many years so.
It doesn't get trying to say more posthumous.
But it can be posthumous ten minutes later, right.
Technique, it's it either is or it isn't posthumous.
Exactly, but anyway, many many years later, and that is an award for non Jews who helped rescue Jews turn the Holocaust.
Yeah, who else?
Well, your buddy sat your dode. He lived until the early two thousand and I think lived in the Jewish ghetto in Rome and worked as a doctor for that whole time.
And then Osuccini, the young partisan, who was also a volunteer at the hospital. He ended up being elected to the Italian Senate for decades and I think went on to be I'm a psychologist too, And he lived until twenty nineteen.
Amazing.
And if you're wondering what happened to the Nazis and Mussolini, I did a little following up on that Kessel ring. He was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death in nineteen forty seven. That was commuted to a life sentence and he was released in nineteen fifty two, which sucks. But he died in nineteen sixty Kapler. They brought the hammer down on him. He was convicted. I don't think he was sentenced. They handed him over to the Italians who sentenced him. They send him to life in an
Italian military prison. They served thirty years until nineteen seventy seven. And the only reason he got out is because he was in a military hospital on the verge of death and his wife showed up from Germany and smuggled him out, lowering down out of the window with ropes and smuggled him back to West Germany because she vowed he would not die in captivity. She thought of him as a christ like figure, apparently, was a quote of hers according to the New York Times. Oh bit, so he died
after thirty years in prison. Kind of got his the Mussolini. He was deposed, remember Chuck, when you're deposed, like you're kind of under arrest basically, and the Nazi SS paratroopers were sent in to free him, and they took him up to northern Italy, which is where the Italian fascists and the Nazis kind of staged their last stand as we saw. But he was eventually arrested along with his inner circle at Lake Cuomo. Lake Como. I just want to say Cuomo because of rivers Cuomo, but it's just
Lake Como where George what's his name Cooney? Yeah, where he lives, right, Okay, Yeah, So they were arrested there. They were executed, I don't know, maybe on the spot and strung up by their legs in the piazza in Milan for all to see. That was the end of Mussolini.
That was the end.
So at least the bad guys kind of got theirs. And you know, really, this whole thing is about celebrating that amazing il Morbo di CKay.
That's right, Syndrome K.
You got anything else?
No, maybe there's not enough for a movie here, but it should be a should be an episode of a of an anthology historical anthology show.
Great idea.
You could get a really good hour out of this.
Sad for sure, we just almost did.
I know, I look at us thirty nine minutes.
If you want to know more about Syndrome K, you can search the internet for that. There's a lot of really interesting articles out there. There's also a really great documentary. I think it's just called Syndrome K. And since I said Syndrome K twice, that means it's time for listener mail.
You know, I'm gonna go ahead and read Marco's email because it's just fittings appropriate. Yeah, Hey guys, I'm Marco. I'm an Italian guy born in the Deep South, Calabria and currently living in Rome. I've been listening to Stuff Should Know for the last two years. I love your show. You're amazing. Most likely I'm your biggest fan in Italy. I know that is pretemptious.
I'm not sure I think he meant pretentious or presumptuous. Oh okay, maybe he just kind of came up with a brand new awesome word. May not presuming something.
He goes on to say, as you see, my English is better than the average English spoken and written by the average Italian people, which honestly is really bad. That's what he says. By the way, well, I have to thank you for this. You're the main reason why my English is not bad.
Nice.
Three exclamation nice. Just one thing, if I may, guys, one little thing. Sometimes you say some Italian words he says Josh more often than Chuck. But I think he just has this swapped out gotta be got be trying to replicate the way Italians talk. Yeah, that's that's I'm Chuck Marco. A lot of people get that wrong. It's fine.
I know we got blamed just for be in your orbit.
I know, guys, really we don't speak like that. We are not even close to that. To be honest, it's a little bit offensive. But he did the crying laughing face. I don't mean to be a pain in the butt except Marco Cus. Oh really, July, he's the A word anyway. Thanks for so much, Thanks so much for your show. I really hope to have the chance to see you live someday.
Chao, Marco, very nice, Chuck. You didn't do a single semi offensive Italian impression in that whole email.
I tried not well.
Thanks a lot, Marco, Thank you for setting us straight. Sadly, I think that might be the end of Chuck's Italian impressions. Maybe we'll see everybody's stay tuned and we'll all find out. If you want to be like Marco and take us to task over something and do it nicely like he did, you can send us an email. It's stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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