"K" Disease: Part 4 of "My Italian Secret"
Transcript
Speaker 1
At the time, the first Jews are deported from Italy, most of the people who will die in Nazi camps have already been murdered. Italian rescuers will face their hardest challenges in the days ahead.
Speaker 2 [Speaking in Italian]
Right after the raids in the ghetto began, the Jews were taken away. Some were able to escape. My father became known as a friend of the Jews. Fortunately, it happens that right over here are the synagogue and Jewish quarter. And there is the Fatebenefratelli Hospital. My father was the head doctor of the hospital. Little by little, Jew came to Fatebenefratelli hoping to be saved. We could call this bridge, “The Bridge of Salvation” because it is the bridge that unites us. My father made up a disease that didn’t exist. Then he admitted the Jews to a hospital wing he named the “K Ward”. He called the illness “K Disease”. He named it “K”. After General Kesserling and Colonel Kappler. All “K’s”. This is what we call in Rome “uno sfotto”, a way of mocking something. Macabre? Because it gave one courage. These “patients” stayed for a few days in the hospital. In the meantime, there was a printer here in Trastevere who would make false documents with surnames that sounded Catholic. And these Jews, with their new documents, would be sent off to convents where they would await liberation. This was all possible because Monsignor Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, was a dear friend of my father. They agreed on this ruse together.
One day, two trucks arrived full of German soldiers. Actually they were SS. It was a raid to search the hospital and check all the patients. My father spoke perfect German. Without faltering, with a radiant smile, he started to describe the illness and how horrible it was. It was very contagious. He told them that this disease was incurable. Even in the luckiest cases, you suffered brain damage or paralysis, if you didn’t just die. The SS were terrified. Not a single one dared to enter the ward. So my father saved more than a hundred Jews. But at home we lived in fear that dad would be taken away from us. One day, we thought that had happened. My father was on his way out. An SS car pulled up. They said they had to take Professor Borromeo to Via Tasso. I said to myself, “I’ll never see him again”. My father was a good friend of, and in constant contact with General Roberto Lordi. He had set up a network of two-way radios around Rome for the Resistance. One day, the General was arrested and taken to Via Tasso. It was the main headquarter where the Germans inflicted the worst tortures on their prisoners. General Lordi asked to be examined by his own doctor. My father arrived at Via Tasso and General Lordi told him, “Memorize these names and tell them to escape. I don’t know if I’ll withstand the torture.” My father left on this mission. He warned everyone. General Lordi underwent terrible torture, but he didn’t talk. He was executed while crying out “Long Live Italy!” Childhood traumas remain with you, in your eyes, your head, your heart, even in your nerves.
Speaker 3 [In Italian]
It’s something very deep within us. What a good man. I know you must be proud. Your children and grandchildren, he’s a saint.
Speaker 2 [In Italian]
No, he’s a man. A good man
Speaker 4
The SS fined 16194 Jews in Rome, and they poured them all to Auschwitz. But more than 10,000 avoid capture thanks to Doctor Borromeo and other Italian rescuers with the courage to defy the Nazis.
Speaker 3
The war rages on with its victims, its pain and his ferocious atrocities. There is hatred, vengeance and malicious gossip. And so much injustice spurred on by blind fanaticism.
Speaker 1
The Germans relentlessly hauled the line at Monte Casino, 80 miles South of Rome. Despite outnumbering them three to one, their allies are unable to break through to northern Italy for months until they do, the SS and Italian fascists continue to search for Jews.
Speaker 5
We had a nanny whom I adored, and they're called Isabella. And Isabella had a lover, Carabiniere. One night soon after their Armistice, this carabiniere he was called. Came to the house. He risked life and he warned us, he said. You have to disappear. And we arrived at Pabra Station, which was already in a state of total confusion. And we were with my grandmother, Gemma and her own mother. And we all got on the platform. We had it to the South. They had it to the north, to Turin. And we only knew what had happened to them after the war quite a long time after the war. We did go towards the South. The idea was to arrive in Rome, then the train stopped because the rails have been bombed. So, my father decided, let's try somewhere else. And so, it went to to see the Grand Lady La Marchesa Gallo, who had what to me, looked like an immense palace. She was sheltering a lot of people, and the families knew each other, and she said, of course I'll hide you.
Speaker 5 [In Italian]
Your grandmother gave us two rooms with a kind of makeshift kitchen. I remember this well, what a beautiful door. Look how it has changed.
Speaker 1
But unforgotten was the main palazzo of Ozibo.
Speaker 5
So when the German come on arrived in Oswald, they decided to take it over and so they said who was the wait and the Butler that serve and and immediately produced Papa who was very elegant, spoke some German and saw he appeared in White gloves we were hoping really probably to poison the food rather than but for several days he was there as the very elegant Butler and the family down there, the family of the Butler.
Speaker 5 [In Italian]
I remember sometimes we’d come up here. And you know, without cars it was much nicer.
Speaker 5
I was quite intimidated because the house was grand. She was grand. And we were trained to, you know, to bow when we saw her.
Speaker 6 [In Italian]
Sometimes you came up here to play. There was this fear that you’d be seen by someone. That is the story I was told.
Speaker 5 [In Italian]
I remember sometimes I was invited up to this beautiful place. There were such good tea and pastries. We were so happy to eat pastries. And then we had to disappear. Vanish. Not easy. And at that age, so young.
Speaker 5
My father invented games, tried to always tell us stories and make us feel that we were living normal times. My mother was much more apprehensive also, because I think being a woman, she was much more she could see much more clearly the threat. One day, when my parents were playing bridge with La Marchesa Gallo, their fourth player was a former mayor in Podesta Fascista Bozari and while playing the Podesta looked at my father and said, but you're not Corrado Prince. You are look luxardo servadio. I recognize you. He got up and left. On the following day, he went to sea La Marchesa they said, look, we've been friends for a long time and I should really denounce you and you would be shocked. But instead, I give you a couple of days to get rid of these people. And La Marchesa then called Papa and said look look you must now disappear. You must be here. You go to the countryside. So, my father disappeared and suddenly we didn't see him and didn't know what had happened to him. My mother was alone with these two small children. Then finally, the 8th Army liberated Osimo. But after three days the Germans took it back again. So, we were warned, immediately came they came and said you must disappear. You must cross the lines. You must go to Porto Recanati. Just a few miles away, there was liberty. And so, my mother and my sister and I on one bicycle with our possessions, we left. It was not very hopeful that we would get on the other side. So finally, when we got to Porto Recanati. It took months before we found my father. Or rather, my father found us. I have telephone, sadness and feeling of guilt towards La Marchesa Gallo this extraordinary woman who in fact risked her own life by hiding us. Here, after the war where I feel we all should have gone and say thank you. We were too humiliated, too ready to hide to ourselves first. So by the time I went to Palazzo Gallo. She had just died. I saw the daughters. And I remember sort of sort of looking for for the place, finding it, recognizing it pressing, you know, the bell and one of the daughters came out and she embraced me, crying brother and my poor English husband, who was with me, didn't know what the hell was happening and and it's so it was very emotional. So and I then said I'm here. I'm so sad not to see her because she was an extraordinary woman.