How a fake disease saved Italian Jews from the Nazis

Incredible bravery of doctors facing Hitler's invading troops

- BY EMMELINE SAUNDERS

WHEN the knock came, the doctors were ready. Nazi guards were outside, demanding entry to the wards of Fatebenefratelli Hospital.

They were tracking down any Jews who had escaped the raiding of the ghetto on October 16, 1943.

But three brave doctors stood firm, telling the thugs that a new, fatal illness had taken hold on the wards and nobody would be allowed in for fear the disease could spread.

For seven months, doctors at the 540-year-old hospital, located on a small island in the middle of Rome's Tiber River, managed to conceal surviving Jews - passing them on to safe houses to smuggle them out of the Nazi-occupied capital.

Hitler's troops stormed the city on September 8, 1943, after the collapse of Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. Jews, who had their rights severely restricted under the Fascists, suddenly found themselves at the mercy of the Nazis, who had already sent millions of their kin to gas chambers.

Previously forced to live in the cramped, inhumane conditions of the ghetto, just across the water from Fatebenefratelli, its occupants had just a few weeks to get used to their new normal before the Gestapo arrived.

Jewish doctors such as 28-year-old Vittorio Sacerdoti to work on his wards using false papers.

He had also installed in the hospital basement an illegal radio transmitter and receiver, to keep in contact with local partisans who were causing trouble for the occupying forces.