Syndrome K: How Italy Resisted the Final Solution by Christian Jennings

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For the first time, the remarkable full story of how the Holocaust was fought in Italy is told in English

Rome, spring 1944. The Nazi’s persecution of Italian Jews was at its height. Giovanni Borromeo, the head physician at a hospital on the River Tiber, decided to risk his life by disguising members of the local Jewish community as patients afflicted with an imaginary disease, and hid them in closed wards. Fearing catching this highly contagious illness, known only as ‘Syndrome K’, the Germans fell for it, and the Jews escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps. It was just one of many ingenious ways the Italians fought a concerted, covert battle to resist the Holocaust, and in Syndrome K acclaimed historian Christian Jennings explores them for the first time in the English language.

Drawing on original archive material in Italy, Germany, the Vatican, Switzerland, the UK and US, the book tells the complete story of the planning, execution, and resistance to the Final Solution in Italy.

Year first published: 2022