In 1943, a team of ingenious Italian doctors invented a deadly, contagious virus called Syndrome K to protect Jews from annihilation. On October 16 of that year, as Nazis closed in to liquidate Rome’s Jewish ghetto, many runaways hid in the 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital. There, anti-Fascist doctors including Adriano Ossicini, Vittorio Sacerdoti and Giovanni Borromeo created a gruesome, imaginary disease.

“Syndrome K was put on patient papers to indicate that the sick person wasn’t sick at all, but Jewish” and in need of protection, Ossicini told Italian newspaper La Stampa last year. The “K” stood for Albert Kesselring and Herbert Kappler — two ruthless Nazi commanders.

The doctors instructed “patients” to cough very loudly and told Nazis that the disease was extremely dangerous, disfiguring and molto contagioso. Soldiers were so alarmed by the list of symptoms and incessant coughing that they left without inspecting the patients. It’s estimated that a few dozen lives were saved by this brilliant scheme.

The doctors were later honored for their heroic actions, and Fatebenefratelli Hospital was declared a “House of Life” by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

i’ve been seeing this post a lot lately:

which means a whole lot of you don’t know the difference between an intrusive thought and an impulsive thought.

intrusive thoughts are a symptom of ocd and many other disorder, they are upsetting and often graphic, they are thoughts you do not want and that scare you, commonly thoughts about doing something violent or about abuse. i suffer from intrusive thoughts, they are triggering and upsetting and yes, dark or about killing people.

an impulse can also be a symptom of a disorder, impulses are not inherently bad and are just your brain telling you to do things with no thought as to why. some can be unpleasant, but they can also be things like “cut all your hair off” or “eat the cardboard”.

please stop saying that intrusive thoughts and impulses are the same thing, you are only adding to the stigma and misunderstanding people with intrusive thoughts face.

— a tragedy, darling.