My Piece of Pretty

Garden of Death by Hugo Simberg is one of my favorite pieces of art for that very reason.

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.

jews: oh no, oh g-d… our-our SYMPTOMS!

man, narrating in russian: Every fucking year, this time of the year, the pond at my backyard gets infested. What do ponds get infested with? Frogs? Poisonous weeds? Geese? No. Not my pond.

[The man opens the back door, stepping out into a garden. Three or four nude, human-like figures dash from the borders of a pond back into the water.]

man: Rusalki! I don't know where they come from or how they get here, and I can't afford to hire an exterminator every year. I can't let my cat outside anymore. Last year a rusalka managed to drown a whole deer in my pond, the stench was unbearable.

[He walks as he speaks, approaching the pond. There are several eerily beautiful female beings peering at him from under the surface, their long hair floating in the murky water. Their eyes are gleaming in an unhuman way. The man holding the camera stops to film them.]

man, calm and deadpan: What the fuck are all of you staring at. Get jobs or something.

[One of the rusalki, smaller than the others and clearly not a fully matured adult, slowly reaches out of the water with her white, thin hand, grasping his ankle. He appears unconcerned.]

man: You can't drown me, you little idiot. You're too small. Shoo!

[A loud thud startles the rusalki, making them scatter. A second thud makes it clear these are the approaching footsteps of something massive. The man turns around and points the camera at what appears to be a house, walking past above the treeline with chicken-like legs]