Giovanni Borromeo

Giovanni Borromeo (Rome, December 15, 1898 - Rome, August 24, 1961) was an Italian physician. In 2004 Yad Vashem recognized him as a “Righteous among the Nations” for saving five members of the Almagià and extended family (Clotilde and Gina Almagià, Luciana Tedesco, Claudio Tedesco, Gabriella Ajo). Borromeo had been a student and assistant of Marco Almajà, a highly respected professor of physiopathology at the University of Rome.

Giovanni Borromeo was the son of the well known physician, Pietro Borromeo. While studying medicine at the University of Rome, he was drafted in World War I. Upon his return he earned a bronze medal. At age 22, Borromeo received his degree in medicine. According to his son, in 1931 he was appointed director of the "Ospedali Riuniti di Roma" but was banned from accepting the position because he was not a member of the Fascist Party. This claim has never been substantiated by evidence.

On December 2, 1933, Borromeo married Maria Adelaide Mangani. They had 3 children: Beatrice (1934), Pietro (1937) and Maria Cristina (1943).

In 1934 he was appointed director of the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli on the Tiberina Island downtown Rome. He and Prior Maurizio Bialek, continued the renovation that the hospital had begun in 1922 transforming an old medical hospice into a modern and efficient infrastructure. The Fatebenefratelli was considered an extraterritorial zone, since it belonged to the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God that had purchased it in 1892 from the Kingdom of Italy and made it part of its worldwide chain of hospitals.

Among the medical staff were two young doctors with a precarious position, Vittorio Emanuele Sacerdoti and Adriano Ossicini: they left the only known first hand recollections of life at the hospital during the war. Sacerdoti was Jewish and the nephew of Prof. Almagià, Borromeo's teacher. Ossicini was a Catholic antifascist who had eluded prison several times. In 1998 Sacerdoti gave a long interview at the Shoah Foundation and in 2005 Ossicini wrote a memoir entitled Un'isola sul Tevere (an island on the Tiber).

Through their memories we learn that, after the armistice of September 8, 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Rome, the Fatebenefratelli became a crucible of fugitives, carabinieri, colonial police, deserters, resistance fighters, antifascists, and eventually, after the liberation, also republican fascists. Both Ossicini and Sacerdoti indicate that, after the armed clashes of September 8, 1943, a group of physicians at the hospital secretly organized to offer medical assistance to resistance fighters. Sacerdoti states that, because he was "in danger" anyway, he was often sent to the woods around Rome to tend to wounded partisans. Above all, Sacerdoti recounts that he provided care and, when available, medicines, to many Jews living in the old ghetto, across the street from the hospital.

...
Wikipedia