22. The Germans raided the hospital in 1944
By the spring of 1944, it was increasingly clear that Rome was to fall to the Allies, and the Germans prepared to withdraw to defensive positions north of the city. In May, responding to increasing pressure from Berlin about the relative scarcity of Italian Jews being transported, the SS raided Fatebenefratelli. The raid was a failure. Forewarned by connections within Rome, Father Bialek and Borromeo successfully hid all of the Italian Jews then under their care. Five Polish Jewish refugees were discovered in the hospital, and were seized by the Germans for deportation. None of the hospital staff were charged with sheltering them.
Several of the families who were saved by the efforts of Giovanni Borromeo and the staff working under his direction told of his efforts in the days following the war. Borromeo, unlike Ossicini and Sacerdoti, did not write of his efforts, nor discuss them much beyond his own family. Both of the doctors whom he both sheltered and enrolled in the plan to rescue as many refugees as possible later claimed the credit for creating the plan, and he did not dispute their claims. The families which he had rescued did, and Borromeo was honored by the Italian government following the war. He died in 1961, at Fatebenefratelli.