7. Vittorio Sacerdoti was still working at the Tiber Island hospital
Sources conflict over the events of October, 1943 at Tiber Island. According to one, Vittorio Sacerdoti was still on the staff of the hospital, which being extraterritorial was not subject to Italian Racial Laws. Another had the doctor as a student at the hospital. Another had him working at the hospital under a false name, supported with falsified identity documents and credentials. Sacerdoti later claimed that beginning in September 1943 he was part of a group of physicians at the hospital which clandestinely supported the partisan Italians resisting the Germans in and around Rome. The support continued until he left the hospital following the Allied liberation of Rome.
According to Sacerdoti, the island hospital became populated with partisans, fugitives, deserters from the Italian army, and others seeking to avoid the German administration, all supported by the doctors and priests of Fatebenefratelli. Dr. Borromeo, with the knowledge of Father Bialek, operated a radio transmitter/receiver in a hidden room in the hospital’s basement, with which he maintained contact with the Italian Resistance and the Vatican. In Rome and the areas around the city, German troops, SS guards, fascist paramilitary groups, and Nazi collaborators all operated beginning with the German occupation in September.