1
00:00:01,680 --> 00:00:10,960
Speaker 1: Uh, Mary Hallam, Miss it's behind the Chris Bastard, Miss

2
00:00:11,039 --> 00:00:17,840
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here podcast. God with Me Today is Margaret

3
00:00:17,920 --> 00:00:23,279
Speaker 1: Killjoy and Sophie Lichtermann. Margaret, how are you doing. I'm good.

4
00:00:23,320 --> 00:00:26,640
Speaker 1: I'm here for the Christmas Song special, isn't. What we're

5
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:29,840
Speaker 1: gonna do is just sing Christmas carols. That's right. We're

6
00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:33,080
Speaker 1: going to sing the version of Frosty the Snowman that

7
00:00:33,159 --> 00:00:35,640
Speaker 1: I wrote while on an acid trip that takes seven

8
00:00:35,720 --> 00:00:39,400
Speaker 1: and a half hours and is largely a retelling of

9
00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:45,080
Speaker 1: the Ring Cycle. Okay, so yeah, I'm also extremely pornographic,

10
00:00:45,159 --> 00:00:47,600
Speaker 1: so if you have children listening, you need to get

11
00:00:47,640 --> 00:00:50,440
Speaker 1: them away. It is actually a crime in thirty seven

12
00:00:50,479 --> 00:00:53,159
Speaker 1: states for them to listen to my version of Frosty

13
00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:56,920
Speaker 1: the Snowman. Yeah, and the worst part is is that actually,

14
00:00:56,960 --> 00:01:00,480
Speaker 1: if anyone listens to it, Robert goes to Jail's right,

15
00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:03,880
Speaker 1: that's right. Um so, Margaret, you will be here to

16
00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:07,919
Speaker 1: do the twenties six minute long kazoo solo, which I'm

17
00:01:08,040 --> 00:01:13,000
Speaker 1: very excited about. Um oh you did. Actually you do

18
00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:19,080
Speaker 1: literally half bells, sweet silver bells, bells that are perfect

19
00:01:19,120 --> 00:01:22,200
Speaker 1: for ringing in Christmas, which is great because this is

20
00:01:22,280 --> 00:01:28,440
Speaker 1: our yearly Christmas episode. Now. Normally, Margaret, normally for Christmas

21
00:01:28,600 --> 00:01:31,360
Speaker 1: we do a non bastard, right like we do a

22
00:01:31,640 --> 00:01:34,800
Speaker 1: hero to kind of pep everybody up at the end

23
00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:38,720
Speaker 1: of the year. But last year and this year really

24
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,800
Speaker 1: you launched a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool

25
00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:45,160
Speaker 1: Stuff that's basically a regular weekly version of the Christmas

26
00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:47,480
Speaker 1: podcast of the Christmas episodes that we used to do.

27
00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:51,520
Speaker 1: So this year I'm doing something a little different, something

28
00:01:51,560 --> 00:01:53,760
Speaker 1: we've never done before, which is we're going to be

29
00:01:53,800 --> 00:01:57,720
Speaker 1: covering a group of people who were rad as ship

30
00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:00,720
Speaker 1: for eighty percent of the story and then things take

31
00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:10,440
Speaker 1: a dark term, so the revolutionaries in human history. Yeah,

32
00:02:10,880 --> 00:02:14,240
Speaker 1: and this is there's a lot of fascinating moral questions

33
00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:16,680
Speaker 1: with the group that we're gonna be talking about. Have

34
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:22,160
Speaker 1: you ever heard about a terrorist group called No com No?

35
00:02:22,600 --> 00:02:27,160
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't know. We'll find out, Yeah,

36
00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:30,480
Speaker 1: we will find out. Indeed, Margaret, before we get into

37
00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:32,320
Speaker 1: this episode, I want to do a little thought experiment

38
00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:34,880
Speaker 1: for everybody here. I want you to imagine that a

39
00:02:34,919 --> 00:02:38,200
Speaker 1: few years down the line, a church or a political

40
00:02:38,320 --> 00:02:42,160
Speaker 1: party rises up in the United States, um and and

41
00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:46,000
Speaker 1: starts trying to spread a fascist gospel around the country

42
00:02:46,040 --> 00:02:48,760
Speaker 1: and and this this gospel takes off among a significant

43
00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:52,600
Speaker 1: chunk of the population. And let's say it's far fetched,

44
00:02:52,680 --> 00:02:55,919
Speaker 1: but yeah, far fetched. And let's say that that these

45
00:02:55,960 --> 00:03:00,359
Speaker 1: fascists are specifically targeting people like you and the folks

46
00:03:00,400 --> 00:03:03,840
Speaker 1: that you love. Whatever whatever thing you identify as, whether

47
00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:11,480
Speaker 1: it's you know, gender orientation, religion, uh, sexuality, political ideology.

48
00:03:11,520 --> 00:03:14,040
Speaker 1: They're targeting like you and the people that you love.

49
00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:18,040
Speaker 1: And let's say, imagine they get into power, right, maybe

50
00:03:18,120 --> 00:03:20,639
Speaker 1: it's a coup, maybe they actually just straight up win

51
00:03:20,680 --> 00:03:23,760
Speaker 1: an election, but they get into power, and a lot

52
00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:26,400
Speaker 1: of violence falls, a tremendous amount of violence, and you

53
00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:28,680
Speaker 1: lose a lot of the people that you love most

54
00:03:28,760 --> 00:03:32,120
Speaker 1: in the world, virtually all of them, over a terrifying

55
00:03:32,240 --> 00:03:35,800
Speaker 1: period of years and years of violence. Now being fascists,

56
00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:40,080
Speaker 1: they do eventually lose, which is what always happens to fascists.

57
00:03:40,560 --> 00:03:42,720
Speaker 1: And at the end of that period, you and the

58
00:03:42,760 --> 00:03:45,920
Speaker 1: folks who have survived, are are hardened, are a lot

59
00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:49,280
Speaker 1: better at doing violence, and are thinking, who do we

60
00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:52,720
Speaker 1: make pay for this? Right? Who is it moral to

61
00:03:52,840 --> 00:03:57,280
Speaker 1: punish for this? Obviously the ringleaders, right, the people that

62
00:03:57,520 --> 00:04:00,440
Speaker 1: were leading the movement, the people who at a death

63
00:04:00,480 --> 00:04:03,160
Speaker 1: squad ship, the people who are actually carrying out the killings.

64
00:04:03,200 --> 00:04:05,360
Speaker 1: But what about what about the church is full of

65
00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:09,760
Speaker 1: clamoring extremists, what about the civilians who supported the movement

66
00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:14,200
Speaker 1: and bade and howled and cheered as they committed their murders.

67
00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:19,960
Speaker 1: To what extent are those people guilty? Right? Is it

68
00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 1: wise to to just let them all live because the

69
00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:26,599
Speaker 1: war is over? Or by doing that are you potentially

70
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:31,320
Speaker 1: endangering your remaining loved ones even more? Because if there's

71
00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:34,040
Speaker 1: not consequences, is it the case that maybe they'll do

72
00:04:34,080 --> 00:04:37,640
Speaker 1: it again. So that's a question to keep in your mind,

73
00:04:37,839 --> 00:04:41,920
Speaker 1: right as we as we start to talk about Eastern

74
00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:45,479
Speaker 1: Europe in the late nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties,

75
00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:49,360
Speaker 1: that was a fun time to be around. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

76
00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:52,320
Speaker 1: So that's what we're gonna be talking about, and specifically

77
00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:55,520
Speaker 1: we're going to be really focusing on one individual today

78
00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:01,040
Speaker 1: of a pretty fascinating fellow named Abbat cove Ner. He

79
00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:04,680
Speaker 1: was born Able Kovener on March fourteenth, nineteen eighteen, just

80
00:05:04,760 --> 00:05:06,760
Speaker 1: as the First World War was ending in a town

81
00:05:06,800 --> 00:05:10,920
Speaker 1: called Sebastopol on the southern tip of Crimea. Now, if

82
00:05:10,960 --> 00:05:14,120
Speaker 1: you've casually glanced at European history, you will know that

83
00:05:14,279 --> 00:05:17,800
Speaker 1: the southern tip of Crimea in nineteen eighteen as a

84
00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:21,320
Speaker 1: Jewish person is a pretty rough place to be. That

85
00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:24,400
Speaker 1: is not one of the top places in times I

86
00:05:24,400 --> 00:05:27,960
Speaker 1: would choose to be born. Um. Now, Abel's parents were

87
00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:31,039
Speaker 1: quite orthodox Jews um in A. In the Fall of

88
00:05:31,080 --> 00:05:33,880
Speaker 1: a Sparrow, a Stanford biography of Covener, they're described as

89
00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:37,559
Speaker 1: is moderately traditional. I don't entirely know what that means,

90
00:05:37,600 --> 00:05:40,200
Speaker 1: but that's that's kind of the way in which they're

91
00:05:40,279 --> 00:05:44,880
Speaker 1: They're generally described by the best biographer Kovener has now

92
00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:48,159
Speaker 1: Sebastopol did not have a large Jewish population. This is

93
00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:52,200
Speaker 1: not a city that has like a particularly significant, um

94
00:05:52,240 --> 00:05:55,920
Speaker 1: like sizeable community in it uh and in Czarist Russia,

95
00:05:56,120 --> 00:05:59,240
Speaker 1: which you know, is what Kovener's parents had lived under.

96
00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:02,520
Speaker 1: Right up until about nineteen seventeen, the ability of Jewish

97
00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:05,479
Speaker 1: people to hold jobs had been strictly limited. Right, you

98
00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:08,159
Speaker 1: can't really teach at colleges if you're Jewish, at least

99
00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:10,400
Speaker 1: you're you're heavily limited from doing it. They have quotas.

100
00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:12,640
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different like jobs, you just can't

101
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:15,839
Speaker 1: do your your there's an apartheid system really and in

102
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,279
Speaker 1: most of of of Czarist Russia. Now luckily for Abba,

103
00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:23,120
Speaker 1: by the time he's born, the Czars are out of power.

104
00:06:23,640 --> 00:06:26,160
Speaker 1: Um and his family is is he comes into like

105
00:06:26,360 --> 00:06:29,400
Speaker 1: a fairly affluent family. They're large, and they're extremely close.

106
00:06:29,480 --> 00:06:32,600
Speaker 1: His father had been an expert appraiser of antique jewelry.

107
00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:39,440
Speaker 1: Um did when with the revolution of Crimea, what happened

108
00:06:39,480 --> 00:06:41,920
Speaker 1: to Crimea to get into the USSR to do its

109
00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:46,080
Speaker 1: own thing. It's part of the USSR. Yeah, But then

110
00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:50,800
Speaker 1: also nineteen eighteen, things are a lot less uh at

111
00:06:50,800 --> 00:06:53,320
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, Yeah, there's still a kind of flory

112
00:06:53,600 --> 00:06:58,440
Speaker 1: moving along, right, Yes, Um and his family is moderately

113
00:06:58,520 --> 00:07:01,160
Speaker 1: well off. One of ABBA's early memories is sitting around

114
00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:04,680
Speaker 1: the table at a family dinner and admiring his grandmother's

115
00:07:04,720 --> 00:07:06,960
Speaker 1: pearl necklace, which had been in the family for a

116
00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:09,479
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years. So he has not just a

117
00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:13,080
Speaker 1: large family, but a family that like they have managed

118
00:07:13,120 --> 00:07:16,160
Speaker 1: a lot of continuity between the generations, which is not

119
00:07:16,640 --> 00:07:19,360
Speaker 1: necessarily the most common thing in this part of Russia

120
00:07:19,400 --> 00:07:21,480
Speaker 1: because of how many programs there are, because of how

121
00:07:21,960 --> 00:07:24,400
Speaker 1: common the violence is, the fact that his family has

122
00:07:24,440 --> 00:07:27,400
Speaker 1: like managed to keep these things in their possession for

123
00:07:27,480 --> 00:07:30,760
Speaker 1: so long says a lot. Right. Um Abba is a

124
00:07:30,880 --> 00:07:34,360
Speaker 1: very smart child. He is pretty much universally regarded as

125
00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:38,440
Speaker 1: having been particularly a brilliant artist and very charismatic. Everybody

126
00:07:38,480 --> 00:07:41,960
Speaker 1: really likes this kid. Um. He's very inclined to the arts,

127
00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:45,800
Speaker 1: particularly poetry. Um and he had his family members were

128
00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:48,640
Speaker 1: called he had a unique ability to memorize and recite

129
00:07:48,680 --> 00:07:51,040
Speaker 1: things that he'd read. Um. And he would do this

130
00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:54,280
Speaker 1: to keep everyone entertained, especially during holidays and family gatherings.

131
00:07:54,320 --> 00:07:56,120
Speaker 1: He would read books and then he would recite them

132
00:07:56,280 --> 00:07:59,080
Speaker 1: to his family. Is like, you know, basically it's the

133
00:07:59,080 --> 00:08:02,200
Speaker 1: early in Sebastopol. They don't have like TV or radio.

134
00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:05,800
Speaker 1: This is you guys, saw this YouTube video. This is

135
00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:12,600
Speaker 1: what I learned. Yeah, normal only only bearable. Yeah, he's

136
00:08:12,640 --> 00:08:16,600
Speaker 1: like describing and Or to everybody in his during like

137
00:08:16,640 --> 00:08:19,520
Speaker 1: the Sader or whatever. Because this is the difference, right, Like,

138
00:08:19,640 --> 00:08:22,040
Speaker 1: if you describe what happened in and Or, it sucks.

139
00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:23,960
Speaker 1: But if you if someone were to just act out

140
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:26,960
Speaker 1: and Or in front of everyone, that would rule. Yeah,

141
00:08:27,040 --> 00:08:28,920
Speaker 1: have you ever seen that movie? I forget the name

142
00:08:28,920 --> 00:08:30,400
Speaker 1: of it. I think Rain of Fire is the Day

143
00:08:30,440 --> 00:08:35,360
Speaker 1: of It's about like dragons destroy civilization and it's apocalyptic Britain.

144
00:08:35,559 --> 00:08:38,040
Speaker 1: There's a great scene where like a bunch of post

145
00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:41,280
Speaker 1: apocalypse survivors are like sitting around a campfire doing Star

146
00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:46,360
Speaker 1: Wars for each other. Yeah yeah, that it out is great.

147
00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:49,880
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's what Kovner is doing. He's very creative.

148
00:08:49,960 --> 00:08:53,760
Speaker 1: Everybody finds them very entertaining. Um. Now this is again

149
00:08:53,920 --> 00:08:58,920
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, rough time to be anybody in Sebastopol, but

150
00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:03,480
Speaker 1: particularly Jewish. UM and his dad is arrested by Soviet

151
00:09:03,559 --> 00:09:06,560
Speaker 1: secret police when he's four in nineteen twenty two. This

152
00:09:06,640 --> 00:09:10,160
Speaker 1: is because private, private commerce was forbidden in the Soviet Union.

153
00:09:10,640 --> 00:09:14,040
Speaker 1: Obviously in the earliest stages, kind of after there's ours fall,

154
00:09:14,120 --> 00:09:16,840
Speaker 1: it's possible, you know, business and stuff continues in regions.

155
00:09:16,880 --> 00:09:19,840
Speaker 1: It's not like evenly distributed at this point. But by

156
00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:22,280
Speaker 1: the early twenties, the Soviet state is kind of starting

157
00:09:22,280 --> 00:09:26,280
Speaker 1: to um to to lock into place. Uh. And he

158
00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:29,640
Speaker 1: gets fined for his bourgeoisie decadence, as you know, being

159
00:09:29,679 --> 00:09:32,720
Speaker 1: a jewelry guy. Um. And he's put in prison for

160
00:09:32,760 --> 00:09:37,080
Speaker 1: several months. This is probably Had or at least his biographer,

161
00:09:37,120 --> 00:09:39,800
Speaker 1: who is I should say this right now, his biographer

162
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,560
Speaker 1: is like super pro Israel um and a zion and

163
00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:47,120
Speaker 1: a Zionist. His father is also a known Zionist. And

164
00:09:47,160 --> 00:09:49,880
Speaker 1: I when I say this, we're all of these folks

165
00:09:49,880 --> 00:09:51,760
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be talking about in the twenties and

166
00:09:51,760 --> 00:09:55,240
Speaker 1: stuff are Zionist. That doesn't mean entirely the same thing

167
00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:58,160
Speaker 1: that it does to this day, in part because a

168
00:09:58,160 --> 00:09:59,760
Speaker 1: lot of people who a lot of Jews who are

169
00:09:59,760 --> 00:10:02,520
Speaker 1: as eye Anist in this period are also socialists, are

170
00:10:02,520 --> 00:10:05,920
Speaker 1: also communist and are less thinking about I want to establish,

171
00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 1: you know, a state of Israel as it currently exists,

172
00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:12,480
Speaker 1: which is, shall we say, deeply problematic, and more we

173
00:10:12,520 --> 00:10:16,640
Speaker 1: want to liberate like the Palestinian Mandate from the British

174
00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:22,600
Speaker 1: imperialists and established establish a socialist community there, right Um.

175
00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:25,400
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the line ABBA's father falls in on.

176
00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:29,280
Speaker 1: His family is very left wing. One of ABBA's cousins

177
00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:31,679
Speaker 1: is going to found the Communist Party of Israel when

178
00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:35,040
Speaker 1: that all happens. Um. So like that's that's the So

179
00:10:35,240 --> 00:10:37,720
Speaker 1: they are very left wing despite the fact that they're

180
00:10:37,760 --> 00:10:42,600
Speaker 1: they're somewhat affluent. But Zionism is not allowed in the

181
00:10:42,600 --> 00:10:44,960
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, right because a big part of it is

182
00:10:45,040 --> 00:10:49,600
Speaker 1: like we're going to Number one, religion is a not

183
00:10:49,840 --> 00:10:54,040
Speaker 1: encouraged in the in the in the early USSR in particular. Um.

184
00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:56,320
Speaker 1: But number two, a big part of it is that like, well,

185
00:10:56,360 --> 00:10:58,480
Speaker 1: we're not going to stay here, right, Like, if you're

186
00:10:58,520 --> 00:11:00,800
Speaker 1: Zionists that you pretty fund the Italy don't want to

187
00:11:00,800 --> 00:11:02,760
Speaker 1: stay where you are in the U. S s are

188
00:11:02,800 --> 00:11:05,480
Speaker 1: And they're also not thrilled with that. Um. So that

189
00:11:05,640 --> 00:11:09,160
Speaker 1: probably played a role in his dad getting arrested. Um.

190
00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:11,600
Speaker 1: And he stays in prison for months until the family

191
00:11:11,640 --> 00:11:14,360
Speaker 1: can put together enough money to secure his release, which

192
00:11:14,440 --> 00:11:16,480
Speaker 1: is interesting to me because he gets arrested for doing

193
00:11:16,480 --> 00:11:22,400
Speaker 1: commerce and being too enough. Yeah, I don't know, you

194
00:11:22,440 --> 00:11:26,280
Speaker 1: know whatever. Uh. By nineteen twenty six, the Kavners had

195
00:11:26,280 --> 00:11:28,920
Speaker 1: decided that the Soviet Union was not a great place

196
00:11:28,960 --> 00:11:32,640
Speaker 1: for them. Um. They felt there, yeah, yeah, especially since

197
00:11:32,640 --> 00:11:37,160
Speaker 1: again most they are fairly religious, um, and they see

198
00:11:37,400 --> 00:11:40,120
Speaker 1: kind of not that just their religion, but their nationality

199
00:11:40,200 --> 00:11:42,120
Speaker 1: is under attacks. So they decided to move somewhat place

200
00:11:42,120 --> 00:11:44,040
Speaker 1: that's going to be a little bit more friendly for them.

201
00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:47,480
Speaker 1: It's also again, Sebastopol doesn't have a huge Jewish population,

202
00:11:47,559 --> 00:11:49,640
Speaker 1: so some of it's just like, well, maybe we'd like

203
00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:52,520
Speaker 1: to be in a place where there's a larger Jewish community.

204
00:11:52,520 --> 00:11:55,440
Speaker 1: I'm so nervous about where they're going to move to. Um, well,

205
00:11:55,480 --> 00:11:57,240
Speaker 1: they're going to move to a place that never has

206
00:11:57,280 --> 00:12:02,440
Speaker 1: any problems in the early part of the twentieth century Lithuania.

207
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:07,200
Speaker 1: Now Lithuania is part of Like specifically, they moved to Vilna,

208
00:12:07,240 --> 00:12:10,240
Speaker 1: which is today the capital of Lithuania, if I'm not mistaken,

209
00:12:10,559 --> 00:12:15,160
Speaker 1: but back then is part of Poland, right, Um, so

210
00:12:15,280 --> 00:12:18,280
Speaker 1: they are attempting to and they've got family in the area, right,

211
00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,760
Speaker 1: you know, so they're they're not just like moving side unseen.

212
00:12:20,800 --> 00:12:23,079
Speaker 1: They have a lot of relatives there too. Um this

213
00:12:23,160 --> 00:12:25,480
Speaker 1: is a good move and for a while the family

214
00:12:25,679 --> 00:12:29,880
Speaker 1: is affluent again, but that period quickly ends because ABBA's

215
00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:32,480
Speaker 1: father seems to be a really generous guy. And in

216
00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:35,000
Speaker 1: this period, because of the Civil War in Russia, because

217
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,040
Speaker 1: of all of the chaos after World War One, there's

218
00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:40,360
Speaker 1: a ton of refugees moving into Vilnia, right, and his

219
00:12:40,480 --> 00:12:43,520
Speaker 1: dad kind of spends money faster than he can make it,

220
00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:45,880
Speaker 1: helping out out their refugees in the area because he's

221
00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:50,040
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty nice guy, um Abba, you know, goes

222
00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:52,200
Speaker 1: to a Hebrew school, um, and then he goes to

223
00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:54,760
Speaker 1: an art university when he graduates. I think it's called

224
00:12:54,760 --> 00:12:58,120
Speaker 1: a gymnasium. I don't entirely. I believe that's broadly speaking,

225
00:12:58,200 --> 00:13:02,640
Speaker 1: like a or a primary school. UM. That's my impression,

226
00:13:02,679 --> 00:13:04,840
Speaker 1: But I always get whatever. I'm in Europe and people

227
00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:08,160
Speaker 1: talk about going to gymnasium. Look, everyone does schools wrong,

228
00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:11,520
Speaker 1: but Europeans particularly do schools wrong, and I think it's

229
00:13:11,520 --> 00:13:15,160
Speaker 1: okay to admit that they at least name them wrong. However,

230
00:13:15,200 --> 00:13:17,280
Speaker 1: they name them very wrong. I think. I think the

231
00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:21,400
Speaker 1: US overall the school is a little bit wronger. Yeah,

232
00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:25,920
Speaker 1: I don't. I hate the word gymnasium, and I'm angry

233
00:13:25,920 --> 00:13:29,560
Speaker 1: at them, so I'm biased here. But he goes to

234
00:13:29,600 --> 00:13:31,559
Speaker 1: a Hebrew school and then he goes to an art

235
00:13:31,679 --> 00:13:36,160
Speaker 1: university and he is studying I think specifically poetry, UM.

236
00:13:36,200 --> 00:13:38,560
Speaker 1: And he's actually being published as a poet. He's quite good,

237
00:13:39,400 --> 00:13:42,160
Speaker 1: and he's he's studying poetry. When things in Europe start

238
00:13:42,240 --> 00:13:45,199
Speaker 1: to take well, I say, start to take a dark turn.

239
00:13:45,640 --> 00:13:49,440
Speaker 1: Is in Vilna in the nineteen. It's been dark for

240
00:13:49,480 --> 00:13:52,079
Speaker 1: a while, but they start to get a lot darker

241
00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:56,200
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties. Um, and again, Vilma is

242
00:13:56,240 --> 00:13:58,840
Speaker 1: a part of Poland that is smack in between Russia,

243
00:13:58,920 --> 00:14:01,559
Speaker 1: which has just gotten through his civil war that's killed millions,

244
00:14:01,600 --> 00:14:04,400
Speaker 1: and Germany, which has just gotten through like a famine

245
00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:06,800
Speaker 1: that killed like a million people after World War One. Man,

246
00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:09,400
Speaker 1: is they're on this there, on this slow road to fascism.

247
00:14:09,440 --> 00:14:11,560
Speaker 1: It's a terrible place to be. And they're about to

248
00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:15,920
Speaker 1: get split up between the two nations. Are they ever

249
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:18,960
Speaker 1: are going to agree to invade together and then hold

250
00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:22,880
Speaker 1: the joint fucking parades? It is going to be It's

251
00:14:22,960 --> 00:14:25,440
Speaker 1: it's not again, one of the worst places you could

252
00:14:25,480 --> 00:14:29,680
Speaker 1: possibly be in this period of time. So ABBA's father

253
00:14:29,840 --> 00:14:32,960
Speaker 1: dies in nineteen thirty two, right as Hitler's rising to

254
00:14:33,040 --> 00:14:36,840
Speaker 1: power in Germany. Um. You know, he's just he's a

255
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:39,080
Speaker 1: stressed out guy. I think he's kind of older. It's

256
00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:42,040
Speaker 1: not uncommon for the man to be significantly older than

257
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:44,840
Speaker 1: his wife in this period in time. Um, he dies

258
00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:47,680
Speaker 1: and his mother. ABBA's mother is forced to support the

259
00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:50,600
Speaker 1: family by starting a restaurant, and this is very difficult

260
00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:53,000
Speaker 1: to her. Because she had a chronic injury to her legs.

261
00:14:53,040 --> 00:14:56,120
Speaker 1: So his mom is like one of these parents who

262
00:14:56,200 --> 00:15:00,840
Speaker 1: is like physically disabled and also taking the burden feeding

263
00:15:00,960 --> 00:15:04,480
Speaker 1: and supporting her entire family onto herself by starting a restaurant.

264
00:15:04,680 --> 00:15:09,160
Speaker 1: But she's a very good cook. It is a successful restaurant. Um.

265
00:15:09,240 --> 00:15:12,160
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty five, when he was seventeen, Covener dropped

266
00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:14,680
Speaker 1: out of Hebrew School, having decided that his studies were

267
00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:18,360
Speaker 1: useless um and the teachers were all old assholes. By

268
00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:22,200
Speaker 1: this point, he was convinced that, yeah, he is. He

269
00:15:22,360 --> 00:15:25,280
Speaker 1: is hard not to like in this period, and he's

270
00:15:25,320 --> 00:15:28,479
Speaker 1: convinced in this point that his future lay in Palestine

271
00:15:28,560 --> 00:15:32,280
Speaker 1: as a pioneer. Now. All throughout Eastern Europe, in this period,

272
00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:36,360
Speaker 1: Jewish communities are watching the spread of radical political ideologies

273
00:15:36,360 --> 00:15:39,200
Speaker 1: that often adopted anti Semitism as planks of their belief.

274
00:15:39,800 --> 00:15:42,240
Speaker 1: Young people in young Jewish people who are paying attention

275
00:15:42,280 --> 00:15:45,840
Speaker 1: to these trends started to form their own youth organizations. UM.

276
00:15:45,880 --> 00:15:47,720
Speaker 1: And these are both for a mix of like self

277
00:15:47,760 --> 00:15:50,920
Speaker 1: defense and to aid them in carrying out this kind

278
00:15:50,920 --> 00:15:54,200
Speaker 1: of migration over to Palestine, right, um, And not all

279
00:15:54,240 --> 00:15:57,240
Speaker 1: of them, some of them are are communist organizations that

280
00:15:57,280 --> 00:16:01,000
Speaker 1: are not Zionist right communist socialist organization that are organizing

281
00:16:01,360 --> 00:16:04,200
Speaker 1: along left wing lines and and planned to stay. That's

282
00:16:04,240 --> 00:16:06,680
Speaker 1: also a significant portion of this. But all of these

283
00:16:06,760 --> 00:16:09,640
Speaker 1: Jewish youth organizations are based heavily on the Boy Scout

284
00:16:09,680 --> 00:16:12,320
Speaker 1: movement that had been launched by Robert Baden Powell because

285
00:16:12,360 --> 00:16:16,880
Speaker 1: it is a quasi military movement, right, that oddly makes sense.

286
00:16:16,920 --> 00:16:18,760
Speaker 1: There was a lot of that going on in Europe

287
00:16:18,800 --> 00:16:20,240
Speaker 1: around that time, where there was a lot of like

288
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:23,480
Speaker 1: hiking clubs would be where you would like go learn

289
00:16:23,520 --> 00:16:27,400
Speaker 1: discipline and marksmanship and hang out with your buds. Yes,

290
00:16:28,080 --> 00:16:30,320
Speaker 1: and it's not hard to see why a lot of

291
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:33,040
Speaker 1: Jewish youths in a place like Vilma would be like, yeah,

292
00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:36,080
Speaker 1: we should probably be like training for some of this stuff. Yeah,

293
00:16:36,360 --> 00:16:40,200
Speaker 1: it looks like it might get a lot harder very soon. Yeah.

294
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:42,320
Speaker 1: Um so, I want to read a quote from the

295
00:16:42,400 --> 00:16:46,280
Speaker 1: Jewish Virtual Library about these youth groups. Quote. Many Jewish youth,

296
00:16:46,320 --> 00:16:49,080
Speaker 1: affected by the process of modernization which had begun among

297
00:16:49,080 --> 00:16:52,240
Speaker 1: Eastern European Jewry, sought a means of maintaining their Jewish

298
00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:55,480
Speaker 1: identity and culture outside the stifling barriers of the Stettle

299
00:16:55,520 --> 00:16:58,040
Speaker 1: and the Orthodox Jewish life. On the other hand, they

300
00:16:58,040 --> 00:17:01,080
Speaker 1: were troubled by the crumbling of the foundations society around them,

301
00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:04,160
Speaker 1: and by the growing anti Semitism, which threatened their very existence.

302
00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:06,879
Speaker 1: In its early stages, the movement was heavily influenced by

303
00:17:06,880 --> 00:17:09,480
Speaker 1: the Boy Scout movement organized by Baden Powell, and it

304
00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:12,440
Speaker 1: embraced scouting is a basic principle to teach ghetto youth

305
00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:15,479
Speaker 1: self reliance, outdoor life, and a love and knowledge of nature.

306
00:17:15,720 --> 00:17:18,600
Speaker 1: Another important influence upon them was the wander Vogel movement

307
00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:22,560
Speaker 1: in Germany, which emphasized youth's independence and creativity. And the

308
00:17:22,600 --> 00:17:25,560
Speaker 1: wander Vogel movement is there's a mix of the Nazis

309
00:17:25,600 --> 00:17:27,600
Speaker 1: that are kind of like inspired and related to it,

310
00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:29,760
Speaker 1: and there's also a lot of reaction to it because

311
00:17:29,800 --> 00:17:31,639
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens in the wander Vogel

312
00:17:31,640 --> 00:17:34,760
Speaker 1: movement is a lot of German youth are having gay

313
00:17:34,800 --> 00:17:38,760
Speaker 1: sex and they go camping right um, which is one

314
00:17:38,800 --> 00:17:40,760
Speaker 1: of the reasons camping is rat and that is the

315
00:17:40,800 --> 00:17:42,800
Speaker 1: thing that the Nazis do not like. We'll talk more

316
00:17:42,800 --> 00:17:46,080
Speaker 1: about the wander Vogler movement. Yeah, yeah, I covered them

317
00:17:46,080 --> 00:17:48,480
Speaker 1: a bunch on the Gay Resistance of Nazis episode, and

318
00:17:48,520 --> 00:17:51,720
Speaker 1: so like, I'm pretty excited about how both the like

319
00:17:51,880 --> 00:17:54,679
Speaker 1: right and left wing were like deeply part of the

320
00:17:54,720 --> 00:17:59,600
Speaker 1: wander Vogel movement. Yeah, it's very interesting and messy and cool.

321
00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:04,800
Speaker 1: It's yeah, yeah, we don't it doesn't get talked about much.

322
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:09,080
Speaker 1: This is all stuff that like you really no, no, no,

323
00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:11,119
Speaker 1: and it's it's stuff you have to really be reading

324
00:18:11,200 --> 00:18:14,520
Speaker 1: your your history in order to actually get to. Once

325
00:18:14,560 --> 00:18:16,639
Speaker 1: you do, you realize like, oh, this was central to

326
00:18:16,760 --> 00:18:21,360
Speaker 1: a lot of what was happening in this period. Um.

327
00:18:21,400 --> 00:18:23,399
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of these groups. Some of them

328
00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:26,119
Speaker 1: are revolutionary and communist in nature. Others are kind of

329
00:18:26,160 --> 00:18:31,080
Speaker 1: centrist and even conservative and much more focused on Zionism. Um.

330
00:18:31,119 --> 00:18:33,919
Speaker 1: And again, when we talk about Zionism in this period,

331
00:18:33,960 --> 00:18:36,040
Speaker 1: some of these people are We're going to like take

332
00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:39,439
Speaker 1: our own state in Palestine by by force, But a

333
00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:41,639
Speaker 1: lot of them are just we're probably all going to

334
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:44,359
Speaker 1: get killed if we stay here, and like farming in

335
00:18:44,920 --> 00:18:47,480
Speaker 1: Palestines seems like a better life, So what if we

336
00:18:47,560 --> 00:18:50,920
Speaker 1: just did that? Right, And there was like right wing

337
00:18:50,960 --> 00:18:53,960
Speaker 1: and left wing Zionism that are like dramatically different and

338
00:18:53,960 --> 00:18:56,280
Speaker 1: then even among left wing Zionism, I think that there

339
00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:57,879
Speaker 1: was kind of a split about whether or not they

340
00:18:57,880 --> 00:19:00,879
Speaker 1: were trying to create a state, whether or whether they

341
00:19:00,920 --> 00:19:04,120
Speaker 1: were just like basically trying to go live where they

342
00:19:04,119 --> 00:19:07,239
Speaker 1: were kind of originally from. Yeah, and where like they

343
00:19:07,280 --> 00:19:09,600
Speaker 1: wouldn't get murdered. And you do have to when you're

344
00:19:09,640 --> 00:19:11,640
Speaker 1: kind of parsing this out, keep that all in mind.

345
00:19:11,760 --> 00:19:14,320
Speaker 1: They're all aware that they're under the gun here. You know,

346
00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:17,520
Speaker 1: it's really weird to look at this from the current

347
00:19:17,560 --> 00:19:23,040
Speaker 1: context of Israel being a an apartheides great thing. Yeah, um,

348
00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:26,080
Speaker 1: but the right wing versus left wing Zionism versus also

349
00:19:26,119 --> 00:19:29,480
Speaker 1: the left wing non anti Zionists, like all three groups

350
00:19:29,560 --> 00:19:32,160
Speaker 1: were doing their things. Sorry, I get really excited about

351
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:34,800
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, they're all. They're all. Also there's a

352
00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:38,920
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of conflict between them and totally um and

353
00:19:38,920 --> 00:19:41,520
Speaker 1: we're The part of the story today is how a

354
00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:44,600
Speaker 1: lot of that conflict comes to an end of one um.

355
00:19:44,720 --> 00:19:48,360
Speaker 1: The specific youth group that Aboca Abacovner joints is called

356
00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:52,119
Speaker 1: Hashomer hats their um. I'm sure I'm not getting that

357
00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:55,320
Speaker 1: quite right, but it's it was kind of I've heard

358
00:19:55,320 --> 00:19:57,840
Speaker 1: different things. They are a Marxist group. They are a

359
00:19:57,880 --> 00:20:01,280
Speaker 1: Marxist like socialist youth organise, and I've also heard them

360
00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:04,760
Speaker 1: described as kind of like soft socialists. So they're they're

361
00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:08,960
Speaker 1: more compared to the people who are like outright communist revolutionaries.

362
00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:10,800
Speaker 1: There are there are a lot more moderate, but they

363
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:13,840
Speaker 1: are Marxist right there, not just like social democrat. They

364
00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:17,639
Speaker 1: are specifically using Marxist and analysis and their propaganda in

365
00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:20,399
Speaker 1: the way that they see the world. Um. ABBA's cousin

366
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,400
Speaker 1: again becomes like the founder of the Israeli Communist Party,

367
00:20:23,440 --> 00:20:26,920
Speaker 1: So this is like a whole thing in his family. Um,

368
00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:31,480
Speaker 1: and it's interesting he uh, you might suspect because his

369
00:20:31,560 --> 00:20:33,919
Speaker 1: dad gets arrested by the Soviets because his family has

370
00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:36,000
Speaker 1: a tough time in the USSR that they might have

371
00:20:36,040 --> 00:20:38,200
Speaker 1: had there might have been the reactionary strain in them

372
00:20:38,200 --> 00:20:41,200
Speaker 1: and they would have like pulled away from those politics. Um.

373
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:44,680
Speaker 1: But that's not really, that's not at all really ABBA's

374
00:20:44,800 --> 00:20:49,399
Speaker 1: uh like his that's not that's not the tack that

375
00:20:49,440 --> 00:20:50,720
Speaker 1: he takes. We'll talk about that a little bit in

376
00:20:50,720 --> 00:20:54,119
Speaker 1: the second. But the hats Omer Hauts there advocated for

377
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:57,760
Speaker 1: Jewish people to abandon the industries they traditionally worked in

378
00:20:58,359 --> 00:21:00,639
Speaker 1: um in, you know, places where they were living, and

379
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:03,400
Speaker 1: instead become labors and farmers so that they'd be able

380
00:21:03,440 --> 00:21:05,920
Speaker 1: to settle in Palestine one day, and you know all

381
00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:08,679
Speaker 1: that stuff. Some of them had started trying to do

382
00:21:08,720 --> 00:21:11,240
Speaker 1: this as early as nineteen nineteen. They are sending there

383
00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:13,360
Speaker 1: are people moving over there. This is how the first

384
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:17,600
Speaker 1: kibbutz is get established, right, it's these guys. So by

385
00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:20,520
Speaker 1: the time World War two is getting ready to kick off,

386
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:23,440
Speaker 1: and that's in the backgrounds as Abbas joining this group,

387
00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:25,520
Speaker 1: as he's as he's kind of moving up the ranks,

388
00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:29,879
Speaker 1: he's becoming a community organizer. He's making propaganda. The Nazis

389
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:33,720
Speaker 1: are taking power and consolidating power. You got your light

390
00:21:33,800 --> 00:21:37,800
Speaker 1: along knives, you got your angelus, you got your war

391
00:21:37,880 --> 00:21:42,440
Speaker 1: bell starting to ring for the invasion of Poland. Um

392
00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:45,080
Speaker 1: now on kind of the eve of the invasion of Poland.

393
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:48,119
Speaker 1: The Jewish population of Vilna is about sixty thousand, and

394
00:21:48,119 --> 00:21:50,280
Speaker 1: it's one of the most cohesive Jewish communities in all

395
00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:54,320
Speaker 1: of Europe. It hosts what's called the Straussian Library, which

396
00:21:54,359 --> 00:21:57,160
Speaker 1: is the most famous Jewish library in all of Europe.

397
00:21:57,720 --> 00:21:59,879
Speaker 1: Abbas spent a lot of time in that library, and

398
00:21:59,920 --> 00:22:01,639
Speaker 1: he spends the years in the run up to the

399
00:22:01,640 --> 00:22:04,159
Speaker 1: war kind of throwing his life into the hat Shomarhatzer,

400
00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:07,160
Speaker 1: and he eventually becomes like one of the leading figures

401
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:10,359
Speaker 1: in his local chapter. This passage from a book about

402
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:13,239
Speaker 1: Abba called The Fall of a Sparrow describes him just

403
00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:16,159
Speaker 1: as the war clouds began to gather in Europe. He

404
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:19,280
Speaker 1: headed the local branch, it's governing body and the regional leadership.

405
00:22:19,560 --> 00:22:22,600
Speaker 1: His physical appearance was also exceptional. He wore his hair

406
00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:25,919
Speaker 1: long and dressed like the older Hashomer Hats members, with

407
00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:29,440
Speaker 1: his shirt collar rather rather than his jacket collar, uppermost

408
00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:32,120
Speaker 1: wide pants, stuffed to do his socks, and in later

409
00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:34,919
Speaker 1: years into his boots. His dress was influenced by the

410
00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:38,240
Speaker 1: Bolshevik revolutionaries, and he turned it into his own personal style.

411
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:42,040
Speaker 1: Kovner wrote an exceptionally beautiful Hebrew a Great Deal for

412
00:22:42,080 --> 00:22:44,760
Speaker 1: the group's newspaper, which was posted on the clubhouse wall.

413
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:47,000
Speaker 1: His sense of humor was well known in the movements

414
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:49,920
Speaker 1: summer and winter camps. He was as familiar with happiness

415
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:52,639
Speaker 1: as he was with sadness, said one friend. He was

416
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,919
Speaker 1: always an intellectual challenge. He had an original way of

417
00:22:55,960 --> 00:22:59,119
Speaker 1: asking questions or discussing problems, and impressed everyone with his

418
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,520
Speaker 1: self control in seriousness. The younger members admired him, and

419
00:23:02,560 --> 00:23:06,840
Speaker 1: the movements instructors recognized his leadership qualities. He radiated authority,

420
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:09,399
Speaker 1: they said fifty years later. And that's one of the

421
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:11,280
Speaker 1: things you'll notice about Kulvner because a lot of the

422
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 1: people who knew him then get get interviewed again, like

423
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:17,600
Speaker 1: literally half a century later, and there's almost this awe

424
00:23:17,680 --> 00:23:20,400
Speaker 1: they all had for him. He's just a deeply charismatic

425
00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:23,840
Speaker 1: young man. Um. Yeah, he's just one of those people

426
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:26,679
Speaker 1: that is kind of magnetic to folks. He also do

427
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: terrible things, or he could, Um, he could. And it's

428
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:32,840
Speaker 1: it's one of he doesn't seem one thing that he

429
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:36,080
Speaker 1: does not seem to have any particular personal desire for power,

430
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:41,560
Speaker 1: which is interesting. He's he's really focused on organizing, um,

431
00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:43,640
Speaker 1: but not focused on kind of like there's no sort

432
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 1: of a cult of personality. He just seems like a

433
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 1: deeply likable kid. UM. I don't know. Yeah, at this certainly,

434
00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: at this point in time, he's nothing but rad um.

435
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 1: And again, it's it's interesting that he's very focused on

436
00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:59,159
Speaker 1: kind of cultivating this image of himself as as a Bolshevik,

437
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,480
Speaker 1: especial considering the problems that his dad has. But his

438
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: earliest memories he never because he's very young, when the

439
00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:09,120
Speaker 1: family is affluent. He doesn't remember that period at all.

440
00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,719
Speaker 1: His earliest memories are after they moved to Vilna, when

441
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 1: they're very poor, you know, and when his dad dies,

442
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 1: when his mom's got to try to keep the family together. Um.

443
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:19,880
Speaker 1: And so he is. He is very dedicated to the poor.

444
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:24,399
Speaker 1: He's very familiar with kind of like class consciousness, and

445
00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: he's he's very humanist. He's a secular guy, right like,

446
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 1: he's not particularly religious, he is he has committed to Marxists, basically, no, no, no.

447
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: He grows up a committed Marxist who's very aware of

448
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:41,199
Speaker 1: like the divide between rich and poor, you know. Um,

449
00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 1: everything changes in his life on September one, nineteen thirty nine,

450
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 1: when Germany invades Poland uh at once, they begin to

451
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: implement the early stages of the Final Solution, which had

452
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: not yet been fully plotted out but was broadly understood

453
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 1: by the Nazi elites. They started forcing Jews into ghettos,

454
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 1: and mass killings were common in the parts of Poland

455
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 1: that the Germans took over. Thousands of men were taken

456
00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:05,639
Speaker 1: by gunpoint at gunpoint and put into force labor battalions.

457
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: Now by the terms of the Molotov Ribbon trop Packed,

458
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: which is the the treaty that the Germans and the

459
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:16,119
Speaker 1: Soviets signed before the partitioning of Poland, Vilna is an

460
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,400
Speaker 1: a portion of Poland that is invaded and occupied by

461
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. As things begin to settle down and

462
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 1: the new Russian occupiers start to take effective control, it

463
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,119
Speaker 1: became clear that the youth movement was going to be

464
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,399
Speaker 1: forcibly disbanded. The issue was, of course, Zionism, which the

465
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,679
Speaker 1: Russians wanted to discourage. Rather than risk being split up

466
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: or disrupted by secret police, Kaufner made the decision to

467
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 1: have his organization go underground. Officially, the hat Zomer hats

468
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: Air had ceased to exist. In reality, it was just hiding.

469
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 1: Dina Parat in Death of a Sparrow writes the underground's

470
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: first task was to find or invent new methods for

471
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:54,640
Speaker 1: continuing their activities. As soon as the younger Hashomer hats

472
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: Air members understood that they were not being dispersed but

473
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: rather that necessity dictated a new modus operandi. They enthusiastically

474
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: begin to construct underground cells. They were organized by the

475
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:07,200
Speaker 1: leadership into groups of five, a method learned from reading

476
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 1: pre revolutionary literature, recounted Covener, and only the most reliable

477
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 1: members were accepted. Key members were sent to places outside Vilna,

478
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: disguised as Christians, in private homes and outside the city limits.

479
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: They continue to study Hebrew hid books taken from the

480
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: great libraries closed by the Soviets, which had been the

481
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: heart and symbol of Jewish Vilna, and even held a

482
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,360
Speaker 1: few seminars. And again at this point, their primary goal

483
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: they're helping refugees. They're trying to continue to carry out

484
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: the practice of their religion, the study of their history,

485
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 1: and they're also continuing there. They're not able to continue

486
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: to help people immigrate over to Palestine right now, but

487
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 1: they are. They're trying to like keep that UH infrastructure

488
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,399
Speaker 1: setups that they can again one of these days. UM. Now,

489
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:50,199
Speaker 1: they're not an insurrectionary organization at this point, and they

490
00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: don't have any desire to fight a rebellion against the

491
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: Soviet state UM, but be able to keep doing Their

492
00:26:56,280 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: ships are that and covener in. An number of others

493
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,120
Speaker 1: are aware that like ship with the Nazis, is going

494
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: to cook off and there will be a need to

495
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: fight at some point, and so they are kind of

496
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,919
Speaker 1: consciously setting themselves up in a structure that will be

497
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:13,920
Speaker 1: able to survive and resist in the in the days

498
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: that are coming. And those days come pretty quickly, you know,

499
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: it comes before other things. What's that, Margaret? It's uh,

500
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 1: the ability for people to exchange money for goods and services.

501
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 1: That's right, Margaret, that's really the most revolutionary activity is

502
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 1: exchanging money for goods and services. Absolutely. M Ah, We're

503
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:50,880
Speaker 1: back my socks tucked into my fucking boots because I'm

504
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: a I'm a I'm a I'm a radical. If I

505
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:56,119
Speaker 1: don't know, if you start with him tucked into your socks,

506
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: that was the look that I was more nervous about.

507
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:00,399
Speaker 1: When he had his pants tucked into his boots. That's

508
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 1: always a solid look, right, No, no notes talked into

509
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: your socks. I don't know, I gotta see it. What

510
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: about having your boot stucked into your socks? What if

511
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 1: you put your boot your socks on the outside of

512
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 1: your boots. If you're attempting to move across terrain in

513
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: ways that you don't leave noticeable tracks while doing things

514
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: at night. I've heard that that's a reasonable thing to do. Well.

515
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 1: This has been Margaret's advice on how to carry out

516
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:31,439
Speaker 1: an insurrection. Welcome. Now it's time to go back to

517
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: the story. So, um, we've just been talking about Covener

518
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:40,480
Speaker 1: and his fellows are kind of preparing themselves for the

519
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 1: future inevitability of a guerrilla war, and that inevitability becomes inevitable.

520
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: I guess on June twenty two, nineteen forty one, when

521
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: Germany institutes Operation Barbarossa, which is still the largest military

522
00:28:55,960 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: organism operation in human history. I think they invade with

523
00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: like three and a half million men or something. It

524
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: is a Titanic operation, um. And if you Titanic, yes, yeah,

525
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 1: And it ends a lot worse than the Titanic. Um,

526
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 1: but it's going it goes great for a while. Again,

527
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:19,240
Speaker 1: like the Germans carry out the largest encirclement operations that

528
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: have ever happened. There's like million man blocks of the

529
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: Soviet Army that are just like annihilated or surrender or whatnot.

530
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 1: It's a whole big thing. It's not going well for

531
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: them at first, Um and the Germans fairly quickly into

532
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: the Lithuanian portions of the uss Are, including Vilna. Um.

533
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: This comes as a shock everyone. Kavner is ready for

534
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: something to happen, right, He's not shocked by the fact

535
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: that the Nazis do Nazi ship but everyone's shocked at

536
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: how poorly the Red Army performs, right, by the fact

537
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: that they fall apart so quickly um and so they

538
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 1: don't really they're not able to get away from this, right,

539
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: some Villna Jews handfuls are able to escape, but nearly

540
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 1: everyone is trapped by Luftwaffa bombardment and verr Machten's circlement.

541
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: So Vilna is going to be because it's one of

542
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 1: the first large Jewish communities that the Nazis take over

543
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: during Barbarossa, and they're going to use it as kind

544
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: of a proof of concept, right they are testing out

545
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: extermination it is. It is one of it's one of

546
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: the first large Jewish communities that's going to be annihilated

547
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:27,240
Speaker 1: by the Germans. Um. Now, when they go in and

548
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: start exterminating people, most of the actual killing is being

549
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: done by members of the Lithuanian right wing members of

550
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: actually kind of adjacent to these Jewish youth movement organizations, right,

551
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 1: these right wing UH clubs and and paramilitary organizations who

552
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 1: had been underground under the U s SR. But when

553
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: the yeah, when the Nazis take over, they're like, hey,

554
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: we would love to take vengeance on Lithuanian leftists and Jews,

555
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: and the Germans are like, absolutely, guys. And I'm gonna

556
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: quote from Dina Porat again. When Einsatz Commando nine into

557
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: Vilma in early July, it immediately became clear that the

558
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: wave had reached the city's Jews as well. Einsetz Commando

559
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: nine but belonged to the Einsetz group and the s

560
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: S units that followed in the Verhrmacht's train, and their

561
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: principal mission was to kill the Jews and Communist Party

562
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:16,959
Speaker 1: activists who had remained behind. The Activities of national Lithuanian

563
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: institutions were drastically curtailed, and only those dealing with urban

564
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: matters were left intact. The Lithuanian Police Force was placed

565
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: under s S command, and right wing units were integrated

566
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 1: directly into it. That left little behind the facade of

567
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: Lithuanian independence and the Lithuanian murder of Jews, whether committed

568
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: on their own initiative or under German ages, brought them

569
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: nothing in return. The coordinated effort of the two German authorities,

570
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: the s S and the Army and the Lithuanian units

571
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: began on July fourth and marked the beginning of the

572
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: oppression and eventually the destruction of the Jewish population in Vilma.

573
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: The German military government issued decrees which the Lithuanian Urban

574
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: Administration put into operation the Einsetz Group and sent Lithuanians

575
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: to kidnap and murder Jews, sometimes participating themselves. Where Leverrmacht

576
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: kidnapped Jews for forced labor, the just called the Lithuanian

577
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 1: kidnappers Chopoon's, and some were local utes who had received

578
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: a small bounty from the Germans for every Jew turned in.

579
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: They broken to homes at will, robbed and beat with

580
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: no fear of retribution, and made the lives of the

581
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 1: Jews intolerable. These are the proud boy types, right, the

582
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 1: oath keepers and ship Yeah. Well, and now the Germans

583
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: are doing it here. It's fitting because like when the

584
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: Nazis take over, they just used the existing police force

585
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: and then added added more right wing stuff to the

586
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 1: existing police force. This is that tracks, Yeah, yeah, that

587
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 1: it completely tracks. There's a lot going on here that

588
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: again is going to become very common among the rest

589
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: of the areas the Nazis have taken. And it's because

590
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: number one, these Einstz group of units are not great

591
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: at most things. They're certainly not good at antipartisan conflict. Um.

592
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 1: There's not a shipload of them. And it's kind of again,

593
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: most of them are like not like. The participating in

594
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 1: these mass killings like leads to a lot of suicides

595
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: and drunkenness among the Einsets group. So whenever they have

596
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: the opportunity to use locals to do the killing for them,

597
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: they're gonna prefer that just because it kind of preserves

598
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 1: German unit strength. Um. There's a number of reasons why

599
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: they do it this way. The Jewish community enveilment is

600
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 1: taken wholly by surprise by this. Many chose to hide

601
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: themselves in an attempt to survive. Kavner recoils at the

602
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 1: prospect of hiding and of fleeing the ghetto. Um. And

603
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: but he does, he's kind of forced to write because

604
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: members of his organization are like, no, we're going to

605
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: get killed if we stay here. We have to try

606
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: to like hide with gentiles who are friendly elsewhere in

607
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: the city so that we can take action later. Um.

608
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: Kavner agrees to do this, but he writes that he's

609
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: covered in shame by the idea of hiding in a closet.

610
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: He is a fighter. He does not want to be

611
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: hiding right, Um, but sometimes you have to make strategic

612
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 1: decisions about when and where you fight. Yes, and they do,

613
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: and he he takes shelter in a group in a

614
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: Dominican monitor or a Dominican convent. That's like these nuns.

615
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: By the way, this is normally a show, and generally

616
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: when we bring up nuns on this show, it's very negative.

617
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: These nuns are based as ship. These are the coolest

618
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: fucking nuns I have ever heard about it. You're gonna

619
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: love these nuns. Um. So these nuns take Kauvner and

620
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 1: a couple of his friends in um and they are

621
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 1: you know, trying to like he's he's he's. He agrees

622
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: to do this, but while he's locked up, he's sending

623
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: out letters. He's arguing whenever he gets face to face

624
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: with someone that we need to get back in the

625
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:32,879
Speaker 1: ghetto to fight back and defend like our our community. Um.

626
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 1: Part of this is because his girlfriend gets is he doesn't.

627
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: He doesn't get to escape with her. She stays in

628
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: the ghetto and for a couple of weeks she's sending

629
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: him letters about how bad the conditions are, and then

630
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 1: the letters stop abruptly and they never pick back up again,

631
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what's happened to her. She's obviously

632
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: she's been killed, um, but he doesn't. He's not able

633
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:55,399
Speaker 1: to find that out. He has no good information about

634
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 1: what's going on. And in the early days, all these

635
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:00,760
Speaker 1: all the Jews and villana have are conflict lifting rumors

636
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: about the slaughter, because what one of the ways the

637
00:35:03,160 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 1: Germans carry out the massacre is they put together a

638
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: second ghetto, and this provides them with the ability to

639
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: move large numbers of film and Jews without making it

640
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: seem suspicious. We're not you know, we're taking you to

641
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: the next ghetto. And then these guys all get taken

642
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: out in massacred, right, But they don't have to say

643
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: we're going to kill all these people and there's a

644
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: little bit of plausible deniability, so it stops a panic

645
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 1: from taking right like happened in and or in the

646
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:31,240
Speaker 1: jail scene, exactly like that. Um So most of these people,

647
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:33,800
Speaker 1: which is tens of thousands of people from mid to

648
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: late are taken to a place called Ponari, which had

649
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:40,520
Speaker 1: previously been a picnicking spot, and they were gunned down

650
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: and tossed into mass graves. Most of the actual killing,

651
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,280
Speaker 1: again is done by Lithuanian right wing partisans. One local

652
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 1: witness to the slaughter later wrote, eleventh July lovely weather.

653
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:54,240
Speaker 1: It's hot out. There are white clouds and a gentle breeze.

654
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:57,320
Speaker 1: Shooting can be heard from the forest, presumably from training.

655
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: The shooting started at four pm. Then I wasn't formed

656
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 1: that many Jews were transported to the forest via the

657
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 1: road to Grodno and were then shot. This was the

658
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,720
Speaker 1: first day of executions, a depressing feeling. The shooting stopped

659
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: at about eight in the evening. For the Germans, three

660
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,520
Speaker 1: hundred Jews or three hundred enemies of humanity. For the Lithuanians,

661
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: three hundred Jews or three hundred pairs of shoots of shoes,

662
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:23,160
Speaker 1: trousers and clothes. Damn. That's such an interesting like way

663
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:25,439
Speaker 1: of breaking it down about like, well, the Germans hate

664
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: the Jews and we just want to steal all the

665
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: ship from the Jews. Yep. That is a big part

666
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 1: of what is happening here. Um, So that's good. When

667
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: the Germans occupied Vilna, the ghetto has again a population

668
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 1: of sixty thousand. I've also heard eighty thousand because of

669
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 1: the refugees. There's not you're not gonna get there's not

670
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 1: like a census, right being taken. That's that's particularly good.

671
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 1: By December of nineteen thirty one, though less than a

672
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:54,759
Speaker 1: third remain Yeah, December of the same year. So in

673
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:57,560
Speaker 1: less than a year they go from sixty seventy people

674
00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:01,920
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand, um because of how many are massacred.

675
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,399
Speaker 1: But while these massacres are occurring because the Germans, there's

676
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 1: some plausible deniability and there's not great Again, there's not

677
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: like the Internet, social Media's not like a lot of

678
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:13,359
Speaker 1: good ways to figure out what's happening outside your door.

679
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: So a lot of Vilna's Jews still don't believe that

680
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 1: the annihilation is being carried out well, and part of

681
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:24,359
Speaker 1: why they don't believe it is. They have friends and

682
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: relatives over in Warsaw, and at this point in time,

683
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:29,920
Speaker 1: a lot of the correspondents that the Villaina Jews are

684
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: getting from their relatives in the West is that like, yeah,

685
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: there was some killing earlier, but it's calmed down, and

686
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: like we think it's gonna be okay. And again this

687
00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: is also we're talking centuries of Jewish history where like, yeah,

688
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 1: there will be these these eruptions and there will be massacres,

689
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 1: but then things will calm down. Again. You have to

690
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 1: deal with some bullshit laws, but like we don't get

691
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:53,240
Speaker 1: wiped out right, um. And that's kind of what people

692
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 1: think is happening. Um. And so there's this, there's this

693
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: belief among a lot of this even though a lot

694
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 1: of people have been killed, that like it's not going

695
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: to be as bad as it is as it clearly is.

696
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: And again I'm saying this, these people are not like irrational,

697
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: They're not weak, they're not shitty, They're they're dealing with

698
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: an unprecedented situation right now, as early reports of German

699
00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:17,200
Speaker 1: atrocity start to leak out in the middle of the

700
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 1: standard belief. So there's this group and this is every ghetto. Right,

701
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:23,800
Speaker 1: there's an organization called the udn rot Um, which is

702
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:26,840
Speaker 1: rot is like a it's spelled rat, like the animal,

703
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,839
Speaker 1: but it's like a governing council. Right, This is just

704
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: like a general word in the area. And the juven

705
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,479
Speaker 1: Rat is the governing council of the ghetto, right um,

706
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 1: and the Nazis endorsed and established June Rots in the

707
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,480
Speaker 1: ghettos that they take, you know, control of and to

708
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: make people think that they have any control over their

709
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: own lives. Yeah, and it's it's a mix of some

710
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 1: of these guys who are part of the judn Rat

711
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 1: are as with you find in any community, like self

712
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: serving assholes who they get better kind of conditions and

713
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: better food by by doing this. A lot of them, though,

714
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 1: are just people who are well, if we work with them,

715
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 1: we can avoid getting massacred, we can like reduce the

716
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: amount of violence our community has to suffer. Again there

717
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: and again, a lot of like people in specifically radical

718
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: organizations are really angry at a lot of the folks

719
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: who agree to be in the June Rat. Obviously, I'm

720
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: not gonna come down morally on anybody who's trying to

721
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 1: survive the fucking Holocaust, like this is a fucking nightmare.

722
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:27,759
Speaker 1: But in this case, you know, there is there are

723
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 1: these reports are starting to filter into the ghetto um

724
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:36,560
Speaker 1: and the June Rats official line is that the killings

725
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:38,880
Speaker 1: that have occurred outside of Vilna are the results of

726
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: an isolated, crazy German commander, not a broad policy of genocide.

727
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: And it's gonna be okay, right, their job is to

728
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:50,839
Speaker 1: keep everybody calm um, and that's what they're trying to do,

729
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: is like they they in the end, it was the

730
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: wrong call, right, Yeah, they didn't know it was the

731
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 1: wrong call. The p who joined at least again only

732
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 1: when I've looked at as the one in the warsaw

733
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:05,839
Speaker 1: and it was like a lot of the people who

734
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: were part of the jude and Rot were like, yeah,

735
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 1: this is how we think we will best survive this

736
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: intact and and they were wrong. And but they were wrong,

737
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:18,279
Speaker 1: but they didn't there was no way to know they

738
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:22,839
Speaker 1: were wrong besides like, yeah, they're not wrong because like

739
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 1: they were pad people or whatever. They're wrong because in

740
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,400
Speaker 1: part because this was not in a lot of times

741
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 1: in which Jewish communities had faced danger in the past,

742
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: stuff like this had been the right thing to do

743
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: right had had been the thing that preserved the community. Um. Again,

744
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 1: this is just an unprecedented time. They are wrong, But

745
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 1: I have no I have no interest in morally totally

746
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:51,320
Speaker 1: any of the people making decisions, but possibly situation. Oh,

747
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:55,040
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast, Margaret. They

748
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 1: they think all times are precedented as shit, and they

749
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 1: don't care about you. Yeah, but that's because we care

750
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 1: about them. It's a one way It's like an anxious

751
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: versus um. It's like an attachment style problem, you know

752
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,399
Speaker 1: that we have with ads. Oh, I would just say

753
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:13,840
Speaker 1: that we have so much love for them that there's

754
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 1: no there's no cosmic space for them to love us. Left.

755
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 1: It's our fault. Yea, it is our fault. Yeah, Ah,

756
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: we are we are. We are that because we think

757
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: m hmm, that's right. I think we're the first people

758
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 1: to come up with that idea. So these guys, you know, again,

759
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 1: we have no interest here in morally judging the members

760
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: of the unon Rock. But the fact that they make

761
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: this choice to try to convince their people that annihilation

762
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 1: is not imminent. Um, it's not going to be the

763
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: right thing to do right. It does not wind up

764
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 1: helping the matter um. In late summer, a number of

765
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: women escape from mass graves at polmari Um. And this

766
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 1: is a thing that happened, right. These are you know,

767
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: they're they're either they're wounded but they survived, or they

768
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,400
Speaker 1: kind of feigned death. And they wind up under a

769
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: pile of the corpses of their loved ones and then

770
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: dig themselves out in the night, and they make it

771
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:19,640
Speaker 1: back to the fucking ghetto or or back to Vilna.

772
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: And they managed to find like friendly people to talk

773
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,839
Speaker 1: to and they try to warn everyone, right, they try

774
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: to be like, no guys, like they are going to

775
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:30,320
Speaker 1: kill us all they're already doing it um and again,

776
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pass over to Dina parat here um. The

777
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: un Rod forbade anyone to meet with them, but even

778
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: individuals far removed from the un Rod had the greatest

779
00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: difficulty in believing the survivor's accounts. Peha aaron Owitz, who

780
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:48,239
Speaker 1: arrived wounded at the home of Dr. Mark Vretsky, the

781
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 1: ghetto children's physician, managed to convince him, although he hesitated

782
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: for a long time before believing her. Others, however, were

783
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: certain she had gone mad, and she stopped telling her

784
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 1: story It was in Vilna and Lithuania, the places in

785
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: Europe to see mass murders, that people began to doubt

786
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: the stories of those who had escaped death, whether they

787
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: recounted them to Jews who lived nearby and were candidates

788
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:10,400
Speaker 1: for the same fate, or do those living in safety.

789
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:13,319
Speaker 1: Perhaps the opposite was true, that those who lived near

790
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 1: the killing pits and the train stations from which the

791
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 1: transports left did not believe, because if they had, they

792
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 1: could no longer have continued living. This is the I

793
00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:26,239
Speaker 1: know that there's no bottom to the worst thing that

794
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:31,840
Speaker 1: one could experience during this time, but this is up there.

795
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: You survive a mass shooting, I mean a mass grave situation,

796
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:42,280
Speaker 1: You survive execution, You crawl out underneath your friends and family,

797
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: You go and warn everyone, and everyone is like, okay, Cassandra,

798
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 1: you're just crazy because they can't believe the enormity you're

799
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:56,400
Speaker 1: telling them, Um and no one, these women, I mean, well,

800
00:43:56,600 --> 00:43:59,239
Speaker 1: and that's probably not not a part of it too, right.

801
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: So Abba Kovner, like most Villna Jews, did not know

802
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: what to do it first, because he's not getting he's

803
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 1: not he hasn't sat down face to face with all

804
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 1: these people. He's just it's just rumors, right, And it's

805
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: rumors that he's hearing while he's hiding underground in a

806
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: Dominican convent. Right. Um. Now, he does eventually succeed kind

807
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: of an in late summer early fall in leaving the

808
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: convent and moving to a safe house in the ghetto

809
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,080
Speaker 1: with some of his comrades. And in September, a group

810
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: of two women and one eleven year old escaped the

811
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 1: burial pits and make it back to Vilna. Uh. They

812
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: visit a doctor again who was a member of the

813
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:37,839
Speaker 1: hats Omer under Abba Kovner. So this is a guy

814
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,960
Speaker 1: who's like one of his his his his boys, and

815
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,920
Speaker 1: when the doctor hears their story, he invites Kovner to

816
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: come and talk to them. So, for the most part,

817
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:50,239
Speaker 1: Kogner spent the early months of occupation focused on smaller tasks. Right.

818
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 1: He's establishing communications lines, he's helping get safe houses, he's

819
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: getting his people in position, he's trying to facilitate their

820
00:44:56,600 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: movement wherever he can. And this is the first moment,

821
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,279
Speaker 1: because he's kind of just been keeping himself busy, this

822
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: is the first moment where he's forced to come to

823
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 1: terms with the fact that his community is being exterminated.

824
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 1: His immediate thought was that he needed to kill himself. Um,

825
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 1: he just wants to die. Like the second he learns

826
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: that this is happening, his immediate urge is to commit suicide. Um,

827
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: which is valid but of course, yeah, literally any reaction

828
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 1: would be that. But of course he can't. He decided

829
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: he like, he can't. He wants to do that, but

830
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,280
Speaker 1: he can't do that because his people are in danger.

831
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:36,000
Speaker 1: So he decides to opt for the next best thing

832
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: to suicide, armed resistance. Now let's get back to those nuns.

833
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 1: I was telling you what, I'm really excited about this.

834
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:46,959
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to when actually do good. The mother

835
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: Superior who had hosted, who had hid Covener and his

836
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 1: friends in the convent, had been distraught when they left.

837
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: She did not want him to leave. She wanted to help.

838
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: She repeatedly told him that she wanted to fight alongside them. Um,

839
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: she's a pretty good lie. And after hearing a bunch

840
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 1: of this, Kaufner basically tells her, if that's how you

841
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,879
Speaker 1: really feel, get us some weapons. And so one day

842
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: in December of nineteen forty one, she shows up in

843
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: full nun garb outside the ghetto with a bunch of

844
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:24,279
Speaker 1: hand grenades hidden under that. Yeah, that's fucking rat. That

845
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:28,839
Speaker 1: is quality nunning. Um. She she has officially won my

846
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: favorite nun award. M so good on you there. There's

847
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:36,919
Speaker 1: a ton of really good ones. Uh, there's the whole

848
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: like thing. Clear you've seen the map of like Catholics

849
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: versus voters of the Nazi Party in Germany. Yeah, it's

850
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 1: just an inverse map, um. Yeah, which is interesting of

851
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:51,400
Speaker 1: course because Catholics were very down with fascism in Spain

852
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 1: at literally the same time. But like, it's just it's interesting.

853
00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: I find it interesting. There's like a billion of them.

854
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: Yeah know, there's there's a wide variety of Catholics and

855
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: this this one rocks. She tells him that she wants

856
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 1: to join the Jews and fight with them because God

857
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 1: is now in the ghetto. That's that is her. Like,

858
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: it's very I think this is pre liberation theology, but

859
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: she is very much like the place for me because

860
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 1: is with the people being oppressed, because that's where God's

861
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:25,880
Speaker 1: going to be total, which is fucking based. Um. Smuggling

862
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:29,359
Speaker 1: grenades into the ghetto in your habit is rad as shit.

863
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,359
Speaker 1: Um so she and she is like, let me come,

864
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 1: I want to fucking kill some Nazis with like I

865
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 1: need you to go back to the convent, like this

866
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: is how you can help us best. We're not ready

867
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: to do that yet, but thank you for all of

868
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:48,600
Speaker 1: these and grenades. Um. He later wrote quote, I mixed

869
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:50,799
Speaker 1: in with the column of Jews returning from their day

870
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 1: of forced labor. I felt my soul torn. What would

871
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 1: happen if it the grenade fell from my hand, or

872
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 1: if I tripped and fell, and because of me, a

873
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: whole community where to trip and fall as well. Till

874
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: that day, I had never touched a hand grenade. I

875
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: didn't know how to use one. So he's got some

876
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 1: weapons there, he doesn't really know what to do with them.

877
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: That's that's a process, right. Um So, while he and

878
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,480
Speaker 1: his partisan's plan for their first attacks against the German occupier,

879
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 1: Kavner puts it upon himself, now that he knows what's happening,

880
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,760
Speaker 1: that he knows the stakes are complete annihilation. He takes

881
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:23,560
Speaker 1: it upon himself to put out a warning to the

882
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:26,719
Speaker 1: rest of Europe's Jews. The mass killing of the Holocaust

883
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: had started in Lithuania and Vilma's Jewish community was among

884
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: the very first to be wiped out. Jews further west

885
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: still had no idea what was coming for them, and

886
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:38,839
Speaker 1: the international community knew even less. He had to warn them.

887
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: So the same month he gets those grenades, December of

888
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:45,320
Speaker 1: nineteen one, Kavner writes a message that is soon smuggled

889
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,560
Speaker 1: into ghettos all across the East, particularly in Poland, and

890
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 1: makes its way out of Nazi Europe and across the world.

891
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,840
Speaker 1: I'm going to read it to you now, Jewish youngster,

892
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: do not trust those that deceive you. Of the eighty

893
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: thousand Jews and the Jerus Salem of Lithuania Vilna, only

894
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 1: twenty thousand have survived in front of our very eyes.

895
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:07,759
Speaker 1: They tore our parents, our brothers, are sisters from us.

896
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: Where are the hundreds of men who were abducted for

897
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,840
Speaker 1: labor by the Lithuanian kidnappers. Where are the naked women

898
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:15,840
Speaker 1: and children who were taken from us on the terrible

899
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:18,640
Speaker 1: night of the provocation. Where the Jews who were taken

900
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: away on yam Kapur, Where our brethren from the second Ghetto,

901
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:25,240
Speaker 1: whoever was taken out of the ghetto gates never returned again.

902
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 1: All the roads of the Gestapo leave to lead to Ponari,

903
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:32,359
Speaker 1: and Ponari is death. Hitler is plotting to annihilate all

904
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 1: the Jews of Europe. It befell the Jews of Lithuania

905
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 1: to be first in line. Let us not go like

906
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:40,799
Speaker 1: sheep to the slaughter. It's true we are weak and defenseless,

907
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:43,960
Speaker 1: but the only response to the enemy is resistance. Brothers.

908
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: It is better to die as free fighters than to

909
00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:49,800
Speaker 1: live at the mercy of murderers. Resist to our last breath.

910
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 1: Yeah this guy, Yeah yeah, This is the first major

911
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:58,680
Speaker 1: warning that comes out that like, what is on the

912
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,560
Speaker 1: table is complete an I Lakavner is the one who

913
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:07,319
Speaker 1: gives it. So that's where we're gonna end part one.

914
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:13,280
Speaker 1: All right, um, lots of good stuff. Well well, actually,

915
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know. I have no idea what's

916
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 1: going to happen next. So it is, this is a

917
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:21,760
Speaker 1: fascinating story, Margaret. But at this point, I mean, Kavnor

918
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 1: is an amazing man. Uh and at this point like

919
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: a guy who is handling himself impossibly well in an

920
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:33,520
Speaker 1: impossible situation. Um, as are a number of other people,

921
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:38,800
Speaker 1: including that based ass fucking mother superior Uh, what a

922
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,919
Speaker 1: what a what a rab lady? So think about that

923
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 1: and uh go smuggle hand grenades to someone who maybe,

924
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 1: uh probably should just Margaret, you've got some plug doubles

925
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:54,839
Speaker 1: to plug. I have a story about nuns coming out,

926
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: Oh you do? Or rather I have a story with

927
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 1: some nuns in it. I have a book, Escape from

928
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: Insul Island that does what it says on the title

929
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 1: on the cover, and it is coming out from Strangers

930
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 1: and the Tangled Wilderness on February one, and you can

931
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: pre order it at Tangled Wilderness dot org and get

932
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: a free poster of the cover. It's a really cool cover.

933
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:19,799
Speaker 1: I think it'll people will be excited about it. Um,

934
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:22,279
Speaker 1: it's a cool cover. It's a very good book. And

935
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about it, Margaret, the Vatican

936
00:51:24,800 --> 00:51:30,359
Speaker 1: is kind of an in cell island. Yeah it is.

937
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:34,360
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The Catholics are definitely the good guys on

938
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:39,160
Speaker 1: this episode, but I couldn't resist that. That's fine. I

939
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:44,439
Speaker 1: guess their vall cell you know, yeah, yeah, definitely ostensibly

940
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:50,360
Speaker 1: ostensibly cell. Um. Yeah, that's that's what I got. I

941
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:52,839
Speaker 1: also a podcast people can check out called Cool People

942
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 1: Do Stuff. It's really good. Thank you. Yeah. Sometimes Robert's there,

943
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 1: Sophie's yeah, I'm always there. Yeah. I'm also sometimes on

944
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 1: sub stack where you can find me. Yeah, it's shatter

945
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 1: zone dot sub stack dot com. Check that out. I

946
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: write things usually is one thing every week, so you

947
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:19,800
Speaker 1: can read more ship from me. If for some reason,

948
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: I'm not in your life enough. Um. Anyway, go to

949
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:28,600
Speaker 1: hell and Robert we're doing We're there's a behind the

950
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: Master show at s F Sketch Fest in in January, right,

951
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:35,799
Speaker 1: really you'll be there, really, Okay, I've never heard you

952
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: do that voice before, and I didn't enjoy it. I'm

953
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 1: just letting you know. Yeah, I didn't enjoy it either.

954
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,799
Speaker 1: It was a little loud. Honestly, I feel terrible about that. Yeah,

955
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 1: it's January twenty tickets stress, I don't know. There's probably

956
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: a link. Hell yeah, I won't make the sound joke again.

957
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,319
Speaker 1: I already made it once. M I enjoyed it. I

958
00:52:57,400 --> 00:52:59,320
Speaker 1: enjoyed it the first and second time. Thank you. I

959
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: appreciate on and R and by. Behind the Bastards is

960
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool

961
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:11,240
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com

962
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,

963
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.