Speaker 1: Uh, Mary Hallam, Miss it's behind the Chris Bastard, Miss
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here podcast. God with Me Today is Margaret
Speaker 1: Killjoy and Sophie Lichtermann. Margaret, how are you doing. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm here for the Christmas Song special, isn't. What we're
Speaker 1: gonna do is just sing Christmas carols. That's right. We're
Speaker 1: going to sing the version of Frosty the Snowman that
Speaker 1: I wrote while on an acid trip that takes seven
Speaker 1: and a half hours and is largely a retelling of
Speaker 1: the Ring Cycle. Okay, so yeah, I'm also extremely pornographic,
Speaker 1: so if you have children listening, you need to get
Speaker 1: them away. It is actually a crime in thirty seven
Speaker 1: states for them to listen to my version of Frosty
Speaker 1: the Snowman. Yeah, and the worst part is is that actually,
Speaker 1: if anyone listens to it, Robert goes to Jail's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um so, Margaret, you will be here to
Speaker 1: do the twenties six minute long kazoo solo, which I'm
Speaker 1: very excited about. Um oh you did. Actually you do
Speaker 1: literally half bells, sweet silver bells, bells that are perfect
Speaker 1: for ringing in Christmas, which is great because this is
Speaker 1: our yearly Christmas episode. Now. Normally, Margaret, normally for Christmas
Speaker 1: we do a non bastard, right like we do a
Speaker 1: hero to kind of pep everybody up at the end
Speaker 1: of the year. But last year and this year really
Speaker 1: you launched a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff that's basically a regular weekly version of the Christmas
Speaker 1: podcast of the Christmas episodes that we used to do.
Speaker 1: So this year I'm doing something a little different, something
Speaker 1: we've never done before, which is we're going to be
Speaker 1: covering a group of people who were rad as ship
Speaker 1: for eighty percent of the story and then things take
Speaker 1: a dark term, so the revolutionaries in human history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is there's a lot of fascinating moral questions
Speaker 1: with the group that we're gonna be talking about. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard about a terrorist group called No com No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't know. We'll find out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will find out. Indeed, Margaret, before we get into
Speaker 1: this episode, I want to do a little thought experiment
Speaker 1: for everybody here. I want you to imagine that a
Speaker 1: few years down the line, a church or a political
Speaker 1: party rises up in the United States, um and and
Speaker 1: starts trying to spread a fascist gospel around the country
Speaker 1: and and this this gospel takes off among a significant
Speaker 1: chunk of the population. And let's say it's far fetched,
Speaker 1: but yeah, far fetched. And let's say that that these
Speaker 1: fascists are specifically targeting people like you and the folks
Speaker 1: that you love. Whatever whatever thing you identify as, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, gender orientation, religion, uh, sexuality, political ideology.
Speaker 1: They're targeting like you and the people that you love.
Speaker 1: And let's say, imagine they get into power, right, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a coup, maybe they actually just straight up win
Speaker 1: an election, but they get into power, and a lot
Speaker 1: of violence falls, a tremendous amount of violence, and you
Speaker 1: lose a lot of the people that you love most
Speaker 1: in the world, virtually all of them, over a terrifying
Speaker 1: period of years and years of violence. Now being fascists,
Speaker 1: they do eventually lose, which is what always happens to fascists.
Speaker 1: And at the end of that period, you and the
Speaker 1: folks who have survived, are are hardened, are a lot
Speaker 1: better at doing violence, and are thinking, who do we
Speaker 1: make pay for this? Right? Who is it moral to
Speaker 1: punish for this? Obviously the ringleaders, right, the people that
Speaker 1: were leading the movement, the people who at a death
Speaker 1: squad ship, the people who are actually carrying out the killings.
Speaker 1: But what about what about the church is full of
Speaker 1: clamoring extremists, what about the civilians who supported the movement
Speaker 1: and bade and howled and cheered as they committed their murders.
Speaker 1: To what extent are those people guilty? Right? Is it
Speaker 1: wise to to just let them all live because the
Speaker 1: war is over? Or by doing that are you potentially
Speaker 1: endangering your remaining loved ones even more? Because if there's
Speaker 1: not consequences, is it the case that maybe they'll do
Speaker 1: it again. So that's a question to keep in your mind,
Speaker 1: right as we as we start to talk about Eastern
Speaker 1: Europe in the late nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: that was a fun time to be around. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's what we're gonna be talking about, and specifically
Speaker 1: we're going to be really focusing on one individual today
Speaker 1: of a pretty fascinating fellow named Abbat cove Ner. He
Speaker 1: was born Able Kovener on March fourteenth, nineteen eighteen, just
Speaker 1: as the First World War was ending in a town
Speaker 1: called Sebastopol on the southern tip of Crimea. Now, if
Speaker 1: you've casually glanced at European history, you will know that
Speaker 1: the southern tip of Crimea in nineteen eighteen as a
Speaker 1: Jewish person is a pretty rough place to be. That
Speaker 1: is not one of the top places in times I
Speaker 1: would choose to be born. Um. Now, Abel's parents were
Speaker 1: quite orthodox Jews um in A. In the Fall of
Speaker 1: a Sparrow, a Stanford biography of Covener, they're described as
Speaker 1: is moderately traditional. I don't entirely know what that means,
Speaker 1: but that's that's kind of the way in which they're
Speaker 1: They're generally described by the best biographer Kovener has now
Speaker 1: Sebastopol did not have a large Jewish population. This is
Speaker 1: not a city that has like a particularly significant, um
Speaker 1: like sizeable community in it uh and in Czarist Russia,
Speaker 1: which you know, is what Kovener's parents had lived under.
Speaker 1: Right up until about nineteen seventeen, the ability of Jewish
Speaker 1: people to hold jobs had been strictly limited. Right, you
Speaker 1: can't really teach at colleges if you're Jewish, at least
Speaker 1: you're you're heavily limited from doing it. They have quotas.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different like jobs, you just can't
Speaker 1: do your your there's an apartheid system really and in
Speaker 1: most of of of Czarist Russia. Now luckily for Abba,
Speaker 1: by the time he's born, the Czars are out of power.
Speaker 1: Um and his family is is he comes into like
Speaker 1: a fairly affluent family. They're large, and they're extremely close.
Speaker 1: His father had been an expert appraiser of antique jewelry.
Speaker 1: Um did when with the revolution of Crimea, what happened
Speaker 1: to Crimea to get into the USSR to do its
Speaker 1: own thing. It's part of the USSR. Yeah, But then
Speaker 1: also nineteen eighteen, things are a lot less uh at
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, Yeah, there's still a kind of flory
Speaker 1: moving along, right, Yes, Um and his family is moderately
Speaker 1: well off. One of ABBA's early memories is sitting around
Speaker 1: the table at a family dinner and admiring his grandmother's
Speaker 1: pearl necklace, which had been in the family for a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years. So he has not just a
Speaker 1: large family, but a family that like they have managed
Speaker 1: a lot of continuity between the generations, which is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the most common thing in this part of Russia
Speaker 1: because of how many programs there are, because of how
Speaker 1: common the violence is, the fact that his family has
Speaker 1: like managed to keep these things in their possession for
Speaker 1: so long says a lot. Right. Um Abba is a
Speaker 1: very smart child. He is pretty much universally regarded as
Speaker 1: having been particularly a brilliant artist and very charismatic. Everybody
Speaker 1: really likes this kid. Um. He's very inclined to the arts,
Speaker 1: particularly poetry. Um and he had his family members were
Speaker 1: called he had a unique ability to memorize and recite
Speaker 1: things that he'd read. Um. And he would do this
Speaker 1: to keep everyone entertained, especially during holidays and family gatherings.
Speaker 1: He would read books and then he would recite them
Speaker 1: to his family. Is like, you know, basically it's the
Speaker 1: early in Sebastopol. They don't have like TV or radio.
Speaker 1: This is you guys, saw this YouTube video. This is
Speaker 1: what I learned. Yeah, normal only only bearable. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like describing and Or to everybody in his during like
Speaker 1: the Sader or whatever. Because this is the difference, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you describe what happened in and Or, it sucks.
Speaker 1: But if you if someone were to just act out
Speaker 1: and Or in front of everyone, that would rule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen that movie? I forget the name
Speaker 1: of it. I think Rain of Fire is the Day
Speaker 1: of It's about like dragons destroy civilization and it's apocalyptic Britain.
Speaker 1: There's a great scene where like a bunch of post
Speaker 1: apocalypse survivors are like sitting around a campfire doing Star
Speaker 1: Wars for each other. Yeah yeah, that it out is great.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's what Kovner is doing. He's very creative.
Speaker 1: Everybody finds them very entertaining. Um. Now this is again
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, rough time to be anybody in Sebastopol, but
Speaker 1: particularly Jewish. UM and his dad is arrested by Soviet
Speaker 1: secret police when he's four in nineteen twenty two. This
Speaker 1: is because private, private commerce was forbidden in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Obviously in the earliest stages, kind of after there's ours fall,
Speaker 1: it's possible, you know, business and stuff continues in regions.
Speaker 1: It's not like evenly distributed at this point. But by
Speaker 1: the early twenties, the Soviet state is kind of starting
Speaker 1: to um to to lock into place. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: gets fined for his bourgeoisie decadence, as you know, being
Speaker 1: a jewelry guy. Um. And he's put in prison for
Speaker 1: several months. This is probably Had or at least his biographer,
Speaker 1: who is I should say this right now, his biographer
Speaker 1: is like super pro Israel um and a zion and
Speaker 1: a Zionist. His father is also a known Zionist. And
Speaker 1: I when I say this, we're all of these folks
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be talking about in the twenties and
Speaker 1: stuff are Zionist. That doesn't mean entirely the same thing
Speaker 1: that it does to this day, in part because a
Speaker 1: lot of people who a lot of Jews who are
Speaker 1: as eye Anist in this period are also socialists, are
Speaker 1: also communist and are less thinking about I want to establish,
Speaker 1: you know, a state of Israel as it currently exists,
Speaker 1: which is, shall we say, deeply problematic, and more we
Speaker 1: want to liberate like the Palestinian Mandate from the British
Speaker 1: imperialists and established establish a socialist community there, right Um.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the line ABBA's father falls in on.
Speaker 1: His family is very left wing. One of ABBA's cousins
Speaker 1: is going to found the Communist Party of Israel when
Speaker 1: that all happens. Um. So like that's that's the So
Speaker 1: they are very left wing despite the fact that they're
Speaker 1: they're somewhat affluent. But Zionism is not allowed in the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, right because a big part of it is
Speaker 1: like we're going to Number one, religion is a not
Speaker 1: encouraged in the in the in the early USSR in particular. Um.
Speaker 1: But number two, a big part of it is that like, well,
Speaker 1: we're not going to stay here, right, Like, if you're
Speaker 1: Zionists that you pretty fund the Italy don't want to
Speaker 1: stay where you are in the U. S s are
Speaker 1: And they're also not thrilled with that. Um. So that
Speaker 1: probably played a role in his dad getting arrested. Um.
Speaker 1: And he stays in prison for months until the family
Speaker 1: can put together enough money to secure his release, which
Speaker 1: is interesting to me because he gets arrested for doing
Speaker 1: commerce and being too enough. Yeah, I don't know, you
Speaker 1: know whatever. Uh. By nineteen twenty six, the Kavners had
Speaker 1: decided that the Soviet Union was not a great place
Speaker 1: for them. Um. They felt there, yeah, yeah, especially since
Speaker 1: again most they are fairly religious, um, and they see
Speaker 1: kind of not that just their religion, but their nationality
Speaker 1: is under attacks. So they decided to move somewhat place
Speaker 1: that's going to be a little bit more friendly for them.
Speaker 1: It's also again, Sebastopol doesn't have a huge Jewish population,
Speaker 1: so some of it's just like, well, maybe we'd like
Speaker 1: to be in a place where there's a larger Jewish community.
Speaker 1: I'm so nervous about where they're going to move to. Um, well,
Speaker 1: they're going to move to a place that never has
Speaker 1: any problems in the early part of the twentieth century Lithuania.
Speaker 1: Now Lithuania is part of Like specifically, they moved to Vilna,
Speaker 1: which is today the capital of Lithuania, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: but back then is part of Poland, right, Um, so
Speaker 1: they are attempting to and they've got family in the area, right,
Speaker 1: you know, so they're they're not just like moving side unseen.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of relatives there too. Um this
Speaker 1: is a good move and for a while the family
Speaker 1: is affluent again, but that period quickly ends because ABBA's
Speaker 1: father seems to be a really generous guy. And in
Speaker 1: this period, because of the Civil War in Russia, because
Speaker 1: of all of the chaos after World War One, there's
Speaker 1: a ton of refugees moving into Vilnia, right, and his
Speaker 1: dad kind of spends money faster than he can make it,
Speaker 1: helping out out their refugees in the area because he's
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty nice guy, um Abba, you know, goes
Speaker 1: to a Hebrew school, um, and then he goes to
Speaker 1: an art university when he graduates. I think it's called
Speaker 1: a gymnasium. I don't entirely. I believe that's broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: like a or a primary school. UM. That's my impression,
Speaker 1: But I always get whatever. I'm in Europe and people
Speaker 1: talk about going to gymnasium. Look, everyone does schools wrong,
Speaker 1: but Europeans particularly do schools wrong, and I think it's
Speaker 1: okay to admit that they at least name them wrong. However,
Speaker 1: they name them very wrong. I think. I think the
Speaker 1: US overall the school is a little bit wronger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I hate the word gymnasium, and I'm angry
Speaker 1: at them, so I'm biased here. But he goes to
Speaker 1: a Hebrew school and then he goes to an art
Speaker 1: university and he is studying I think specifically poetry, UM.
Speaker 1: And he's actually being published as a poet. He's quite good,
Speaker 1: and he's he's studying poetry. When things in Europe start
Speaker 1: to take well, I say, start to take a dark turn.
Speaker 1: Is in Vilna in the nineteen. It's been dark for
Speaker 1: a while, but they start to get a lot darker
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties. Um, and again, Vilma is
Speaker 1: a part of Poland that is smack in between Russia,
Speaker 1: which has just gotten through his civil war that's killed millions,
Speaker 1: and Germany, which has just gotten through like a famine
Speaker 1: that killed like a million people after World War One. Man,
Speaker 1: is they're on this there, on this slow road to fascism.
Speaker 1: It's a terrible place to be. And they're about to
Speaker 1: get split up between the two nations. Are they ever
Speaker 1: are going to agree to invade together and then hold
Speaker 1: the joint fucking parades? It is going to be It's
Speaker 1: it's not again, one of the worst places you could
Speaker 1: possibly be in this period of time. So ABBA's father
Speaker 1: dies in nineteen thirty two, right as Hitler's rising to
Speaker 1: power in Germany. Um. You know, he's just he's a
Speaker 1: stressed out guy. I think he's kind of older. It's
Speaker 1: not uncommon for the man to be significantly older than
Speaker 1: his wife in this period in time. Um, he dies
Speaker 1: and his mother. ABBA's mother is forced to support the
Speaker 1: family by starting a restaurant, and this is very difficult
Speaker 1: to her. Because she had a chronic injury to her legs.
Speaker 1: So his mom is like one of these parents who
Speaker 1: is like physically disabled and also taking the burden feeding
Speaker 1: and supporting her entire family onto herself by starting a restaurant.
Speaker 1: But she's a very good cook. It is a successful restaurant. Um.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty five, when he was seventeen, Covener dropped
Speaker 1: out of Hebrew School, having decided that his studies were
Speaker 1: useless um and the teachers were all old assholes. By
Speaker 1: this point, he was convinced that, yeah, he is. He
Speaker 1: is hard not to like in this period, and he's
Speaker 1: convinced in this point that his future lay in Palestine
Speaker 1: as a pioneer. Now. All throughout Eastern Europe, in this period,
Speaker 1: Jewish communities are watching the spread of radical political ideologies
Speaker 1: that often adopted anti Semitism as planks of their belief.
Speaker 1: Young people in young Jewish people who are paying attention
Speaker 1: to these trends started to form their own youth organizations. UM.
Speaker 1: And these are both for a mix of like self
Speaker 1: defense and to aid them in carrying out this kind
Speaker 1: of migration over to Palestine, right, um, And not all
Speaker 1: of them, some of them are are communist organizations that
Speaker 1: are not Zionist right communist socialist organization that are organizing
Speaker 1: along left wing lines and and planned to stay. That's
Speaker 1: also a significant portion of this. But all of these
Speaker 1: Jewish youth organizations are based heavily on the Boy Scout
Speaker 1: movement that had been launched by Robert Baden Powell because
Speaker 1: it is a quasi military movement, right, that oddly makes sense.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of that going on in Europe
Speaker 1: around that time, where there was a lot of like
Speaker 1: hiking clubs would be where you would like go learn
Speaker 1: discipline and marksmanship and hang out with your buds. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's not hard to see why a lot of
Speaker 1: Jewish youths in a place like Vilma would be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should probably be like training for some of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like it might get a lot harder very soon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so, I want to read a quote from the
Speaker 1: Jewish Virtual Library about these youth groups. Quote. Many Jewish youth,
Speaker 1: affected by the process of modernization which had begun among
Speaker 1: Eastern European Jewry, sought a means of maintaining their Jewish
Speaker 1: identity and culture outside the stifling barriers of the Stettle
Speaker 1: and the Orthodox Jewish life. On the other hand, they
Speaker 1: were troubled by the crumbling of the foundations society around them,
Speaker 1: and by the growing anti Semitism, which threatened their very existence.
Speaker 1: In its early stages, the movement was heavily influenced by
Speaker 1: the Boy Scout movement organized by Baden Powell, and it
Speaker 1: embraced scouting is a basic principle to teach ghetto youth
Speaker 1: self reliance, outdoor life, and a love and knowledge of nature.
Speaker 1: Another important influence upon them was the wander Vogel movement
Speaker 1: in Germany, which emphasized youth's independence and creativity. And the
Speaker 1: wander Vogel movement is there's a mix of the Nazis
Speaker 1: that are kind of like inspired and related to it,
Speaker 1: and there's also a lot of reaction to it because
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens in the wander Vogel
Speaker 1: movement is a lot of German youth are having gay
Speaker 1: sex and they go camping right um, which is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons camping is rat and that is the
Speaker 1: thing that the Nazis do not like. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about the wander Vogler movement. Yeah, yeah, I covered them
Speaker 1: a bunch on the Gay Resistance of Nazis episode, and
Speaker 1: so like, I'm pretty excited about how both the like
Speaker 1: right and left wing were like deeply part of the
Speaker 1: wander Vogel movement. Yeah, it's very interesting and messy and cool.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, yeah, we don't it doesn't get talked about much.
Speaker 1: This is all stuff that like you really no, no, no,
Speaker 1: and it's it's stuff you have to really be reading
Speaker 1: your your history in order to actually get to. Once
Speaker 1: you do, you realize like, oh, this was central to
Speaker 1: a lot of what was happening in this period. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of these groups. Some of them
Speaker 1: are revolutionary and communist in nature. Others are kind of
Speaker 1: centrist and even conservative and much more focused on Zionism. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, when we talk about Zionism in this period,
Speaker 1: some of these people are We're going to like take
Speaker 1: our own state in Palestine by by force, But a
Speaker 1: lot of them are just we're probably all going to
Speaker 1: get killed if we stay here, and like farming in
Speaker 1: Palestines seems like a better life, So what if we
Speaker 1: just did that? Right, And there was like right wing
Speaker 1: and left wing Zionism that are like dramatically different and
Speaker 1: then even among left wing Zionism, I think that there
Speaker 1: was kind of a split about whether or not they
Speaker 1: were trying to create a state, whether or whether they
Speaker 1: were just like basically trying to go live where they
Speaker 1: were kind of originally from. Yeah, and where like they
Speaker 1: wouldn't get murdered. And you do have to when you're
Speaker 1: kind of parsing this out, keep that all in mind.
Speaker 1: They're all aware that they're under the gun here. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really weird to look at this from the current
Speaker 1: context of Israel being a an apartheides great thing. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but the right wing versus left wing Zionism versus also
Speaker 1: the left wing non anti Zionists, like all three groups
Speaker 1: were doing their things. Sorry, I get really excited about
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, they're all. They're all. Also there's a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of conflict between them and totally um and
Speaker 1: we're The part of the story today is how a
Speaker 1: lot of that conflict comes to an end of one um.
Speaker 1: The specific youth group that Aboca Abacovner joints is called
Speaker 1: Hashomer hats their um. I'm sure I'm not getting that
Speaker 1: quite right, but it's it was kind of I've heard
Speaker 1: different things. They are a Marxist group. They are a
Speaker 1: Marxist like socialist youth organise, and I've also heard them
Speaker 1: described as kind of like soft socialists. So they're they're
Speaker 1: more compared to the people who are like outright communist revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: There are there are a lot more moderate, but they
Speaker 1: are Marxist right there, not just like social democrat. They
Speaker 1: are specifically using Marxist and analysis and their propaganda in
Speaker 1: the way that they see the world. Um. ABBA's cousin
Speaker 1: again becomes like the founder of the Israeli Communist Party,
Speaker 1: So this is like a whole thing in his family. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting he uh, you might suspect because his
Speaker 1: dad gets arrested by the Soviets because his family has
Speaker 1: a tough time in the USSR that they might have
Speaker 1: had there might have been the reactionary strain in them
Speaker 1: and they would have like pulled away from those politics. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's not really, that's not at all really ABBA's
Speaker 1: uh like his that's not that's not the tack that
Speaker 1: he takes. We'll talk about that a little bit in
Speaker 1: the second. But the hats Omer Hauts there advocated for
Speaker 1: Jewish people to abandon the industries they traditionally worked in
Speaker 1: um in, you know, places where they were living, and
Speaker 1: instead become labors and farmers so that they'd be able
Speaker 1: to settle in Palestine one day, and you know all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Some of them had started trying to do
Speaker 1: this as early as nineteen nineteen. They are sending there
Speaker 1: are people moving over there. This is how the first
Speaker 1: kibbutz is get established, right, it's these guys. So by
Speaker 1: the time World War two is getting ready to kick off,
Speaker 1: and that's in the backgrounds as Abbas joining this group,
Speaker 1: as he's as he's kind of moving up the ranks,
Speaker 1: he's becoming a community organizer. He's making propaganda. The Nazis
Speaker 1: are taking power and consolidating power. You got your light
Speaker 1: along knives, you got your angelus, you got your war
Speaker 1: bell starting to ring for the invasion of Poland. Um
Speaker 1: now on kind of the eve of the invasion of Poland.
Speaker 1: The Jewish population of Vilna is about sixty thousand, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the most cohesive Jewish communities in all
Speaker 1: of Europe. It hosts what's called the Straussian Library, which
Speaker 1: is the most famous Jewish library in all of Europe.
Speaker 1: Abbas spent a lot of time in that library, and
Speaker 1: he spends the years in the run up to the
Speaker 1: war kind of throwing his life into the hat Shomarhatzer,
Speaker 1: and he eventually becomes like one of the leading figures
Speaker 1: in his local chapter. This passage from a book about
Speaker 1: Abba called The Fall of a Sparrow describes him just
Speaker 1: as the war clouds began to gather in Europe. He
Speaker 1: headed the local branch, it's governing body and the regional leadership.
Speaker 1: His physical appearance was also exceptional. He wore his hair
Speaker 1: long and dressed like the older Hashomer Hats members, with
Speaker 1: his shirt collar rather rather than his jacket collar, uppermost
Speaker 1: wide pants, stuffed to do his socks, and in later
Speaker 1: years into his boots. His dress was influenced by the
Speaker 1: Bolshevik revolutionaries, and he turned it into his own personal style.
Speaker 1: Kovner wrote an exceptionally beautiful Hebrew a Great Deal for
Speaker 1: the group's newspaper, which was posted on the clubhouse wall.
Speaker 1: His sense of humor was well known in the movements
Speaker 1: summer and winter camps. He was as familiar with happiness
Speaker 1: as he was with sadness, said one friend. He was
Speaker 1: always an intellectual challenge. He had an original way of
Speaker 1: asking questions or discussing problems, and impressed everyone with his
Speaker 1: self control in seriousness. The younger members admired him, and
Speaker 1: the movements instructors recognized his leadership qualities. He radiated authority,
Speaker 1: they said fifty years later. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things you'll notice about Kulvner because a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who knew him then get get interviewed again, like
Speaker 1: literally half a century later, and there's almost this awe
Speaker 1: they all had for him. He's just a deeply charismatic
Speaker 1: young man. Um. Yeah, he's just one of those people
Speaker 1: that is kind of magnetic to folks. He also do
Speaker 1: terrible things, or he could, Um, he could. And it's
Speaker 1: it's one of he doesn't seem one thing that he
Speaker 1: does not seem to have any particular personal desire for power,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. He's he's really focused on organizing, um,
Speaker 1: but not focused on kind of like there's no sort
Speaker 1: of a cult of personality. He just seems like a
Speaker 1: deeply likable kid. UM. I don't know. Yeah, at this certainly,
Speaker 1: at this point in time, he's nothing but rad um.
Speaker 1: And again, it's it's interesting that he's very focused on
Speaker 1: kind of cultivating this image of himself as as a Bolshevik,
Speaker 1: especial considering the problems that his dad has. But his
Speaker 1: earliest memories he never because he's very young, when the
Speaker 1: family is affluent. He doesn't remember that period at all.
Speaker 1: His earliest memories are after they moved to Vilna, when
Speaker 1: they're very poor, you know, and when his dad dies,
Speaker 1: when his mom's got to try to keep the family together. Um.
Speaker 1: And so he is. He is very dedicated to the poor.
Speaker 1: He's very familiar with kind of like class consciousness, and
Speaker 1: he's he's very humanist. He's a secular guy, right like,
Speaker 1: he's not particularly religious, he is he has committed to Marxists, basically, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: He grows up a committed Marxist who's very aware of
Speaker 1: like the divide between rich and poor, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: everything changes in his life on September one, nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: when Germany invades Poland uh at once, they begin to
Speaker 1: implement the early stages of the Final Solution, which had
Speaker 1: not yet been fully plotted out but was broadly understood
Speaker 1: by the Nazi elites. They started forcing Jews into ghettos,
Speaker 1: and mass killings were common in the parts of Poland
Speaker 1: that the Germans took over. Thousands of men were taken
Speaker 1: by gunpoint at gunpoint and put into force labor battalions.
Speaker 1: Now by the terms of the Molotov Ribbon trop Packed,
Speaker 1: which is the the treaty that the Germans and the
Speaker 1: Soviets signed before the partitioning of Poland, Vilna is an
Speaker 1: a portion of Poland that is invaded and occupied by
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. As things begin to settle down and
Speaker 1: the new Russian occupiers start to take effective control, it
Speaker 1: became clear that the youth movement was going to be
Speaker 1: forcibly disbanded. The issue was, of course, Zionism, which the
Speaker 1: Russians wanted to discourage. Rather than risk being split up
Speaker 1: or disrupted by secret police, Kaufner made the decision to
Speaker 1: have his organization go underground. Officially, the hat Zomer hats
Speaker 1: Air had ceased to exist. In reality, it was just hiding.
Speaker 1: Dina Parat in Death of a Sparrow writes the underground's
Speaker 1: first task was to find or invent new methods for
Speaker 1: continuing their activities. As soon as the younger Hashomer hats
Speaker 1: Air members understood that they were not being dispersed but
Speaker 1: rather that necessity dictated a new modus operandi. They enthusiastically
Speaker 1: begin to construct underground cells. They were organized by the
Speaker 1: leadership into groups of five, a method learned from reading
Speaker 1: pre revolutionary literature, recounted Covener, and only the most reliable
Speaker 1: members were accepted. Key members were sent to places outside Vilna,
Speaker 1: disguised as Christians, in private homes and outside the city limits.
Speaker 1: They continue to study Hebrew hid books taken from the
Speaker 1: great libraries closed by the Soviets, which had been the
Speaker 1: heart and symbol of Jewish Vilna, and even held a
Speaker 1: few seminars. And again at this point, their primary goal
Speaker 1: they're helping refugees. They're trying to continue to carry out
Speaker 1: the practice of their religion, the study of their history,
Speaker 1: and they're also continuing there. They're not able to continue
Speaker 1: to help people immigrate over to Palestine right now, but
Speaker 1: they are. They're trying to like keep that UH infrastructure
Speaker 1: setups that they can again one of these days. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: they're not an insurrectionary organization at this point, and they
Speaker 1: don't have any desire to fight a rebellion against the
Speaker 1: Soviet state UM, but be able to keep doing Their
Speaker 1: ships are that and covener in. An number of others
Speaker 1: are aware that like ship with the Nazis, is going
Speaker 1: to cook off and there will be a need to
Speaker 1: fight at some point, and so they are kind of
Speaker 1: consciously setting themselves up in a structure that will be
Speaker 1: able to survive and resist in the in the days
Speaker 1: that are coming. And those days come pretty quickly, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes before other things. What's that, Margaret? It's uh,
Speaker 1: the ability for people to exchange money for goods and services.
Speaker 1: That's right, Margaret, that's really the most revolutionary activity is
Speaker 1: exchanging money for goods and services. Absolutely. M Ah, We're
Speaker 1: back my socks tucked into my fucking boots because I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a I'm a I'm a radical. If I
Speaker 1: don't know, if you start with him tucked into your socks,
Speaker 1: that was the look that I was more nervous about.
Speaker 1: When he had his pants tucked into his boots. That's
Speaker 1: always a solid look, right, No, no notes talked into
Speaker 1: your socks. I don't know, I gotta see it. What
Speaker 1: about having your boot stucked into your socks? What if
Speaker 1: you put your boot your socks on the outside of
Speaker 1: your boots. If you're attempting to move across terrain in
Speaker 1: ways that you don't leave noticeable tracks while doing things
Speaker 1: at night. I've heard that that's a reasonable thing to do. Well.
Speaker 1: This has been Margaret's advice on how to carry out
Speaker 1: an insurrection. Welcome. Now it's time to go back to
Speaker 1: the story. So, um, we've just been talking about Covener
Speaker 1: and his fellows are kind of preparing themselves for the
Speaker 1: future inevitability of a guerrilla war, and that inevitability becomes inevitable.
Speaker 1: I guess on June twenty two, nineteen forty one, when
Speaker 1: Germany institutes Operation Barbarossa, which is still the largest military
Speaker 1: organism operation in human history. I think they invade with
Speaker 1: like three and a half million men or something. It
Speaker 1: is a Titanic operation, um. And if you Titanic, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it ends a lot worse than the Titanic. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's going it goes great for a while. Again,
Speaker 1: like the Germans carry out the largest encirclement operations that
Speaker 1: have ever happened. There's like million man blocks of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Army that are just like annihilated or surrender or whatnot.
Speaker 1: It's a whole big thing. It's not going well for
Speaker 1: them at first, Um and the Germans fairly quickly into
Speaker 1: the Lithuanian portions of the uss Are, including Vilna. Um.
Speaker 1: This comes as a shock everyone. Kavner is ready for
Speaker 1: something to happen, right, He's not shocked by the fact
Speaker 1: that the Nazis do Nazi ship but everyone's shocked at
Speaker 1: how poorly the Red Army performs, right, by the fact
Speaker 1: that they fall apart so quickly um and so they
Speaker 1: don't really they're not able to get away from this, right,
Speaker 1: some Villna Jews handfuls are able to escape, but nearly
Speaker 1: everyone is trapped by Luftwaffa bombardment and verr Machten's circlement.
Speaker 1: So Vilna is going to be because it's one of
Speaker 1: the first large Jewish communities that the Nazis take over
Speaker 1: during Barbarossa, and they're going to use it as kind
Speaker 1: of a proof of concept, right they are testing out
Speaker 1: extermination it is. It is one of it's one of
Speaker 1: the first large Jewish communities that's going to be annihilated
Speaker 1: by the Germans. Um. Now, when they go in and
Speaker 1: start exterminating people, most of the actual killing is being
Speaker 1: done by members of the Lithuanian right wing members of
Speaker 1: actually kind of adjacent to these Jewish youth movement organizations, right,
Speaker 1: these right wing UH clubs and and paramilitary organizations who
Speaker 1: had been underground under the U s SR. But when
Speaker 1: the yeah, when the Nazis take over, they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we would love to take vengeance on Lithuanian leftists and Jews,
Speaker 1: and the Germans are like, absolutely, guys. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from Dina Porat again. When Einsatz Commando nine into
Speaker 1: Vilma in early July, it immediately became clear that the
Speaker 1: wave had reached the city's Jews as well. Einsetz Commando
Speaker 1: nine but belonged to the Einsetz group and the s
Speaker 1: S units that followed in the Verhrmacht's train, and their
Speaker 1: principal mission was to kill the Jews and Communist Party
Speaker 1: activists who had remained behind. The Activities of national Lithuanian
Speaker 1: institutions were drastically curtailed, and only those dealing with urban
Speaker 1: matters were left intact. The Lithuanian Police Force was placed
Speaker 1: under s S command, and right wing units were integrated
Speaker 1: directly into it. That left little behind the facade of
Speaker 1: Lithuanian independence and the Lithuanian murder of Jews, whether committed
Speaker 1: on their own initiative or under German ages, brought them
Speaker 1: nothing in return. The coordinated effort of the two German authorities,
Speaker 1: the s S and the Army and the Lithuanian units
Speaker 1: began on July fourth and marked the beginning of the
Speaker 1: oppression and eventually the destruction of the Jewish population in Vilma.
Speaker 1: The German military government issued decrees which the Lithuanian Urban
Speaker 1: Administration put into operation the Einsetz Group and sent Lithuanians
Speaker 1: to kidnap and murder Jews, sometimes participating themselves. Where Leverrmacht
Speaker 1: kidnapped Jews for forced labor, the just called the Lithuanian
Speaker 1: kidnappers Chopoon's, and some were local utes who had received
Speaker 1: a small bounty from the Germans for every Jew turned in.
Speaker 1: They broken to homes at will, robbed and beat with
Speaker 1: no fear of retribution, and made the lives of the
Speaker 1: Jews intolerable. These are the proud boy types, right, the
Speaker 1: oath keepers and ship Yeah. Well, and now the Germans
Speaker 1: are doing it here. It's fitting because like when the
Speaker 1: Nazis take over, they just used the existing police force
Speaker 1: and then added added more right wing stuff to the
Speaker 1: existing police force. This is that tracks, Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: it completely tracks. There's a lot going on here that
Speaker 1: again is going to become very common among the rest
Speaker 1: of the areas the Nazis have taken. And it's because
Speaker 1: number one, these Einstz group of units are not great
Speaker 1: at most things. They're certainly not good at antipartisan conflict. Um.
Speaker 1: There's not a shipload of them. And it's kind of again,
Speaker 1: most of them are like not like. The participating in
Speaker 1: these mass killings like leads to a lot of suicides
Speaker 1: and drunkenness among the Einsets group. So whenever they have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to use locals to do the killing for them,
Speaker 1: they're gonna prefer that just because it kind of preserves
Speaker 1: German unit strength. Um. There's a number of reasons why
Speaker 1: they do it this way. The Jewish community enveilment is
Speaker 1: taken wholly by surprise by this. Many chose to hide
Speaker 1: themselves in an attempt to survive. Kavner recoils at the
Speaker 1: prospect of hiding and of fleeing the ghetto. Um. And
Speaker 1: but he does, he's kind of forced to write because
Speaker 1: members of his organization are like, no, we're going to
Speaker 1: get killed if we stay here. We have to try
Speaker 1: to like hide with gentiles who are friendly elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the city so that we can take action later. Um.
Speaker 1: Kavner agrees to do this, but he writes that he's
Speaker 1: covered in shame by the idea of hiding in a closet.
Speaker 1: He is a fighter. He does not want to be
Speaker 1: hiding right, Um, but sometimes you have to make strategic
Speaker 1: decisions about when and where you fight. Yes, and they do,
Speaker 1: and he he takes shelter in a group in a
Speaker 1: Dominican monitor or a Dominican convent. That's like these nuns.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is normally a show, and generally
Speaker 1: when we bring up nuns on this show, it's very negative.
Speaker 1: These nuns are based as ship. These are the coolest
Speaker 1: fucking nuns I have ever heard about it. You're gonna
Speaker 1: love these nuns. Um. So these nuns take Kauvner and
Speaker 1: a couple of his friends in um and they are
Speaker 1: you know, trying to like he's he's he's. He agrees
Speaker 1: to do this, but while he's locked up, he's sending
Speaker 1: out letters. He's arguing whenever he gets face to face
Speaker 1: with someone that we need to get back in the
Speaker 1: ghetto to fight back and defend like our our community. Um.
Speaker 1: Part of this is because his girlfriend gets is he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get to escape with her. She stays in
Speaker 1: the ghetto and for a couple of weeks she's sending
Speaker 1: him letters about how bad the conditions are, and then
Speaker 1: the letters stop abruptly and they never pick back up again,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what's happened to her. She's obviously
Speaker 1: she's been killed, um, but he doesn't. He's not able
Speaker 1: to find that out. He has no good information about
Speaker 1: what's going on. And in the early days, all these
Speaker 1: all the Jews and villana have are conflict lifting rumors
Speaker 1: about the slaughter, because what one of the ways the
Speaker 1: Germans carry out the massacre is they put together a
Speaker 1: second ghetto, and this provides them with the ability to
Speaker 1: move large numbers of film and Jews without making it
Speaker 1: seem suspicious. We're not you know, we're taking you to
Speaker 1: the next ghetto. And then these guys all get taken
Speaker 1: out in massacred, right, But they don't have to say
Speaker 1: we're going to kill all these people and there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of plausible deniability, so it stops a panic
Speaker 1: from taking right like happened in and or in the
Speaker 1: jail scene, exactly like that. Um So most of these people,
Speaker 1: which is tens of thousands of people from mid to
Speaker 1: late are taken to a place called Ponari, which had
Speaker 1: previously been a picnicking spot, and they were gunned down
Speaker 1: and tossed into mass graves. Most of the actual killing,
Speaker 1: again is done by Lithuanian right wing partisans. One local
Speaker 1: witness to the slaughter later wrote, eleventh July lovely weather.
Speaker 1: It's hot out. There are white clouds and a gentle breeze.
Speaker 1: Shooting can be heard from the forest, presumably from training.
Speaker 1: The shooting started at four pm. Then I wasn't formed
Speaker 1: that many Jews were transported to the forest via the
Speaker 1: road to Grodno and were then shot. This was the
Speaker 1: first day of executions, a depressing feeling. The shooting stopped
Speaker 1: at about eight in the evening. For the Germans, three
Speaker 1: hundred Jews or three hundred enemies of humanity. For the Lithuanians,
Speaker 1: three hundred Jews or three hundred pairs of shoots of shoes,
Speaker 1: trousers and clothes. Damn. That's such an interesting like way
Speaker 1: of breaking it down about like, well, the Germans hate
Speaker 1: the Jews and we just want to steal all the
Speaker 1: ship from the Jews. Yep. That is a big part
Speaker 1: of what is happening here. Um, So that's good. When
Speaker 1: the Germans occupied Vilna, the ghetto has again a population
Speaker 1: of sixty thousand. I've also heard eighty thousand because of
Speaker 1: the refugees. There's not you're not gonna get there's not
Speaker 1: like a census, right being taken. That's that's particularly good.
Speaker 1: By December of nineteen thirty one, though less than a
Speaker 1: third remain Yeah, December of the same year. So in
Speaker 1: less than a year they go from sixty seventy people
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand, um because of how many are massacred.
Speaker 1: But while these massacres are occurring because the Germans, there's
Speaker 1: some plausible deniability and there's not great Again, there's not
Speaker 1: like the Internet, social Media's not like a lot of
Speaker 1: good ways to figure out what's happening outside your door.
Speaker 1: So a lot of Vilna's Jews still don't believe that
Speaker 1: the annihilation is being carried out well, and part of
Speaker 1: why they don't believe it is. They have friends and
Speaker 1: relatives over in Warsaw, and at this point in time,
Speaker 1: a lot of the correspondents that the Villaina Jews are
Speaker 1: getting from their relatives in the West is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was some killing earlier, but it's calmed down, and
Speaker 1: like we think it's gonna be okay. And again this
Speaker 1: is also we're talking centuries of Jewish history where like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there will be these these eruptions and there will be massacres,
Speaker 1: but then things will calm down. Again. You have to
Speaker 1: deal with some bullshit laws, but like we don't get
Speaker 1: wiped out right, um. And that's kind of what people
Speaker 1: think is happening. Um. And so there's this, there's this
Speaker 1: belief among a lot of this even though a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been killed, that like it's not going
Speaker 1: to be as bad as it is as it clearly is.
Speaker 1: And again I'm saying this, these people are not like irrational,
Speaker 1: They're not weak, they're not shitty, They're they're dealing with
Speaker 1: an unprecedented situation right now, as early reports of German
Speaker 1: atrocity start to leak out in the middle of the
Speaker 1: standard belief. So there's this group and this is every ghetto. Right,
Speaker 1: there's an organization called the udn rot Um, which is
Speaker 1: rot is like a it's spelled rat, like the animal,
Speaker 1: but it's like a governing council. Right, This is just
Speaker 1: like a general word in the area. And the juven
Speaker 1: Rat is the governing council of the ghetto, right um,
Speaker 1: and the Nazis endorsed and established June Rots in the
Speaker 1: ghettos that they take, you know, control of and to
Speaker 1: make people think that they have any control over their
Speaker 1: own lives. Yeah, and it's it's a mix of some
Speaker 1: of these guys who are part of the judn Rat
Speaker 1: are as with you find in any community, like self
Speaker 1: serving assholes who they get better kind of conditions and
Speaker 1: better food by by doing this. A lot of them, though,
Speaker 1: are just people who are well, if we work with them,
Speaker 1: we can avoid getting massacred, we can like reduce the
Speaker 1: amount of violence our community has to suffer. Again there
Speaker 1: and again, a lot of like people in specifically radical
Speaker 1: organizations are really angry at a lot of the folks
Speaker 1: who agree to be in the June Rat. Obviously, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna come down morally on anybody who's trying to
Speaker 1: survive the fucking Holocaust, like this is a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 1: But in this case, you know, there is there are
Speaker 1: these reports are starting to filter into the ghetto um
Speaker 1: and the June Rats official line is that the killings
Speaker 1: that have occurred outside of Vilna are the results of
Speaker 1: an isolated, crazy German commander, not a broad policy of genocide.
Speaker 1: And it's gonna be okay, right, their job is to
Speaker 1: keep everybody calm um, and that's what they're trying to do,
Speaker 1: is like they they in the end, it was the
Speaker 1: wrong call, right, Yeah, they didn't know it was the
Speaker 1: wrong call. The p who joined at least again only
Speaker 1: when I've looked at as the one in the warsaw
Speaker 1: and it was like a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: were part of the jude and Rot were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is how we think we will best survive this
Speaker 1: intact and and they were wrong. And but they were wrong,
Speaker 1: but they didn't there was no way to know they
Speaker 1: were wrong besides like, yeah, they're not wrong because like
Speaker 1: they were pad people or whatever. They're wrong because in
Speaker 1: part because this was not in a lot of times
Speaker 1: in which Jewish communities had faced danger in the past,
Speaker 1: stuff like this had been the right thing to do
Speaker 1: right had had been the thing that preserved the community. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: this is just an unprecedented time. They are wrong, But
Speaker 1: I have no I have no interest in morally totally
Speaker 1: any of the people making decisions, but possibly situation. Oh,
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast, Margaret. They
Speaker 1: they think all times are precedented as shit, and they
Speaker 1: don't care about you. Yeah, but that's because we care
Speaker 1: about them. It's a one way It's like an anxious
Speaker 1: versus um. It's like an attachment style problem, you know
Speaker 1: that we have with ads. Oh, I would just say
Speaker 1: that we have so much love for them that there's
Speaker 1: no there's no cosmic space for them to love us. Left.
Speaker 1: It's our fault. Yea, it is our fault. Yeah, Ah,
Speaker 1: we are we are. We are that because we think
Speaker 1: m hmm, that's right. I think we're the first people
Speaker 1: to come up with that idea. So these guys, you know, again,
Speaker 1: we have no interest here in morally judging the members
Speaker 1: of the unon Rock. But the fact that they make
Speaker 1: this choice to try to convince their people that annihilation
Speaker 1: is not imminent. Um, it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: right thing to do right. It does not wind up
Speaker 1: helping the matter um. In late summer, a number of
Speaker 1: women escape from mass graves at polmari Um. And this
Speaker 1: is a thing that happened, right. These are you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're either they're wounded but they survived, or they
Speaker 1: kind of feigned death. And they wind up under a
Speaker 1: pile of the corpses of their loved ones and then
Speaker 1: dig themselves out in the night, and they make it
Speaker 1: back to the fucking ghetto or or back to Vilna.
Speaker 1: And they managed to find like friendly people to talk
Speaker 1: to and they try to warn everyone, right, they try
Speaker 1: to be like, no guys, like they are going to
Speaker 1: kill us all they're already doing it um and again,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pass over to Dina parat here um. The
Speaker 1: un Rod forbade anyone to meet with them, but even
Speaker 1: individuals far removed from the un Rod had the greatest
Speaker 1: difficulty in believing the survivor's accounts. Peha aaron Owitz, who
Speaker 1: arrived wounded at the home of Dr. Mark Vretsky, the
Speaker 1: ghetto children's physician, managed to convince him, although he hesitated
Speaker 1: for a long time before believing her. Others, however, were
Speaker 1: certain she had gone mad, and she stopped telling her
Speaker 1: story It was in Vilna and Lithuania, the places in
Speaker 1: Europe to see mass murders, that people began to doubt
Speaker 1: the stories of those who had escaped death, whether they
Speaker 1: recounted them to Jews who lived nearby and were candidates
Speaker 1: for the same fate, or do those living in safety.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the opposite was true, that those who lived near
Speaker 1: the killing pits and the train stations from which the
Speaker 1: transports left did not believe, because if they had, they
Speaker 1: could no longer have continued living. This is the I
Speaker 1: know that there's no bottom to the worst thing that
Speaker 1: one could experience during this time, but this is up there.
Speaker 1: You survive a mass shooting, I mean a mass grave situation,
Speaker 1: You survive execution, You crawl out underneath your friends and family,
Speaker 1: You go and warn everyone, and everyone is like, okay, Cassandra,
Speaker 1: you're just crazy because they can't believe the enormity you're
Speaker 1: telling them, Um and no one, these women, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: and that's probably not not a part of it too, right.
Speaker 1: So Abba Kovner, like most Villna Jews, did not know
Speaker 1: what to do it first, because he's not getting he's
Speaker 1: not he hasn't sat down face to face with all
Speaker 1: these people. He's just it's just rumors, right, And it's
Speaker 1: rumors that he's hearing while he's hiding underground in a
Speaker 1: Dominican convent. Right. Um. Now, he does eventually succeed kind
Speaker 1: of an in late summer early fall in leaving the
Speaker 1: convent and moving to a safe house in the ghetto
Speaker 1: with some of his comrades. And in September, a group
Speaker 1: of two women and one eleven year old escaped the
Speaker 1: burial pits and make it back to Vilna. Uh. They
Speaker 1: visit a doctor again who was a member of the
Speaker 1: hats Omer under Abba Kovner. So this is a guy
Speaker 1: who's like one of his his his his boys, and
Speaker 1: when the doctor hears their story, he invites Kovner to
Speaker 1: come and talk to them. So, for the most part,
Speaker 1: Kogner spent the early months of occupation focused on smaller tasks. Right.
Speaker 1: He's establishing communications lines, he's helping get safe houses, he's
Speaker 1: getting his people in position, he's trying to facilitate their
Speaker 1: movement wherever he can. And this is the first moment,
Speaker 1: because he's kind of just been keeping himself busy, this
Speaker 1: is the first moment where he's forced to come to
Speaker 1: terms with the fact that his community is being exterminated.
Speaker 1: His immediate thought was that he needed to kill himself. Um,
Speaker 1: he just wants to die. Like the second he learns
Speaker 1: that this is happening, his immediate urge is to commit suicide. Um,
Speaker 1: which is valid but of course, yeah, literally any reaction
Speaker 1: would be that. But of course he can't. He decided
Speaker 1: he like, he can't. He wants to do that, but
Speaker 1: he can't do that because his people are in danger.
Speaker 1: So he decides to opt for the next best thing
Speaker 1: to suicide, armed resistance. Now let's get back to those nuns.
Speaker 1: I was telling you what, I'm really excited about this.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to when actually do good. The mother
Speaker 1: Superior who had hosted, who had hid Covener and his
Speaker 1: friends in the convent, had been distraught when they left.
Speaker 1: She did not want him to leave. She wanted to help.
Speaker 1: She repeatedly told him that she wanted to fight alongside them. Um,
Speaker 1: she's a pretty good lie. And after hearing a bunch
Speaker 1: of this, Kaufner basically tells her, if that's how you
Speaker 1: really feel, get us some weapons. And so one day
Speaker 1: in December of nineteen forty one, she shows up in
Speaker 1: full nun garb outside the ghetto with a bunch of
Speaker 1: hand grenades hidden under that. Yeah, that's fucking rat. That
Speaker 1: is quality nunning. Um. She she has officially won my
Speaker 1: favorite nun award. M so good on you there. There's
Speaker 1: a ton of really good ones. Uh, there's the whole
Speaker 1: like thing. Clear you've seen the map of like Catholics
Speaker 1: versus voters of the Nazi Party in Germany. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just an inverse map, um. Yeah, which is interesting of
Speaker 1: course because Catholics were very down with fascism in Spain
Speaker 1: at literally the same time. But like, it's just it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I find it interesting. There's like a billion of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah know, there's there's a wide variety of Catholics and
Speaker 1: this this one rocks. She tells him that she wants
Speaker 1: to join the Jews and fight with them because God
Speaker 1: is now in the ghetto. That's that is her. Like,
Speaker 1: it's very I think this is pre liberation theology, but
Speaker 1: she is very much like the place for me because
Speaker 1: is with the people being oppressed, because that's where God's
Speaker 1: going to be total, which is fucking based. Um. Smuggling
Speaker 1: grenades into the ghetto in your habit is rad as shit.
Speaker 1: Um so she and she is like, let me come,
Speaker 1: I want to fucking kill some Nazis with like I
Speaker 1: need you to go back to the convent, like this
Speaker 1: is how you can help us best. We're not ready
Speaker 1: to do that yet, but thank you for all of
Speaker 1: these and grenades. Um. He later wrote quote, I mixed
Speaker 1: in with the column of Jews returning from their day
Speaker 1: of forced labor. I felt my soul torn. What would
Speaker 1: happen if it the grenade fell from my hand, or
Speaker 1: if I tripped and fell, and because of me, a
Speaker 1: whole community where to trip and fall as well. Till
Speaker 1: that day, I had never touched a hand grenade. I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to use one. So he's got some
Speaker 1: weapons there, he doesn't really know what to do with them.
Speaker 1: That's that's a process, right. Um So, while he and
Speaker 1: his partisan's plan for their first attacks against the German occupier,
Speaker 1: Kavner puts it upon himself, now that he knows what's happening,
Speaker 1: that he knows the stakes are complete annihilation. He takes
Speaker 1: it upon himself to put out a warning to the
Speaker 1: rest of Europe's Jews. The mass killing of the Holocaust
Speaker 1: had started in Lithuania and Vilma's Jewish community was among
Speaker 1: the very first to be wiped out. Jews further west
Speaker 1: still had no idea what was coming for them, and
Speaker 1: the international community knew even less. He had to warn them.
Speaker 1: So the same month he gets those grenades, December of
Speaker 1: nineteen one, Kavner writes a message that is soon smuggled
Speaker 1: into ghettos all across the East, particularly in Poland, and
Speaker 1: makes its way out of Nazi Europe and across the world.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read it to you now, Jewish youngster,
Speaker 1: do not trust those that deceive you. Of the eighty
Speaker 1: thousand Jews and the Jerus Salem of Lithuania Vilna, only
Speaker 1: twenty thousand have survived in front of our very eyes.
Speaker 1: They tore our parents, our brothers, are sisters from us.
Speaker 1: Where are the hundreds of men who were abducted for
Speaker 1: labor by the Lithuanian kidnappers. Where are the naked women
Speaker 1: and children who were taken from us on the terrible
Speaker 1: night of the provocation. Where the Jews who were taken
Speaker 1: away on yam Kapur, Where our brethren from the second Ghetto,
Speaker 1: whoever was taken out of the ghetto gates never returned again.
Speaker 1: All the roads of the Gestapo leave to lead to Ponari,
Speaker 1: and Ponari is death. Hitler is plotting to annihilate all
Speaker 1: the Jews of Europe. It befell the Jews of Lithuania
Speaker 1: to be first in line. Let us not go like
Speaker 1: sheep to the slaughter. It's true we are weak and defenseless,
Speaker 1: but the only response to the enemy is resistance. Brothers.
Speaker 1: It is better to die as free fighters than to
Speaker 1: live at the mercy of murderers. Resist to our last breath.
Speaker 1: Yeah this guy, Yeah yeah, This is the first major
Speaker 1: warning that comes out that like, what is on the
Speaker 1: table is complete an I Lakavner is the one who
Speaker 1: gives it. So that's where we're gonna end part one.
Speaker 1: All right, um, lots of good stuff. Well well, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know. I have no idea what's
Speaker 1: going to happen next. So it is, this is a
Speaker 1: fascinating story, Margaret. But at this point, I mean, Kavnor
Speaker 1: is an amazing man. Uh and at this point like
Speaker 1: a guy who is handling himself impossibly well in an
Speaker 1: impossible situation. Um, as are a number of other people,
Speaker 1: including that based ass fucking mother superior Uh, what a
Speaker 1: what a what a rab lady? So think about that
Speaker 1: and uh go smuggle hand grenades to someone who maybe,
Speaker 1: uh probably should just Margaret, you've got some plug doubles
Speaker 1: to plug. I have a story about nuns coming out,
Speaker 1: Oh you do? Or rather I have a story with
Speaker 1: some nuns in it. I have a book, Escape from
Speaker 1: Insul Island that does what it says on the title
Speaker 1: on the cover, and it is coming out from Strangers
Speaker 1: and the Tangled Wilderness on February one, and you can
Speaker 1: pre order it at Tangled Wilderness dot org and get
Speaker 1: a free poster of the cover. It's a really cool cover.
Speaker 1: I think it'll people will be excited about it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a cool cover. It's a very good book. And
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about it, Margaret, the Vatican
Speaker 1: is kind of an in cell island. Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The Catholics are definitely the good guys on
Speaker 1: this episode, but I couldn't resist that. That's fine. I
Speaker 1: guess their vall cell you know, yeah, yeah, definitely ostensibly
Speaker 1: ostensibly cell. Um. Yeah, that's that's what I got. I
Speaker 1: also a podcast people can check out called Cool People
Speaker 1: Do Stuff. It's really good. Thank you. Yeah. Sometimes Robert's there,
Speaker 1: Sophie's yeah, I'm always there. Yeah. I'm also sometimes on
Speaker 1: sub stack where you can find me. Yeah, it's shatter
Speaker 1: zone dot sub stack dot com. Check that out. I
Speaker 1: write things usually is one thing every week, so you
Speaker 1: can read more ship from me. If for some reason,
Speaker 1: I'm not in your life enough. Um. Anyway, go to
Speaker 1: hell and Robert we're doing We're there's a behind the
Speaker 1: Master show at s F Sketch Fest in in January, right,
Speaker 1: really you'll be there, really, Okay, I've never heard you
Speaker 1: do that voice before, and I didn't enjoy it. I'm
Speaker 1: just letting you know. Yeah, I didn't enjoy it either.
Speaker 1: It was a little loud. Honestly, I feel terrible about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's January twenty tickets stress, I don't know. There's probably
Speaker 1: a link. Hell yeah, I won't make the sound joke again.
Speaker 1: I already made it once. M I enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it the first and second time. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: appreciate on and R and by. Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.