WEBVTT - Part One: A Tale of Revenge 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.960 Uh, Mary Hallam, Miss it's behind the Chris Bastard, Miss 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:17.840 Robert Evans here podcast. God with Me Today is Margaret 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:23.279 Killjoy and Sophie Lichtermann. Margaret, how are you doing. I'm good. 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:26.640 I'm here for the Christmas Song special, isn't. What we're 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:29.840 gonna do is just sing Christmas carols. That's right. We're 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.080 going to sing the version of Frosty the Snowman that 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.640 I wrote while on an acid trip that takes seven 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.400 and a half hours and is largely a retelling of 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:45.080 the Ring Cycle. Okay, so yeah, I'm also extremely pornographic, 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:47.600 so if you have children listening, you need to get 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.440 them away. It is actually a crime in thirty seven 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.159 states for them to listen to my version of Frosty 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.920 the Snowman. Yeah, and the worst part is is that actually, 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.480 if anyone listens to it, Robert goes to Jail's right, 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.880 that's right. Um so, Margaret, you will be here to 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.919 do the twenties six minute long kazoo solo, which I'm 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:13.000 very excited about. Um oh you did. Actually you do 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:19.080 literally half bells, sweet silver bells, bells that are perfect 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.200 for ringing in Christmas, which is great because this is 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:28.440 our yearly Christmas episode. Now. Normally, Margaret, normally for Christmas 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.360 we do a non bastard, right like we do a 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.800 hero to kind of pep everybody up at the end 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:38.720 of the year. But last year and this year really 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:41.800 you launched a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.160 Stuff that's basically a regular weekly version of the Christmas 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.480 podcast of the Christmas episodes that we used to do. 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.520 So this year I'm doing something a little different, something 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:53.760 we've never done before, which is we're going to be 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.720 covering a group of people who were rad as ship 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.720 for eighty percent of the story and then things take 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:10.440 a dark term, so the revolutionaries in human history. Yeah, 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.240 and this is there's a lot of fascinating moral questions 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:16.680 with the group that we're gonna be talking about. Have 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:22.160 you ever heard about a terrorist group called No com No? 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:27.160 I don't think so. I don't know. We'll find out, Yeah, 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.480 we will find out. Indeed, Margaret, before we get into 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:32.320 this episode, I want to do a little thought experiment 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:34.880 for everybody here. I want you to imagine that a 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.200 few years down the line, a church or a political 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.160 party rises up in the United States, um and and 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:46.000 starts trying to spread a fascist gospel around the country 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:48.760 and and this this gospel takes off among a significant 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.600 chunk of the population. And let's say it's far fetched, 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.919 but yeah, far fetched. And let's say that that these 0:02:55.960 --> 0:03:00.359 fascists are specifically targeting people like you and the folks 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.840 that you love. Whatever whatever thing you identify as, whether 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:11.480 it's you know, gender orientation, religion, uh, sexuality, political ideology. 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.040 They're targeting like you and the people that you love. 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.040 And let's say, imagine they get into power, right, maybe 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.639 it's a coup, maybe they actually just straight up win 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.760 an election, but they get into power, and a lot 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.400 of violence falls, a tremendous amount of violence, and you 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:28.680 lose a lot of the people that you love most 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.120 in the world, virtually all of them, over a terrifying 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.800 period of years and years of violence. Now being fascists, 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:40.080 they do eventually lose, which is what always happens to fascists. 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:42.720 And at the end of that period, you and the 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.920 folks who have survived, are are hardened, are a lot 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.280 better at doing violence, and are thinking, who do we 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.720 make pay for this? Right? Who is it moral to 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:57.280 punish for this? Obviously the ringleaders, right, the people that 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.440 were leading the movement, the people who at a death 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.160 squad ship, the people who are actually carrying out the killings. 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:05.360 But what about what about the church is full of 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.760 clamoring extremists, what about the civilians who supported the movement 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:14.200 and bade and howled and cheered as they committed their murders. 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:19.960 To what extent are those people guilty? Right? Is it 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:22.880 wise to to just let them all live because the 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.599 war is over? Or by doing that are you potentially 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:31.320 endangering your remaining loved ones even more? Because if there's 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.040 not consequences, is it the case that maybe they'll do 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.640 it again. So that's a question to keep in your mind, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.920 right as we as we start to talk about Eastern 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.479 Europe in the late nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties, 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.360 that was a fun time to be around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.320 So that's what we're gonna be talking about, and specifically 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:55.520 we're going to be really focusing on one individual today 0:04:56.000 --> 0:05:01.040 of a pretty fascinating fellow named Abbat cove Ner. He 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:04.680 was born Able Kovener on March fourteenth, nineteen eighteen, just 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:06.760 as the First World War was ending in a town 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.920 called Sebastopol on the southern tip of Crimea. Now, if 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.120 you've casually glanced at European history, you will know that 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.800 the southern tip of Crimea in nineteen eighteen as a 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:21.320 Jewish person is a pretty rough place to be. That 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.400 is not one of the top places in times I 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:27.960 would choose to be born. Um. Now, Abel's parents were 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:31.039 quite orthodox Jews um in A. In the Fall of 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.880 a Sparrow, a Stanford biography of Covener, they're described as 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:37.559 is moderately traditional. I don't entirely know what that means, 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.200 but that's that's kind of the way in which they're 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.880 They're generally described by the best biographer Kovener has now 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.159 Sebastopol did not have a large Jewish population. This is 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.200 not a city that has like a particularly significant, um 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.920 like sizeable community in it uh and in Czarist Russia, 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.240 which you know, is what Kovener's parents had lived under. 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.520 Right up until about nineteen seventeen, the ability of Jewish 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.479 people to hold jobs had been strictly limited. Right, you 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.159 can't really teach at colleges if you're Jewish, at least 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.400 you're you're heavily limited from doing it. They have quotas. 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:12.640 There's a lot of different like jobs, you just can't 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.839 do your your there's an apartheid system really and in 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:20.279 most of of of Czarist Russia. Now luckily for Abba, 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:23.120 by the time he's born, the Czars are out of power. 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.160 Um and his family is is he comes into like 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.400 a fairly affluent family. They're large, and they're extremely close. 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.600 His father had been an expert appraiser of antique jewelry. 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:39.440 Um did when with the revolution of Crimea, what happened 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:41.920 to Crimea to get into the USSR to do its 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:46.080 own thing. It's part of the USSR. Yeah, But then 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:50.800 also nineteen eighteen, things are a lot less uh at 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.320 that point. Yeah, Yeah, there's still a kind of flory 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:58.440 moving along, right, Yes, Um and his family is moderately 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:01.160 well off. One of ABBA's early memories is sitting around 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.680 the table at a family dinner and admiring his grandmother's 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:06.960 pearl necklace, which had been in the family for a 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.479 hundred and fifty years. So he has not just a 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.080 large family, but a family that like they have managed 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.160 a lot of continuity between the generations, which is not 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.360 necessarily the most common thing in this part of Russia 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:21.480 because of how many programs there are, because of how 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.400 common the violence is, the fact that his family has 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.400 like managed to keep these things in their possession for 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.760 so long says a lot. Right. Um Abba is a 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.360 very smart child. He is pretty much universally regarded as 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:38.440 having been particularly a brilliant artist and very charismatic. Everybody 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.960 really likes this kid. Um. He's very inclined to the arts, 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.800 particularly poetry. Um and he had his family members were 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.640 called he had a unique ability to memorize and recite 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.040 things that he'd read. Um. And he would do this 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.280 to keep everyone entertained, especially during holidays and family gatherings. 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.120 He would read books and then he would recite them 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.080 to his family. Is like, you know, basically it's the 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.200 early in Sebastopol. They don't have like TV or radio. 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:05.800 This is you guys, saw this YouTube video. This is 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:12.600 what I learned. Yeah, normal only only bearable. Yeah, he's 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.600 like describing and Or to everybody in his during like 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.520 the Sader or whatever. Because this is the difference, right, Like, 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.040 if you describe what happened in and Or, it sucks. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:23.960 But if you if someone were to just act out 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:26.960 and Or in front of everyone, that would rule. Yeah, 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:28.920 have you ever seen that movie? I forget the name 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:30.400 of it. I think Rain of Fire is the Day 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:35.360 of It's about like dragons destroy civilization and it's apocalyptic Britain. 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.040 There's a great scene where like a bunch of post 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.280 apocalypse survivors are like sitting around a campfire doing Star 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:46.360 Wars for each other. Yeah yeah, that it out is great. 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.880 Yeah yeah, yeah, that's what Kovner is doing. He's very creative. 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.760 Everybody finds them very entertaining. Um. Now this is again 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:58.920 nineteen eighteen, rough time to be anybody in Sebastopol, but 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:03.480 particularly Jewish. UM and his dad is arrested by Soviet 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.560 secret police when he's four in nineteen twenty two. This 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.160 is because private, private commerce was forbidden in the Soviet Union. 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:14.040 Obviously in the earliest stages, kind of after there's ours fall, 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:16.840 it's possible, you know, business and stuff continues in regions. 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.840 It's not like evenly distributed at this point. But by 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.280 the early twenties, the Soviet state is kind of starting 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:26.280 to um to to lock into place. Uh. And he 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.640 gets fined for his bourgeoisie decadence, as you know, being 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.720 a jewelry guy. Um. And he's put in prison for 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.080 several months. This is probably Had or at least his biographer, 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.800 who is I should say this right now, his biographer 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.560 is like super pro Israel um and a zion and 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.120 a Zionist. His father is also a known Zionist. And 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.880 I when I say this, we're all of these folks 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:51.760 that we're gonna be talking about in the twenties and 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.240 stuff are Zionist. That doesn't mean entirely the same thing 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:58.160 that it does to this day, in part because a 0:09:58.160 --> 0:09:59.760 lot of people who a lot of Jews who are 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.520 as eye Anist in this period are also socialists, are 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.920 also communist and are less thinking about I want to establish, 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:09.000 you know, a state of Israel as it currently exists, 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.480 which is, shall we say, deeply problematic, and more we 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:16.640 want to liberate like the Palestinian Mandate from the British 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:22.600 imperialists and established establish a socialist community there, right Um. 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.400 And that's kind of the line ABBA's father falls in on. 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:29.280 His family is very left wing. One of ABBA's cousins 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:31.679 is going to found the Communist Party of Israel when 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.040 that all happens. Um. So like that's that's the So 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:37.720 they are very left wing despite the fact that they're 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:42.600 they're somewhat affluent. But Zionism is not allowed in the 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:44.960 Soviet Union, right because a big part of it is 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:49.600 like we're going to Number one, religion is a not 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.040 encouraged in the in the in the early USSR in particular. Um. 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:56.320 But number two, a big part of it is that like, well, 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:58.480 we're not going to stay here, right, Like, if you're 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:00.800 Zionists that you pretty fund the Italy don't want to 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:02.760 stay where you are in the U. S s are 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.480 And they're also not thrilled with that. Um. So that 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.160 probably played a role in his dad getting arrested. Um. 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.600 And he stays in prison for months until the family 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.360 can put together enough money to secure his release, which 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:16.480 is interesting to me because he gets arrested for doing 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:22.400 commerce and being too enough. Yeah, I don't know, you 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.280 know whatever. Uh. By nineteen twenty six, the Kavners had 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:28.920 decided that the Soviet Union was not a great place 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.640 for them. Um. They felt there, yeah, yeah, especially since 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:37.160 again most they are fairly religious, um, and they see 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.120 kind of not that just their religion, but their nationality 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:42.120 is under attacks. So they decided to move somewhat place 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:44.040 that's going to be a little bit more friendly for them. 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.480 It's also again, Sebastopol doesn't have a huge Jewish population, 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:49.640 so some of it's just like, well, maybe we'd like 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.520 to be in a place where there's a larger Jewish community. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.440 I'm so nervous about where they're going to move to. Um, well, 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.240 they're going to move to a place that never has 0:11:57.280 --> 0:12:02.440 any problems in the early part of the twentieth century Lithuania. 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:07.200 Now Lithuania is part of Like specifically, they moved to Vilna, 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.240 which is today the capital of Lithuania, if I'm not mistaken, 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:15.160 but back then is part of Poland, right, Um, so 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:18.280 they are attempting to and they've got family in the area, right, 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:20.760 you know, so they're they're not just like moving side unseen. 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.079 They have a lot of relatives there too. Um this 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.480 is a good move and for a while the family 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.880 is affluent again, but that period quickly ends because ABBA's 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.480 father seems to be a really generous guy. And in 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.000 this period, because of the Civil War in Russia, because 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.040 of all of the chaos after World War One, there's 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.360 a ton of refugees moving into Vilnia, right, and his 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.520 dad kind of spends money faster than he can make it, 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:45.880 helping out out their refugees in the area because he's 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:50.040 a pretty pretty nice guy, um Abba, you know, goes 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:52.200 to a Hebrew school, um, and then he goes to 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:54.760 an art university when he graduates. I think it's called 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.120 a gymnasium. I don't entirely. I believe that's broadly speaking, 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:02.640 like a or a primary school. UM. That's my impression, 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:04.840 But I always get whatever. I'm in Europe and people 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:08.160 talk about going to gymnasium. Look, everyone does schools wrong, 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.520 but Europeans particularly do schools wrong, and I think it's 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:15.160 okay to admit that they at least name them wrong. However, 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:17.280 they name them very wrong. I think. I think the 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.400 US overall the school is a little bit wronger. Yeah, 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:25.920 I don't. I hate the word gymnasium, and I'm angry 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.560 at them, so I'm biased here. But he goes to 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:31.559 a Hebrew school and then he goes to an art 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:36.160 university and he is studying I think specifically poetry, UM. 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.560 And he's actually being published as a poet. He's quite good, 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:42.160 and he's he's studying poetry. When things in Europe start 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:45.199 to take well, I say, start to take a dark turn. 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.440 Is in Vilna in the nineteen. It's been dark for 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.079 a while, but they start to get a lot darker 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:56.200 in the early nineteen thirties. Um, and again, Vilma is 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:58.840 a part of Poland that is smack in between Russia, 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.559 which has just gotten through his civil war that's killed millions, 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.400 and Germany, which has just gotten through like a famine 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:06.800 that killed like a million people after World War One. Man, 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:09.400 is they're on this there, on this slow road to fascism. 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:11.560 It's a terrible place to be. And they're about to 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.920 get split up between the two nations. Are they ever 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:18.960 are going to agree to invade together and then hold 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.880 the joint fucking parades? It is going to be It's 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:25.440 it's not again, one of the worst places you could 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:29.680 possibly be in this period of time. So ABBA's father 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.960 dies in nineteen thirty two, right as Hitler's rising to 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:36.840 power in Germany. Um. You know, he's just he's a 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.080 stressed out guy. I think he's kind of older. It's 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.040 not uncommon for the man to be significantly older than 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:44.840 his wife in this period in time. Um, he dies 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.680 and his mother. ABBA's mother is forced to support the 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.600 family by starting a restaurant, and this is very difficult 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.000 to her. Because she had a chronic injury to her legs. 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.120 So his mom is like one of these parents who 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:00.840 is like physically disabled and also taking the burden feeding 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.480 and supporting her entire family onto herself by starting a restaurant. 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:09.160 But she's a very good cook. It is a successful restaurant. Um. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.160 In nineteen thirty five, when he was seventeen, Covener dropped 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:14.680 out of Hebrew School, having decided that his studies were 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:18.360 useless um and the teachers were all old assholes. By 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:22.200 this point, he was convinced that, yeah, he is. He 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.280 is hard not to like in this period, and he's 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:28.479 convinced in this point that his future lay in Palestine 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.280 as a pioneer. Now. All throughout Eastern Europe, in this period, 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:36.360 Jewish communities are watching the spread of radical political ideologies 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.200 that often adopted anti Semitism as planks of their belief. 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.240 Young people in young Jewish people who are paying attention 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.840 to these trends started to form their own youth organizations. UM. 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:47.720 And these are both for a mix of like self 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.920 defense and to aid them in carrying out this kind 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:54.200 of migration over to Palestine, right, um, And not all 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.240 of them, some of them are are communist organizations that 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:01.000 are not Zionist right communist socialist organization that are organizing 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.200 along left wing lines and and planned to stay. That's 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:06.680 also a significant portion of this. But all of these 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:09.640 Jewish youth organizations are based heavily on the Boy Scout 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.320 movement that had been launched by Robert Baden Powell because 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.880 it is a quasi military movement, right, that oddly makes sense. 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:18.760 There was a lot of that going on in Europe 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:20.240 around that time, where there was a lot of like 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.480 hiking clubs would be where you would like go learn 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:27.400 discipline and marksmanship and hang out with your buds. Yes, 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.320 and it's not hard to see why a lot of 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.040 Jewish youths in a place like Vilma would be like, yeah, 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.080 we should probably be like training for some of this stuff. Yeah, 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.200 it looks like it might get a lot harder very soon. Yeah. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.320 Um so, I want to read a quote from the 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:46.280 Jewish Virtual Library about these youth groups. Quote. Many Jewish youth, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.080 affected by the process of modernization which had begun among 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.240 Eastern European Jewry, sought a means of maintaining their Jewish 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.480 identity and culture outside the stifling barriers of the Stettle 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.040 and the Orthodox Jewish life. On the other hand, they 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:01.080 were troubled by the crumbling of the foundations society around them, 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:04.160 and by the growing anti Semitism, which threatened their very existence. 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:06.879 In its early stages, the movement was heavily influenced by 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.480 the Boy Scout movement organized by Baden Powell, and it 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:12.440 embraced scouting is a basic principle to teach ghetto youth 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.479 self reliance, outdoor life, and a love and knowledge of nature. 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.600 Another important influence upon them was the wander Vogel movement 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.560 in Germany, which emphasized youth's independence and creativity. And the 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.560 wander Vogel movement is there's a mix of the Nazis 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:27.600 that are kind of like inspired and related to it, 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:29.760 and there's also a lot of reaction to it because 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:31.639 one of the things that happens in the wander Vogel 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.760 movement is a lot of German youth are having gay 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:38.760 sex and they go camping right um, which is one 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:40.760 of the reasons camping is rat and that is the 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:42.800 thing that the Nazis do not like. We'll talk more 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:46.080 about the wander Vogler movement. Yeah, yeah, I covered them 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:48.480 a bunch on the Gay Resistance of Nazis episode, and 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.720 so like, I'm pretty excited about how both the like 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.679 right and left wing were like deeply part of the 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:59.600 wander Vogel movement. Yeah, it's very interesting and messy and cool. 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.800 It's yeah, yeah, we don't it doesn't get talked about much. 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:09.080 This is all stuff that like you really no, no, no, 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:11.119 and it's it's stuff you have to really be reading 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.520 your your history in order to actually get to. Once 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:16.639 you do, you realize like, oh, this was central to 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:21.360 a lot of what was happening in this period. Um. 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:23.399 So there's a lot of these groups. Some of them 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.119 are revolutionary and communist in nature. Others are kind of 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:31.080 centrist and even conservative and much more focused on Zionism. Um. 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.919 And again, when we talk about Zionism in this period, 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.040 some of these people are We're going to like take 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.439 our own state in Palestine by by force, But a 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:41.639 lot of them are just we're probably all going to 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.359 get killed if we stay here, and like farming in 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:47.480 Palestines seems like a better life, So what if we 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.920 just did that? Right, And there was like right wing 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.960 and left wing Zionism that are like dramatically different and 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:56.280 then even among left wing Zionism, I think that there 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:57.879 was kind of a split about whether or not they 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.879 were trying to create a state, whether or whether they 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.120 were just like basically trying to go live where they 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.239 were kind of originally from. Yeah, and where like they 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:09.600 wouldn't get murdered. And you do have to when you're 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.640 kind of parsing this out, keep that all in mind. 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.320 They're all aware that they're under the gun here. You know, 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:17.520 it's really weird to look at this from the current 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:23.040 context of Israel being a an apartheides great thing. Yeah, um, 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.080 but the right wing versus left wing Zionism versus also 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:29.480 the left wing non anti Zionists, like all three groups 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.160 were doing their things. Sorry, I get really excited about 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.800 this stuff. Yeah, they're all. They're all. Also there's a 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:38.920 tremendous amount of conflict between them and totally um and 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.520 we're The part of the story today is how a 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.600 lot of that conflict comes to an end of one um. 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.360 The specific youth group that Aboca Abacovner joints is called 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.119 Hashomer hats their um. I'm sure I'm not getting that 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.320 quite right, but it's it was kind of I've heard 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.840 different things. They are a Marxist group. They are a 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.280 Marxist like socialist youth organise, and I've also heard them 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:04.760 described as kind of like soft socialists. So they're they're 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.960 more compared to the people who are like outright communist revolutionaries. 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:10.800 There are there are a lot more moderate, but they 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.840 are Marxist right there, not just like social democrat. They 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:17.639 are specifically using Marxist and analysis and their propaganda in 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.399 the way that they see the world. Um. ABBA's cousin 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.400 again becomes like the founder of the Israeli Communist Party, 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:26.920 So this is like a whole thing in his family. Um, 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:31.480 and it's interesting he uh, you might suspect because his 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.919 dad gets arrested by the Soviets because his family has 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.000 a tough time in the USSR that they might have 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.200 had there might have been the reactionary strain in them 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.200 and they would have like pulled away from those politics. Um. 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.680 But that's not really, that's not at all really ABBA's 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:49.399 uh like his that's not that's not the tack that 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:50.720 he takes. We'll talk about that a little bit in 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:54.119 the second. But the hats Omer Hauts there advocated for 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.760 Jewish people to abandon the industries they traditionally worked in 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.639 um in, you know, places where they were living, and 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:03.400 instead become labors and farmers so that they'd be able 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.920 to settle in Palestine one day, and you know all 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:08.679 that stuff. Some of them had started trying to do 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.240 this as early as nineteen nineteen. They are sending there 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.360 are people moving over there. This is how the first 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:17.600 kibbutz is get established, right, it's these guys. So by 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.520 the time World War two is getting ready to kick off, 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.440 and that's in the backgrounds as Abbas joining this group, 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:25.520 as he's as he's kind of moving up the ranks, 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:29.879 he's becoming a community organizer. He's making propaganda. The Nazis 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.720 are taking power and consolidating power. You got your light 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.800 along knives, you got your angelus, you got your war 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:42.440 bell starting to ring for the invasion of Poland. Um 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:45.080 now on kind of the eve of the invasion of Poland. 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:48.119 The Jewish population of Vilna is about sixty thousand, and 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.280 it's one of the most cohesive Jewish communities in all 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.320 of Europe. It hosts what's called the Straussian Library, which 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.160 is the most famous Jewish library in all of Europe. 0:21:57.720 --> 0:21:59.879 Abbas spent a lot of time in that library, and 0:21:59.920 --> 0:22:01.639 he spends the years in the run up to the 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:04.159 war kind of throwing his life into the hat Shomarhatzer, 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.160 and he eventually becomes like one of the leading figures 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.359