WEBVTT - Part Two: A Tale of Revenge 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.639 So make sure the episode starts about six minutes back. 0:00:10.160 --> 0:00:13.400 This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast by Robert Evans 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:17.840 about Robert Evans, the bastard who just went yeah. I 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:24.919 was like, I really, I don't so many noises today. 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.440 I didn't know what was happening and just leave. This 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.840 podcast is an engine and the fuel is you being 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:35.760 frustrated with me. We are going to be the first 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.920 human beings on fucking Mars. Is what we're gonna do? What? 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:43.920 What has happened? Just we're starting? Are you we announcing 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:50.280 the competitor to SpaceX that you started? Yeah, SpaceX is 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.520 is going to get their asses kicked by frustrated sof 0:00:55.040 --> 0:01:01.440 X be frustrated. So FAC's gonna be a frustrated sofa. A. Well, 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:03.320 I don't like the x X greets me out. I 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:05.760 thought it was space x Y and it was a 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:11.240 reference to nice. There's a lot of things that could 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:17.920 be a reference to um Margaret, Yes, what do you 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:19.520 what do you do? What do you what? What do 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:21.399 you do? At the start of this podcast, what do 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.600 you do? What do you where? To justify my existence? 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:29.240 That's right, because everyone has to. That's harder. I write 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:33.520 stuff I write fiction. So far, I write a podcast 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:38.120 called Cool People Stuff. So far it's cool. And what 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:40.920 else do I do? I hang out with my dog. Um, 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:47.000 he's becoming a reasonable creature. He's about fourteen or fifty. Yeah, 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.880 way way more handleable. And I live alone on a 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.040 mountain in West Virginia. And I watched the world crumble 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:59.720 as I install solar panels and run another podcast about 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:02.000 prep pain called Live like the World is Dying. That 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:07.400 does sound nice? That does sound nice, Margaret. You know 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.760 who didn't live on the top of a mountain is Abakovner. 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.600 He lived in Vilna, which was a rough place to 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.760 live in the period of time that we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:21.280 he beat the odds. Uh, that's the depressing way of 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.800 saying he has already beaten the odds because nearly everyone 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.040 he knows has been exterminated by the Nazis. UM. As 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.120 we start part two, so Covener has just issued what 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:35.639 we become known as the Ponari Manifesto UM, and it 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.120 electrifies the room. There's also, and this is not his fault, 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.639 one of the one of the problems that exists within 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:44.840 kind of the way in which some people talk about 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.239 the Holocaust, is there's this attitude that there's this errant 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.520 belief that Jews went to the death camps um kind 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:54.840 of passively, like sheep to the slaughter, right like that, 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.280 And and that some of that comes from he says, 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.560 let us not go like sheep to the slaughter, and 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.200 there were some like mistranslations that like make it seem 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.720 like he's saying people were going like sheep, sheep to 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.000 the slaughter. None of this, even if you're looking at 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:10.920 the stories of people who were killed in the camps, 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.960 it was very rarely passive, even to the extent that 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.919 like people were trying to like take care of their 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.720 families and keep their their children from panning. Like none 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.040 of this was like passive. People were dealing with a 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.680 nightmare in the best way that they had available, and 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.079 there was, in fact a lot of resistance, which we're 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.760 going to talk about. And this is a story I'm 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:33.639 aware of, like one pop culture touchdown from this. I 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.720 get into arguments periodically online with people about you know, 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:39.880 armed self defense, and one of the things that keep 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.200 that some folks will bring up is that like, um, well, 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:45.200 none of it, you know, none of it would have 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.720 helped Jews during the Holocaust. Uh. And the reality is 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.080 that having guns did help quite a few Jews during 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:53.880 the Holocaust. There was a tremendous history of partisan resistance 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:55.960 and if you would like to see a reasonably good 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.480 movie about that, starring Daniel Craig, uh, you can watch 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.480 the movie to Fiance, which is about the Bielski Atriad, 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.720 which was a group of eventually a couple of thousand. Um. 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.680 Centered around these brothers who I think we're basically gangsters 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:10.680 prior to the war, which is why they had access 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:14.200 to some of the some weapons. Um. I'm not on that, 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.360 but I believe that's the story with them. But it's 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.960 about this group who took to the woods of Poland 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.080 after the German invasion and eventually we're able to protect 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.120 several thousand people and fight as partisans. There was a 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:30.120 significant number of partisans, and Kovner and his his members 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:32.120 of the hot zmer Hats are are going to become 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.480 some of those partisans. And one of the things that 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:36.720 I get really frustrated when people talk about that kind 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.640 of stuff too, is that, Um. The first thing, again, 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:41.560 the only one I've done a lot of research about 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.320 is the war saw ghetto uprising and the main task 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.200 in front of people, the dangerous immediate task was literally 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:51.760 just getting small arms. Yeah, um small arms. People are 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:57.840 like explosives manufacturing. Yeah, anyway, people, I don't know anyway. Yeah, 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.760 it's it's I don't know. I get really mad at 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:02.640 the way people talk about a lot of the stuff. 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.000 Yeah yeah. And I think one of the things, because 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:10.040 we're again Kauvner ends on a problematic note, shall we say, 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.080 but one of the things he's right about is that, like, look, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.120 now we know what's happening. Nobody's coming to save us. 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.279 We have to find a way to kill as many 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.640 of these Nazi sons of bitches as we possibly can, 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:25.320 which is the a great thing to do. Um Again, 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.360 A none is smuggling hand grenades into the ghetto so 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.040 that they can murder Schermans like this is where, this 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:36.000 is where the line is now. Um So Connor the 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.359 ponary Manifesto electrifies because he delivers this first to just 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:41.080 kind of a room full of Youth Movement members that 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.080 he reads it to during a meeting that they were holding. 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.360 Because it was during New Year's celebrations, it was easy 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.040 to kind of disguise the fact that people were gathering. 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:52.520 But it spreads very quickly through Jewish Europe and it 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.760 ignites a rapid change in the kind of conversations being 0:05:55.760 --> 0:06:00.320 held underground and ghettos across the Greater German Reich. No 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.960 longer was the discussion about hiding and avoiding German wrath. 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.120 Talks started to turn towards the concept of resistance and reprisal. 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.279 In ninety two, Covener helped to found the FPO or 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:17.760 United Partisans Organization. This was a pan ideological because again, 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.560 even after the Nazis took over a lot of these 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:22.880 different because you've got your Communists, some of them were 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.400 like insurrectionary, some of whom are Zionists, and you've got 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.120 your Socialists, and you've got your kind of more centrist 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.120 dream and right wing folks who are Zionist, and you've got, 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:33.720 you know again, people who aren't Zionists but who were 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:37.000 like left wing activists. All these different youth organizations that 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.280 are constantly fighting each other. And Kulviner is like, look, 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.440 we can't do that right now. Later it's going to 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.920 take everything we have just to not get wiped out. Um, 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:51.760 so let's all like basically in his pitch is basically like, 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:54.039 nearly all of us are dead already, what what do 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.680 politics matter? It's time to kill these fucking Nazis. And 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.680 basically at this point, basically everyone's like, yeah, you know 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.719 that that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Um, 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.279 So the FPO gets formed of Wagner's one of the 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:09.680 people starting this. There's a number of of of or 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.120 of of leaders and stuff in the little in the 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.440 area of Lithuania that are doing this. Um. The guy 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:17.680 who gets elected to lead the or they hold a vote, 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.840 because there's about three hundred of them. They hold a vote, 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:21.520 and the guy who gets elected to lead is a 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.760 very cool dude called Yitzak Wittenberg, and he is a 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.960 communist um and they they split the organization up into 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:31.760 these five man cells, and several five man groups make 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:34.400 up a platoon, and then the platoons are split into 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.840 two battalions, and Kavner is commanding one of these battalions. 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.320 He calls his men the Avengers, and they set out 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.600 soon to the work of yeah, yeah, to the work 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.560 of stealing more guns and explosives in order to prepare 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.280 for a broader armed insurrection of the ghetto. The FBO 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.160 makes contacts with Soviet partisans in the woods, and they 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:57.200 work alongside the Polish communist underground. These are just like 0:07:57.360 --> 0:07:59.920 Polish communists, who aren't you wish um to launch a 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.560 series of daring attacks on German military targets. And I'm 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.120 going to quote now from a Latt Gordon Levett Levitan quote. 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:10.560 The Villanet ghetto fighters blew up a German military train, 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.920 smuggled in arms, sabotage German military equipment, and set up 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:16.920 an a legal printing press outside the ghetto, and established 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:19.560 ties to the Soviet resistance in the city in the forests. 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:22.600 They also sent emissaries to the Warsaw and Bellish Dot 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.080 ghettos to warn the inhabitants about the mass killing of 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.880 Jews and the occupied Soviet Union and to incite resistance. 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.839 And they do like a meaningful amount of damage. They 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.720 destroy I think a few dozen trains, they kill like 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:40.400 seventy one Germans, they rescue a couple of hundred um 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:42.920 like a Jewish people who are at you know, going 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:46.920 to be eradicated and whatnot. Um Like, they do quite 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:48.760 a bit of damage, and they focus mostly a lot 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.040 like the anarchists in like Russia, right now, are focusing 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.000 on blowing up trains, on blowing on destroying trains and 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.640 derailing trains right to to stop the flow of war 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.680 material and harm the Nazi war effort and also harm 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:05.600 their effort to like deport and murder more Jews. Um. Yeah. 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.400 By nineteen forty three, the Germans have grown weary enough 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.160 of the FPO that they launched a major crackdown and 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:15.000 eventually succeeded in capturing several officers of Vilma's non Jewish 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.400 communist underground. From these men, they learned that Wittenberg was 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:21.319 the elected head of the Jewish resistance. They surrounded the 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:23.880 Vilna Ghetto and promised to destroy it all and kill 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.120 all twenty thousand people inside unless Wittenberg was turned over 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:29.040 to them. And this is this is a fascinating story, 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.720 because Wittenberg gets captured at one point and they carry 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.240 out a prison break and they free him. But then 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:36.520 the Germans are like, we're just gonna kill everybody if 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:38.640 we don't get this guy. So in an act of 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:43.160 almost unfathomable courage, Wittenberg hands himself over to the Nazis 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.600 and then commit suicide and German custody to save everybody else, 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.880 and control of the organization now hands is handed over 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.720 to Kauvner when the Nazis destroyed the ghetto anyway. Later 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.600 that year, Kavner and his surviving men flee into the 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.679 woods around Vilna, where they liaise with Soviet At Partisans 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.640 and carry out even more insurgent attacks against the Germans. 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:07.240 By July of nineteen forty four, the German military is 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:09.760 collapsing in the east and Kaufner takes part in the 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:13.520 liberation of Vilna with other partisans. It was a pyric 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.720 victory at best. More than forty thousand Jews had been killed. 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.240 The ghetto was basically nothing but ashes and bones, as 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.320 this quote from the Book to Calm makes clear. The 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:26.240 visitors returned stunned and tends from the blunt reality but 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:30.079 speaking wide scale slaughter into gigantic round pits, and from 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:32.840 the beastual brutality of those who had aimed deadly gunfire 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.000 face to face at living creatures. Evidence of that brutality 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.600 was still visible. Scattered bodies remain that had not yet 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.560 received proper burial, and the visitors knew very well who 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.280 had been killed there at the edge of the pits. 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.680 Their parents and all of their neighbors, acquaintances, well to 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:52.160 do in proletarian, pious, assimilated and baptized, communal leaders, synagogue functionaries, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:56.480 peddlers and drawers of water, communists and Zionists, intellectuals, artists, 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:00.240 and village idiots. Some four thousand babies, all of them, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.640 as writer amos Oz described the individualish community. When the 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.920 visit was over, Kaufner composed a detailed questionnaire and the 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.440 survivors who had begun to gather filled it out. The 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.199 copies were collected with a view to preparing for future trials, punishment, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:19.079 and vengeance. Now Kauvnor gets no time to like, what's that. Oh, 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.480 it's just I mean one, I just have to sit 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.960 on that, right. But one of the things that it 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.320 occurs to me, I mean I remember a friend of 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:34.400 mine describing to continue Margaret's crime school. Um, sometimes it's 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.000 safer at the front. Not like the front in terms 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.199 of like a war, right, but like you know, sometimes 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:46.160 being up where the conflict is happening is safer, like literally, 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:51.600 And I I'm not trying to tell people what they 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.120 should have done retroactively, just interesting to me that it's like, 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.080 I mean, it sounds like the reason that the Partisans 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.360 survived is that they were partisans and they were used 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.640 to moving in and out to the woods. Yeah, and 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:05.760 they escape. A lot of them get out through the 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.080 sewers and stuff like. Yeah, they barely make it out 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:10.760 in a lot of cases. Yeah, and I'm sure a 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:12.320 ton of them don't. I'm not trying to be like, oh, 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:14.640 it's easy, everyone should just go do that, you know, 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:22.240 but yeah, anyway, yep, uh it is. It is, um 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:30.200 pretty pretty fucked up, Margaret y um so uh. Kavner 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.040 was soon obliged to leave Vilma with his avengers. He 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.920 doesn't really have any time to like, nobody has time 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.600 to process this, right, um, like they might not want to. 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.800 They are immediately on with the with the advancing Red 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.000 Army right and are are continuing to act as insurgents, 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:51.600 basically kind of ahead of the main advance, harassing Nazi 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:54.319 forces as they retreat. And while he's doing this, he 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:58.400 repeated repeatedly lobbies with the Soviets to establish a partisan 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.600 regiment of Jewish Hullo cost survivors to carry out acts 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.640 of sabotage in Germany, to like sneak into Germany and 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:09.000 start blowing up German in history. Um, the Soviets don't 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:11.839 entirely trust him or other Jewish youth movement veterans since 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:16.120 they're all Zionists, and this does not happen. And then 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:19.720 also Kaufner is breaking Soviet law in this period because 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:22.680 while he is fighting and while he's advancing, he is 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.000 he's this kind of guy who is he's just an 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:28.520 expert organizer. So while they're doing this, he is building 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.520 an underground railroad to smuggle Jews from the fires of 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.120 the Holocaust over to the British mandate in Palestine. He's 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.800 like building an organization to do this as he is 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.560 running an insurgent war. Um, he's a he's very good 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:42.520 at organ Obviously he's not the only one doing this, 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:45.880 but he's a major, major figure in it. His experience 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.640 building and maintaining connections between a far flung network of 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.720 insurgents made him kind of the perfect man for this. UM. 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.319 And again it's worth remembering that during this period, getting 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:57.360 Jews out of Poland and into Palestine was often the 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.640 only way to keep them alive. Pogroms and massacres of 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:04.319 Jews continued even as the Nazis retreated. We're gonna talk 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:08.640 about that more later, and established another clandestine organization as 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.400 he traveled across Europe, Blue was called Brickhaw and it's 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.080 again it's this underground railroad type sort of situation. As 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:18.480 he makes connections with survivors across Europe's Jewish communities, he 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:20.640 starts to come face to face with survivors of the 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.800 Nazi death camps. He and his and again, these guys, 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:26.760 these guys aren't going to camps. Right in Lithuanian Villa, 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.160 there's not like a big there being shot in the 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:32.920 fucking woods. That's how that's how the Holocaust starts. Um. 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.120 So they're finding out about the death camps as they are, 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.800 as they're moving west and meeting people who had been there. 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:41.880 And then later in nine four he and his Avengers 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:44.880 helped to liberate mashd Neck and they see their first 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:48.120 concentration camp. Now mash Neck was located in a suburb 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.240 of Lubland, Poland, and somewhere around three hundred and sixty 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.440 thousand people were massacred there. So Kavner comes from Vilna 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.720 where forty to sixty thousand Jews are killed, and this 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.640 just this is like already broke at him. Right, this 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:03.480 has like turned him into this kind of force for vengeance. 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.480 And then he realizes that like Vilma is a blip 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.920 on the radar, and the total number of people who 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:13.480 are being killed, and he starts to realize the scale 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.320 of the Holocaust, right, the like the truly Titanic scale 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.480 of the killings that have been carried out. Coming face 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:24.160 to face with Mashenet convinced Kaufner that simple military victory 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.360 against the Germans was no longer sufficient. Images of a 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.680 death camp were stuck in his mind. Now he had 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.320 spent years obsessed with the destruction of the Villa neg Ghetto, 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:34.560 his home and then he'd come face to face with 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:37.840 a massacre six times greater than the entire Jewish population 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.560 of his home town. And even as the war ended 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.240 in German defeat, stories of more massacres poured in. Some 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.000 of these were stories of the greatest death camps like Auschwitz, 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.840 but others were stories of massacres of Jews committed by 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:52.640 forces who were not Nazis. And I'm gonna quote again 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:56.080 from the book to Calm When Jews returned in July 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.280 nineteen forty four to Kiev and hoped to reoccupy their houses. 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:03.080 They discovered Ukrainian squatters who refused to vacate. The Ukrainians 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:06.320 started throwing Jews from moving train cars and beating random Jews. 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:08.960 The feeling was of an impending program. There was no 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.040 one to turn to with an alert. In July of 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.200 nineteen forty four, upon the liberation of Lithuania, Jews who 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:16.600 returned to their homes from the forests and hideouts, attempting 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:19.320 to find relatives and perhaps a small fraction of their properties, 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.560 were murdered on their doorsteps by neighbors and local Lithuanian 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.360 gangs who hidden the forests and elsewhere in order to 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:27.960 not be conscripted by the Germans. In the pockets of 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.360 five Jews who had survived the Holocaust but were then 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:33.360 murdered in the Lithuanian town of a Ks, a note 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:35.840 was found in Polish saying this will be the fate 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:41.160 of all the Jews left alive. So this doesn't put 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:43.840 Kavnor and his men into his men and women. By 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:46.120 the way, there's a pretty I think it might even 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:48.080 be a pretty even split of men and women in 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:54.960 his In his insurgent organization UM it is like they're 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.680 kind of out of their minds at this point, right, 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.000 not only you have to like because the Holocaust is 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:06.480 still happening, because now it's because yeah, and this is 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.160 again if you have ever had PTSD, what that means. 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.199 I'm not trying to I'm not again, I have had it. 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:14.560 I'm not I've had I've had a couple of of 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:20.240 PTSD breaks. I Am not trying to be um uh me, 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.320 I don't mean this in a negative way. You're crazy, right, 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:25.560 Like that's what you're You're kind of out of your 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:28.440 mind for a while. That's part of the problem. And 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.480 these people are dealing with not only like the most 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:36.400 PTSD I can fucking imagine. Um, but now they realize 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:39.359 that like it's not over. The massacre is continuing, and 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.000 all of this is happening like while they are continuing 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.679 to fight a war. And so between the grief of 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:46.960 losing all of their loved ones and friends and the 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:50.680 trauma of years of underground fighting, deadly partisan combat, these 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.800 people are in what you might call a particular state 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.720 of mind. The most obvious consequence is of this is 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.359 an obsession with vengeance, which the end of the war 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.840 does not slack, and as the war kind of comes 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.400 to an end, a lot of these Jewish partisan's people 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:11.320 who are friends and affiliated with them, with with kaufner 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:14.440 Um members of different Zionist youth groups in Poland, they 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.040 start to carry out attacks in areas that have already 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.640 been liberated, places where the war has come to an end. 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:21.879 And I'm gonna read a quote from the book to 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:26.360 calm here. Naza GROUPA, a group of Zionist youth members 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.680 from beds in Poland, aimed to exact vengeance in Germany, 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.199 and Mill Brigg, later a hero in Israel's War of 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.760 Well in the Arab Israeli War, recounted, Uh we have 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:38.359 She uses the term Israel's War of independence like you 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.760 can whatever. We had nothing to lose. We wanted only revenge. 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.080 Young men and women burning with venge for vengeance, with 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.440 nothing in their world but a mighty urge to kill 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.879 Germans and to destroy whoever was collaborating with Germans. Some 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.760 members of Naza GROUPA, who had volunteered for the Red Army, 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.560 succeeded in acts of vengeance, but not as much as 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.359 they had wished, not as Jews, not as representatives of 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.480 the entire Jewish nation against the higher German nation. One 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.119 of them, Manos d'amont, visited Auschwitz as soon as the 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:06.399 war ended, and he saw this command written on one 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.920 of the walls of the torture chambers. Jews take vengeance. 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.280 These words guided his future. He and Alex Gatman, a 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.840 fellow member of the group, headed a squad in Austria 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:18.560 that executed those who had been found guilty. Most of 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.040 the members felt as if they were judges without robes, 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:24.120 judges of a special kind, who together delivered and immediately 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.600 carried out their sentences. They bound and gagged suspects, held 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:29.800 a few minutes of trial proceedings for each, and read 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:32.600 an indictment. They prosecuted murderers who had been active in 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:35.280 the ghettos and concentration camps, those who had killed with 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.600 their own hands and could be reliably identified, in the 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:40.800 group's opinion by at least two witnesses. No troop, no 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:42.840 courte of true justice in the world, would have handed 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:45.040 down a different verdict if he confessed on his own 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:48.639 without being interrogated, said Damont. These killers were mostly, but 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.720 not always s S troops. The group then killed the suspect, 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.360 For example, four young men who had been freed from 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:58.119 the Lansburg Offering concentration camp near Munich, stole British jeeps 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.480 and drove to a neighboring town, whe they mounted a 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.240 pegram of their own for four or five hours, punching 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:05.840 and beating. Soldiers of the Jewish Brigade who arrived at 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:08.760 the scene stood there stunned. They couldn't agree with this 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:11.800 and sent us away. We broke everything around, We broke windows, 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.439 We hit children and old people too. The hatred inside 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:17.080 of us was terrible, a heavy burden of rage. It 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:19.600 is difficult to determine how many such incidents occurred, with 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.760 survivors taking action either independently or with a few comrades. 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:25.720 So again there's like this stuff is happening as the 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.040 war ends. There's like guys busting, like stealing British military 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.600 ship and just driving into German towns and just beating 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:34.639 the ship out of everybody they encounter, which like I 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:39.840 get it, man, Like, yeah, it's like it's not good, 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.080 it's not, but it's justice. But it's inevitable to have 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:48.840 the inevitable consequence of what the Nazis did, Right, I 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.159 feel like there's a difference between justice and consequences that 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.480 doesn't get talked about enough for it's just like, I 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:56.080 don't know, like you do a bunch of bad ship 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:58.680 and some other bad ship's going to happen and it's 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:04.200 not justified inherently like that kid who got beat didn't 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:09.400 do anything, you know, and like it's not good. It's 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:15.720 a it's just a thing. It's just it is that. Yeah, yeah, 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:17.479 if you're going to say, and I think it is, like, 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:20.000 it's bad. It's bad if like children are getting beaten 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.000 in the street, because even if the children believed the 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:25.360 fun up things their parents told them, they're they're not 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:30.960 responsible for it. But also the bad thing that's being 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:33.760 done here, I would say, even though it's being committed 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:36.840 by these like Jewish concentration camp survivors, the evil is 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:40.000 still on the Nazis. They're responsible for those kids getting 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:41.760 beaten in the street. Right, It's not the fault of 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.200 the people who lost everything and are like what these 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:46.760