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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast

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Speaker 1: on Trac B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry and we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about a collection. We don't do this often.

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Speaker 1: We don't always stick to one thing. We're talking about

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Speaker 1: a collection of people. Today, there are so many amazing

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Speaker 1: and heroic stories of people who risk their own lives

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Speaker 1: and the lives of their families and friends to protect

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Speaker 1: Jews and other people who were at risk before and

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Speaker 1: during the Holocaust. Yad Vism honors people with the title

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Speaker 1: of Righteous among the nations on behalf of Israel, and

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Speaker 1: these are non Jews who risked their lives to save

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Speaker 1: Jews during the Holocaust and els of January one, which

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Speaker 1: was the most recent day I could find, twenty four thousand,

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Speaker 1: eight hundred eleven people had been a in this title.

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Speaker 1: And some of these people are quite well known today.

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Speaker 1: People like Oscar Schindler, who we know about because of

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Speaker 1: the film Schindler's List, Uh, you know, had deep pockets

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Speaker 1: and were well connected and they used their money in

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Speaker 1: their bureaucracy to protect people. Schindler, for example, is credited

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Speaker 1: with saving one thousand, two hundred Jews. And there were

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Speaker 1: also diplomats who used their roles in their clout to

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Speaker 1: illegally secure visas and passports for people. A couple of

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Speaker 1: examples are Louis Martin's de Susa Dantas from Brazil and

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Speaker 1: are Stee de Susa Mendez from Portugal, and they were

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Speaker 1: both working from France when they did this. And then

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Speaker 1: there are the people who sheltered individual people and families,

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Speaker 1: and one of the most famous being meet Geez, who

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Speaker 1: is one of the people who helped shelter and Frank

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Speaker 1: and her family, and who also found and saved Anne's diary,

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Speaker 1: which of course became a really important document. In the

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Speaker 1: town of new Land, Netherlands, every household sheltered at least

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Speaker 1: one Jew, and that was so that no one in

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Speaker 1: the community would be able to betray anyone else, like

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Speaker 1: they kind of took the approach of they were all

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Speaker 1: in it together. To betray anyone else in the community

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Speaker 1: was to betray oneself. A few rescuers, some of them

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Speaker 1: who have also been named righteous among the Nations, turned

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Speaker 1: to really just surprisingly ingenious or unexpected or daring plans

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Speaker 1: to save other people and for a number of reasons.

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Speaker 1: There's not a lot of biographical or scholarly information for

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Speaker 1: a lot of them, at least not enough to be

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Speaker 1: able to vote to devote one whole episode to just

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Speaker 1: one of them. But these stories are so incredible and

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Speaker 1: they reveal so much about the links that some people

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Speaker 1: will go to to protect other human beings that we

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Speaker 1: didn't want to overlook them. So we've gathered a few

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Speaker 1: into one episode today, uh, And we're going to start

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Speaker 1: with one that requires a little bit of a grain

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Speaker 1: of salt, because this story has become a little bit

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Speaker 1: inflated through the years and retellings. Charles Coward was a

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Speaker 1: British sergeant major held at a pow camp here Auschwitz Monoe,

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Speaker 1: also called Auschwitz three, and his experience was later made

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Speaker 1: into a book called The Password is Courage, which in

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Speaker 1: turn was made into a film. So you can see

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Speaker 1: how facts might get a little uh altered, a nebulous

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Speaker 1: along the way. In those retailers, there was the passage

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Speaker 1: of time and the fact that there was there was

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Speaker 1: the dramatization element involved, and some of that story really

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Speaker 1: has come under some scrutiny over the years. So what

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Speaker 1: we are sticking to is the most conservative version for

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Speaker 1: the part for which he was named as Righteous among

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Speaker 1: the Nations on February six, nine five, And that's the

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Speaker 1: most substantiated of the greater part of his story. And

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Speaker 1: this was a rescue through body swapping. So Charles and

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Speaker 1: the other POWs would get aid packages from the International

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Speaker 1: Red Cross, which would include such valuable items as chocolate

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Speaker 1: and cigarettes. He hoarded these and he convinced the other

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Speaker 1: podve used to part with there's also, and then he

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Speaker 1: used them as currency. He would trade them with a

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Speaker 1: German who was responsible for disposing of bodies from the

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Speaker 1: neighboring construction site. And the bodies are actually what Charles

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Speaker 1: was after. He claimed they were part of a practical joke,

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Speaker 1: but he was really using them as stand ins for

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Speaker 1: escaping Jews. So the Jews would be marched from the

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Speaker 1: camp to a synthetic rubber works where they were worked

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Speaker 1: to exhaustion, and sometimes they would die there or on

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Speaker 1: route back to the camp as a result of being

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Speaker 1: so overworked and malnourished and poorly treated. So with the

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Speaker 1: help of sympathetic guards and the other POWs, Charles would

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Speaker 1: have two or three bodies staged along the the route

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Speaker 1: that they were marching to get to and from the

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Speaker 1: rubber works, and then a matching number of Jewish prisoners

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Speaker 1: who Charles had identified would slip away during the march back.

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Speaker 1: Jews were counted coming and going to prevent just such

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Speaker 1: an escape, but the body of anyone who died along

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Speaker 1: the way had to be returned to Auschwitz and counted

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Speaker 1: as oh, and the bodies would then be tallied along

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Speaker 1: with the Jewish prisoner, so no one would be accounted

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Speaker 1: as missing. So this was really an ingenious little math

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Speaker 1: plot to make sure that the total number added up

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Speaker 1: at the end. Uh The exact number of people that

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Speaker 1: were saved using this little body swap is a little

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Speaker 1: bit unclear at this point, um, and Charles himself is

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Speaker 1: not around any longer to discuss about it. He died

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. And then the next time we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about is Dr Eugene Lezowski. Yes, he

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Speaker 1: was a doctor and a soldier in the Polish Army,

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Speaker 1: and he faked an outbreak of epidemic Typhus and roswadow

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Speaker 1: in southeast Poland to save Jews and the Polish people

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Speaker 1: who were living there. He had been sent there to

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Speaker 1: work for the Polish Red Cross after Germany invaded Poland

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Speaker 1: in nine His friend and medical colleague Stanislaw Matuluis, discovered

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Speaker 1: that if he injected someone with killed typhus bacteria, that

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Speaker 1: person would then test positive to the disease without actually

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Speaker 1: being infected. Dr Lezowski ran with this knowledge repeating the

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Speaker 1: process on other people in Roswadow. If Jewish people were

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Speaker 1: discovered to have typhus, they would have been just killed

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Speaker 1: as a disease control measure. So what he did was

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Speaker 1: he injected the non Jews who were living in the area,

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Speaker 1: and then he sent there supposedly contaminated blood to German

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Speaker 1: labs to be tested, and he carefully metered out the

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Speaker 1: number of infections these fox infections to mimic what would

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Speaker 1: be a very natural and organic start of a typhus epidemic.

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Speaker 1: German officials, fearing the disease, wound up quarantining the entire area,

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Speaker 1: and it was home to about eight thousand people, so

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Speaker 1: he's credited with saving the Jews who lived there from

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Speaker 1: concentration camps and everyone else from being sent into forced labor.

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Speaker 1: In addition to orchestrating this outbreak, he also provided medical

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Speaker 1: care to the Jews who were living in the Roswadal

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Speaker 1: ghetto under the cover of night, which is something that

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Speaker 1: he would have been punished for doing if he had

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Speaker 1: ever been caught. Uh and Dr Lazowski immigrated to Chicago

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Speaker 1: after the war and he ended up living in Eugene, Oregon,

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Speaker 1: where he died on December sixteenth of two thousand six.

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Speaker 1: We have another medical intervention as that is our next story.

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Speaker 1: This is Ernest Tree or More and he was an

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Speaker 1: anentusiologist living in Denmark. At the time. The Danish resistance

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Speaker 1: was smuggling Jews under the false bottoms of fishing boats.

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Speaker 1: So what they would do is they would row far

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Speaker 1: enough away from land that they wouldn't be seen, and

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Speaker 1: then they would transfer their human cargo to Swedish ships

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Speaker 1: who would then take them the rest of the way

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Speaker 1: to Sweden. And then the Gestapo started using dogs to

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Speaker 1: try to sniff out stowaway and they had gotten wind

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Speaker 1: of what was going on and started bringing the dogs

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Speaker 1: to try to put stop to it. Working with a

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Speaker 1: pharmacist named Olaf Houbner, Dr Mork came up with this

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Speaker 1: mixture of cocaine and dried rabbits blood that would rob

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Speaker 1: the dogs of their ability to smell all They basically

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Speaker 1: acted like a local anesthetic on the dog's noses and tongues,

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Speaker 1: and because of the rabbit blood, they would eagerly lick

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Speaker 1: it all up and sniff it. So they worked out

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Speaker 1: the kinks using Olifs cocker spaniel as a test subject,

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Speaker 1: which fine a little charming. I'm imagining this cocker spaniel

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Speaker 1: just being uh, sniffle, sniff around, temporarily robbed of its

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Speaker 1: sense of smell, and then to come back to perfect

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Speaker 1: the uh the process. It also suggests this as they

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Speaker 1: were doing it on a pet, it was not harmful

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Speaker 1: to the dogs, so I always love that uh. And

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Speaker 1: then they would sprinkle this powder that they had developed

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Speaker 1: onto the decks of the boats, so the Gestapo's dogs

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Speaker 1: would come aboard, and they'd sniff and lick at the

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Speaker 1: powder eagerly, and they would temporarily have their senses deadn't uh,

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Speaker 1: And it would conceal then that there was anyone hidden

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Speaker 1: on the boat. They were useless to sniff out the

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Speaker 1: bodies at that point. So this allowed the resistance to

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Speaker 1: keep doing what it had been doing uh and and

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Speaker 1: carry on with getting people out of the area without

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Speaker 1: so much fear of discovery. Dr Mark died on January

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Speaker 1: and now back to our topic at hand. Yes, the

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Speaker 1: next person on our list is Irene Good up Dike.

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Speaker 1: She was then just Irene Good and she hid twelve

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Speaker 1: Jews at a villa where she was working as a housekeeper.

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Speaker 1: The trick here is that the villa actually belonged to

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Speaker 1: German Major Eduard Rugemer. She was only seventeen years old

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Speaker 1: at the start of World War Two and she was

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Speaker 1: studying nursing when Germany invaded Poland. She fled the invasion,

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Speaker 1: but she was captured by Russian soldiers who raped her.

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Speaker 1: She wound up hospitalized after the attack, and once she recovered,

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Speaker 1: she was put to work in a factory, and when

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Speaker 1: she felt ill, Major Rugemer took pity on her and

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Speaker 1: moved her into a job working at a club for

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Speaker 1: German soldiers, and there she was the supervisor of twelve

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Speaker 1: Jews who were working in the laundry service. Major Rugimer

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Speaker 1: later made her the housekeeper at his own villa, and

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Speaker 1: after hearing that the camp where the Jews were living

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Speaker 1: was going to be liquidated, Irene found places to hide

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Speaker 1: them at the villa. Some of them lived in a

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Speaker 1: cellar under the gazebo, and some lived in a laundry room,

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Speaker 1: and some of the women that she was hiding would

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Speaker 1: occasionally help her with the cleaning while Major Ruginer was away,

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Speaker 1: and eight months into this whole charade, he returned home

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Speaker 1: early one day and discovered them. This would have been

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Speaker 1: inexcusable for an officer to learn that his home had

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Speaker 1: been used to shelter Jews, and it would have caused

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Speaker 1: irreparable harm to his career if he had confessed to it,

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Speaker 1: but Irene further insured his silence by becoming his mistress.

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Speaker 1: So in addition to keeping these twelve people safe, she

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Speaker 1: also helped smuggle other Jews into the forest so that

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Speaker 1: they could make an escape, and she smuggled food into

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Speaker 1: the ghetto for them as well. She really like she

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Speaker 1: was doing a lot of different things to help the cause.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, Irene and the twelve people she'd

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Speaker 1: been hiding escaped into the forest themselves, and they hid

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Speaker 1: there until Russia invaded Poland. In eight she immigrated to States,

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Speaker 1: and she wrote and published a memoir called In My Hands,

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Speaker 1: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer. She was honored as one

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Speaker 1: of the Righteous among the Nations on July eighth of

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Speaker 1: nine two. She died in two thousand three at the

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Speaker 1: age of eighty five. And this last person we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about is one that we have gotten several

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Speaker 1: requests to talk about after a blog post that has

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Speaker 1: filtered around the Internet lately, and that's Irena Sundler, who

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Speaker 1: rescued about twenty five hundred children from the Warsaw Ghetto

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Speaker 1: using suitcases, trunks, facts, and piles of garbage to hide them.

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Speaker 1: She was born in Warsaw in nineteen ten and her

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Speaker 1: father was a doctor. She later said that when she

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Speaker 1: was seven, her father had told her, if you see

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Speaker 1: someone drowning, you must try to save him, even if

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Speaker 1: you cannot swim, and it was this attitude that led

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Speaker 1: her into a life of service, including her work as

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Speaker 1: a social worker. Before the start of the war, when

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Speaker 1: the Germans began moving Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto, she

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Speaker 1: started by smuggling food and medicine into the area. She

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Speaker 1: would forge papers using Polish names so she could secure

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Speaker 1: food and medical aid, and then she would distribute it

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Speaker 1: among the Jews. When the ghetto was locked down, she

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Speaker 1: got a nurse's uniform and a permit to inspect sanitary conditions,

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Speaker 1: which let her move in and out of the area

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Speaker 1: more freely. In two Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto began

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Speaker 1: to be removed to the Treblinka extermination camp, and while

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Speaker 1: some of the other camps during the Holocaust housed prisoners

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Speaker 1: who were forced into labor, the main purpose of Trablinka

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Speaker 1: was really just execution. Jews and other people that Mattie

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Speaker 1: wanted to exterminate would be brought in and told they

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Speaker 1: were there to be resettled, but then they would be

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Speaker 1: led directly into gas chambers and killed. At this point,

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Speaker 1: Arena began to work with Zagoda, the Council for Aid

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Speaker 1: to Jews, which had been formed by the Polish government

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Speaker 1: in exile, which at that point was operating from London.

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Speaker 1: She used the code the code named Joe Lanta. Zagoda

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Speaker 1: provided Arena with money and forged documents, and sometimes they

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Speaker 1: would also learn which buildings in the ghetto were being

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Speaker 1: emptied the next day, and Arena would go to those first.

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Speaker 1: She would encourage Jewish parents to let her take their

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Speaker 1: children away so that she could place them with Christian

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Speaker 1: families or take them to a convent or to the

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Speaker 1: family of Merry orphanage. In Warsaw, parents were naturally very

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Speaker 1: reluctant to part with their children. Many of them wanted

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Speaker 1: to know for sure that if they gave up their children,

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Speaker 1: their children would survive, but there really wasn't any guarantee

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Speaker 1: that they would even make it out of the ghetto

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Speaker 1: without being caught. What was much more certain was that

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Speaker 1: if they were taken to Triblanca, they would die. And

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Speaker 1: there were also matters of faith to consider. These children

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Speaker 1: would need to learn Christian stories and prayers to be

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Speaker 1: able to maintain their disguise and blend in in Christian families,

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Speaker 1: and parents were actually worried that they would be drawn

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Speaker 1: away from their existing culture and beliefs, so a lot

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Speaker 1: of parents really believed the sort of charade that Treblinka

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Speaker 1: was actually a resettlement camp. Arena really had to work

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Speaker 1: to convey into them that they were being sent there

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Speaker 1: to die, and that their children's only hope of survival

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Speaker 1: was to be moved elsewhere. One piece of reassurance that

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Speaker 1: Arena was able to give these families is that she

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Speaker 1: would keep up with the real names of their children

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Speaker 1: so that later on, families could potentially be reunited. She

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Speaker 1: wrote the children's real names and new names on pieces

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Speaker 1: of paper, and she would seal them into jars and bottles,

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Speaker 1: and then she buried them under an apple tree that

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Speaker 1: belonged to her friend Janina Grabowska. She used all kinds

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Speaker 1: of tactics to smuggle children out of the ghetto once

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Speaker 1: parents had agreed to let her do it. Children who

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Speaker 1: were very sick or who could convincingly look very sick,

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Speaker 1: could just be taken out in an ambulance, or if

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Speaker 1: they couldn't really pass for being ill, they could just

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Speaker 1: hide under the stretchers that were being used to transport

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Speaker 1: other children. Babies were given sedating drugs to keep them quiet,

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Speaker 1: and they were sometimes smuggled out in suitcases and hidden

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Speaker 1: among cargo in carts and trucks. Children also left the

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Speaker 1: get and garbage trucks produced sacks, trunks, basically anything that

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Speaker 1: a child could fit into and could be taken carried

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Speaker 1: away in right. Unfortunately, Arena was discovered for all of

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Speaker 1: these activities and she was arrested on October twenty nine.

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Speaker 1: She was imprisoned, she was tortured, and she was sentenced

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Speaker 1: to execution. Her own method of escape was a little

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Speaker 1: like what her own rescue work had been. The go

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Speaker 1: to bribe a guard who kept her name on the

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Speaker 1: list of executed prisoners that he instead released her. She

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Speaker 1: was given false identification papers, and she stayed in hiding

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Speaker 1: for the rest of the war. The damage to her

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Speaker 1: legs from the torture and beatings that she received in

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Speaker 1: prison affected her ability to walk for the rest of

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Speaker 1: her life. After the war, true to her words, she

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Speaker 1: dug up the jars and started trying to reunite children

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Speaker 1: with their families, but unfortunately, almost all of the children's

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Speaker 1: families had in fact died in Treblinka. She was named

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Speaker 1: one of the Righteous among the Nations. On October ninety five,

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Speaker 1: in students at a Kansas high school wrote Life in

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Speaker 1: a Jar to publicize Arena's life after they read about

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Speaker 1: her in an article in U S News and World Report.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand three, she was awarded the Jan Carski

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Speaker 1: Award for Valor and Compassion from the American Center of

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Speaker 1: Polish Culture. She wasn't healthy enough at that point to travel,

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Speaker 1: so one of the children she rescued accepted it on

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Speaker 1: her behalf, and Irena died in two thousand eight. There

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Speaker 1: are people who call her the female Schindler, but it

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Speaker 1: really seems to me just as accurate to call Schindler

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Speaker 1: the male Sendler based on the numbers of people each

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Speaker 1: of them saved. Yeah, he's just got the bigger billing culturally.

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Speaker 1: So having having had a giant motion picture made about

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Speaker 1: a person doesn't totally solidify them into the public consciousness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it could certainly still happen. Yeah, there are lots and

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Speaker 1: lots of other really amazing stories of of uh people who,

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Speaker 1: rather than being anywhere on the spectrum between complicit and

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Speaker 1: actively harming other people, uh, I really just did a

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Speaker 1: lot to try to save other people and to protect

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Speaker 1: other human beings during the Holocaust. You can read lots

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Speaker 1: and lots of them at the Righteous among the Nation's website,

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Speaker 1: which we will link to from our show notes. So, Tracy,

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Speaker 1: do you have a little bit of listener mail for him? Do?

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Speaker 1: This is from Eric, and Eric says, Hello Holly and Tracy.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I want to thank you for this podcast.

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Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many long runs it has

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Speaker 1: gotten me through. I just listened to your show about

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Speaker 1: New England vampires and I thought I might add a

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Speaker 1: bit of information. I grew up in Exeter, Rhode Island,

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Speaker 1: home of the Lenap Mercy Brown vampire legend. Her grave

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Speaker 1: can still be seen at the Chestnut Hill Cemetery just

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Speaker 1: off Route one O two. If you visit today, or

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Speaker 1: even look for a picture of a stone online, you'll

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Speaker 1: see a strange black band of metal around its base.

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Speaker 1: For a while, my father worked as a volunteer caretaker

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Speaker 1: for the cemetery, where much of our family is buried,

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Speaker 1: and in addition to keeping the grounds looking tidy, he

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Speaker 1: occasionally had to deal with vandalism. One day, I came

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Speaker 1: home from school to discover that Mercy Brown's headstone was

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Speaker 1: sitting in our shed. Some kids had knocked it over,

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Speaker 1: so my father took it upon himself to fix it good.

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Speaker 1: Never one for half measures, he welded the metal band

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Speaker 1: and attached to support fart, bracing these against an extra

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Speaker 1: block of concrete. Whenever I hear the story of Mercy Brown,

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Speaker 1: I think about my dad, the unsung hero of keeping

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Speaker 1: her great sites dirty if strange. Looking for people to

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Speaker 1: come and see. I thought you might like the inside scoop.

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Speaker 1: Thanks again, they would need like the inside scoop. Thank

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Speaker 1: you so much, Eric, and I also so we get

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Speaker 1: a lot of people who tell us that they listened

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Speaker 1: to our podcast while running. Yeah, I always find that

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Speaker 1: the most immensely flattering thing, because when I run, I

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Speaker 1: have to have music on, and then also Zombies Run

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Speaker 1: has to be on. And then also preferably there's a

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Speaker 1: TV in front me on the treadmill that has a

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Speaker 1: TV show I'm actually interested in, Like, I have to

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Speaker 1: have all that stimulus happening at the same time, or

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Speaker 1: else I get bored and quit. And so the people

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Speaker 1: who are find the podcast enough to keep them running.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for telling us. So I know, I feel

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Speaker 1: like we should run a metronome so we stay on

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Speaker 1: some sort of paste. That would be terrible. We can

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Speaker 1: see we could try that one time and see if

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Speaker 1: anyone notices I too have to have minimum have to

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Speaker 1: have music. Yeah, I have to just have as as

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Speaker 1: much assaulting my senses as possible, or else I'm super

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Speaker 1: bored and just like I'm just gonna get off here now.

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Speaker 1: So you would like to write to us about this

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Speaker 1: or any other topic, you can. We are at History

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Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook at

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Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash history class stuff and on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at missed in History. Our tumbler is missed in History

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Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com and we have a pinboard on Pinterest.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to learn a little more about

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Speaker 1: some of what we've talked about today, you can come

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00:19:58,960 --> 00:20:02,040
Speaker 1: to our website. Search the word disguises and you will

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00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:05,159
Speaker 1: find the article ten insane disguises that actually worked, and

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Speaker 1: that includes a page on the whole rabbits blooding cocaine

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00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,200
Speaker 1: scheme that we talked about today. You can do all

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Speaker 1: that and a lot more at our website, which is

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com for more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot com.

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