Speaker 1: M was motherfucker's No, that's not how we're gonna start with.
Speaker 1: That's so good. I'm Robert Evans. Hello, I your This
Speaker 1: is the Behind the Bastard Show, the show where we
Speaker 1: tell you everything you don't know about the very worst
Speaker 1: people in all of history. Only today that's not what
Speaker 1: we're doing. This is our special Christmas episode. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I figured that in light of the holiday season, the
Speaker 1: fact that, uh, it's the time of the year where
Speaker 1: everybody tries to think about the better aspects of humankind,
Speaker 1: we would do a little break from tradition here and
Speaker 1: talk about someone who is not a bastard, but is
Speaker 1: in fact a little bit of a hero of mine,
Speaker 1: more than a little bit. My guest today is Ana Hosnia,
Speaker 1: co host of the Ethnically Ambiguous podcast What did I
Speaker 1: suk Up? She didn't even notice, Uh, what did you do?
Speaker 1: That's totally fine. Yeah, who cares? At this point? Who cares?
Speaker 1: He said? Most people go like Hasney, our hosts n
Speaker 1: that's you were you were there, my friends. All right,
Speaker 1: let's leave this all in, uh, Lawrence, Yeah, we're keeping
Speaker 1: it in and this will be good because that way,
Speaker 1: if any of our listeners meet you, they will know
Speaker 1: how to approximately. How are you doing today, Anna, I
Speaker 1: am good. You know I overslept this morning, um, which
Speaker 1: is common for me on a nice Monday. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: can't hop back that well into the work week after
Speaker 1: a weekend. No, there's no hopping for I just got
Speaker 1: off of a red eye from d C. So I am.
Speaker 1: I am ruined. Right. Were you fighting the Good War? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Kind of, yeah, I was. I was teaching baby cops
Speaker 1: how to find Nazis on the internet. That is the
Speaker 1: most youth thing I've ever heard in my life. Anna,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a fellow named Raoul Wallenberg? No,
Speaker 1: I'm you're about to. Uh. In a world so full
Speaker 1: of evil, depthless greed, unspeakable cruelty, and uh that one
Speaker 1: Arianna Grande music video that was kind of mean. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can be easy to feel like there's no way
Speaker 1: a single human being can make any kind of meaningful difference.
Speaker 1: I feel like that a lot. I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: common feeling in as we watch society spiral into oblivion.
Speaker 1: You've got that Weinstein laugh going again, just kind of
Speaker 1: bust into a cloud of dust. Yeah. Now, Raoul Wallenberg,
Speaker 1: I feel is proof against this kind of hopeless feeling.
Speaker 1: This is the story of a man who saved tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of lives using nothing but paper and the
Speaker 1: eternal power of lying. Uh Raul Wallenberg might be the
Speaker 1: man from history I most admire, and so today as
Speaker 1: sort of a Christmas present, or as a Yule present
Speaker 1: if you're not into Christmas, or as a uh Satanist
Speaker 1: Easter present. I think that's in December two. I don't
Speaker 1: really know much. No, probably not. I just lied about that, um.
Speaker 1: But in the world, I think this might also count.
Speaker 1: We're recording this during Hanukah, but it's not going to
Speaker 1: run during Hanukah. But you can consider it Hanakah present
Speaker 1: as well if that is your desire. Any kind of present,
Speaker 1: if you like presents, this this is a kind of
Speaker 1: one of those for you. Chris MCCA, if you will,
Speaker 1: Chris MCA Christmas, Chris MCA Satanist Easter. Right, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Roel wallenberg story after this roll. Wallenberg's parents were
Speaker 1: the science of two wealthy Swedish families. His father was
Speaker 1: also named Roel Wallenberg and was a naval officer in
Speaker 1: the Swedish Maybe. His mother, Maj Wizing, was the daughter
Speaker 1: of a neurologist. They married in nineteen eleven, but Rule
Speaker 1: contracted cancer a few months later and died three months
Speaker 1: before the birth of the Sun who would carry on
Speaker 1: his name. So, but he didn't go by the second
Speaker 1: or junior, not because his dad was dead as ship.
Speaker 1: So you don't got to do that if your dad dies,
Speaker 1: so Swedish. So Donald, well, no, not gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do that. That's breaking the law again. So r Raoul
Speaker 1: Wallenberg was born on August four, nineteen twelve, in Capsta, Sweden.
Speaker 1: He spent his first few years living in boogie comfort
Speaker 1: with his mother and his grandmother. Roe grew up in
Speaker 1: about as much privilege as it's possible to grow up with.
Speaker 1: His grandfather had been the Swedish ambassador to Japan, and
Speaker 1: his uncle's were wealthy bankers, founders of the Inn Skilled,
Speaker 1: a bank. He had kid who are bishops. His great
Speaker 1: grandfather was a Jewish man who become the king's chief
Speaker 1: financial advisor. Himself was not Jewish, but like he comes from,
Speaker 1: you know, privilege. When you're you've get a relative who's
Speaker 1: advising the king on where to invest money, you're anyone
Speaker 1: who's got to ambassador. Uncle. Yeah, here we go, here
Speaker 1: we go. Yeah yeah. I actually lived near the Saudi embassy,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you those kids do not drive well.
Speaker 1: Do you like ever like walk by and go who
Speaker 1: If I'm feeling crazy today, maybe I'll go in there.
Speaker 1: I mean again, we're really trying to get away from
Speaker 1: talking about committing crimes on this podcast. Sorry, I can't
Speaker 1: help myself. I will say it looks pretty fortified, like
Speaker 1: you would have you would have trouble um next to
Speaker 1: a really good shop for getting like desserts and stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes sense, yeah, really really nice desserts
Speaker 1: and coffee. Uh. Also a nice T shirt store next door?
Speaker 1: And then where is it like in Koreatown area. No,
Speaker 1: it's in like the West side. Uh oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yes, most of the embassies are like
Speaker 1: kind of that Wilsher Block, like some Saudi building, and
Speaker 1: it's like this giant fortress looking thing in the middle
Speaker 1: of like a shopping district. It's really weird. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things. There's no signs. I didn't realize until later,
Speaker 1: but there's all like regularly really nice cars with diplomatic
Speaker 1: plates driving through and like usually driving like a bat
Speaker 1: out of hell, because I mean I if I had
Speaker 1: diplomatic plates, yeah I would lawless. Yeah I would never
Speaker 1: drive sober. So okay. When Roll's mother remarried in nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve he was six years old, his stepdad became the
Speaker 1: administrator of the largest hospital in Sweden by all AC counts.
Speaker 1: His childhood was a happy one. His mom and stepdad
Speaker 1: gave him a great deal of freedom to roam around
Speaker 1: and uh. He generally had an opportunity not a lot
Speaker 1: of rich kids have, which is to kind of come
Speaker 1: to their own conclusions about life. Role was particularly close
Speaker 1: to his grandpa Gustav. Since Gustav spent his career as
Speaker 1: a diplomat, he considered himself a citizen of the world
Speaker 1: rather than just a Swite. He wanted his grandson Raoul
Speaker 1: to grow up understanding the duty and oppligatetion that he
Speaker 1: felt people owed each other. Raoul graduated from secondary school
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty. He spent nine months in mandatory military
Speaker 1: service and then spent a year at the University of
Speaker 1: Potier in France. By the time he was twenty, he
Speaker 1: was fluent in English, German, Russian, and French sounds exhausting, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always over. I mean it's good. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: always an interesting thing. Like American kids don't do that,
Speaker 1: Like it was kind of an old timey, kind of
Speaker 1: like European style to be like, I just learned all them.
Speaker 1: There's no television exactly, there's no Twitter to distract me anyway.
Speaker 1: I speak Chinese. Never going to go there because there's
Speaker 1: no antibiotics. It's it's just a hobby. Uh. Role traveled
Speaker 1: to the United States for college. He was an artist,
Speaker 1: and he sought a career in architecture. Although he could
Speaker 1: have afforded to have an Ivy League education, Role had
Speaker 1: no interest in surrounding himself with a bunch of wealthy bricks.
Speaker 1: His sister described him as an anti snob who loved
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, hot dogs, and sneakers. He went by the
Speaker 1: nickname Rudy. He would not have fit in at Harvard
Speaker 1: or Yale, but the University of Michigan proved to be
Speaker 1: a perfect fit. It's nice. I heard it's nice. It's
Speaker 1: like an an arbor area. It's an ann arbor area
Speaker 1: and just during the winter. Most of what I know
Speaker 1: about Michigan is that ann arbor is a place in
Speaker 1: it M. That's very true. Alright, moving on. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was popular at college. One classmate recalled that Rule was
Speaker 1: a star who always thought to the essence of an issue.
Speaker 1: He was full of energy, good humor, and generally a
Speaker 1: good guy. Role refused to join a fraternity because, in
Speaker 1: the words of a friend, he worried it would isolate
Speaker 1: him from a certain strata of students. Wow, he really
Speaker 1: is a good guy. If he's like, I'm sorry, fraternities
Speaker 1: just aren't for me. It's gonna I just feel like
Speaker 1: I don't want to hang around with rich people all
Speaker 1: the time. He's like, I'm not trying to get sucked
Speaker 1: into bro culture, you know, really trying to open my
Speaker 1: eyes and trying to the world. Yeah. Yeah. During the holidays,
Speaker 1: Wallenberg indulged in his passion hitchhiking. He wrote in a
Speaker 1: letter to his grandpa that quote, when you travel like
Speaker 1: a hobo, everything is different. You have to be on
Speaker 1: the alert the whole time. You're in close contact with
Speaker 1: new people every day. Hitchhiking gives you training in diplomacy. Intact,
Speaker 1: this training would prove critical for what's going to come later.
Speaker 1: Hitchhiking also gave Wallenberg experience in staying calm during moments
Speaker 1: of tremendous danger during his second summer in America. What
Speaker 1: just only a man could do that? Well, yeah, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: this is definitely I'm like, could I have been No,
Speaker 1: I would have been murdered in my moments of diplomacy.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, yeah, I mean. And as it heads up,
Speaker 1: this is a story of a guy who's born into
Speaker 1: like about as much privilege as it's possible to be
Speaker 1: born into, but who actually like deploys it really effectively,
Speaker 1: which is part of why I like this story. So
Speaker 1: during the second Summer in America, while he's hitching from
Speaker 1: Chicago to ann Arbor, the East coast distances are always weird.
Speaker 1: Like when I was in d C. I would go
Speaker 1: through like two or three states in a day, just
Speaker 1: like get lunch. And it's like, actually when I people
Speaker 1: doing it. Once when I was in Chicago, I took
Speaker 1: the train to ann Arbor for the day, it's not
Speaker 1: it's lunacy. I grew up in Texas and then I
Speaker 1: moved to California, So I'm used to a state being
Speaker 1: a thing that like you gotta really you gotta want it.
Speaker 1: The East Coast is nonsense. Uh and I don't care
Speaker 1: who knows it except for Pittsburgh fish East coast city
Speaker 1: of this podcast. Okay, yeah, I don't know why. That's
Speaker 1: where movie theaters started. Really yep, well then there you go. Um. So,
Speaker 1: during his second summer in America, this paragraphs taking as
Speaker 1: a while. While hitching from Chicago han Arbor, Wallenberg was
Speaker 1: picked up by a suspicious looking group before young men.
Speaker 1: He later recalled that he quote started to work my
Speaker 1: poverty into the conversation in order to convince them that
Speaker 1: he wasn't worse robbing. This did not succeed. One of
Speaker 1: the men jammed a revolver in Wallenberg's face and demanded
Speaker 1: all of his money. He stayed calm. In fact, he
Speaker 1: later reported that during the robbery, he realized his robbers
Speaker 1: were quote the ones who were frightened. Maybe because I
Speaker 1: was so calm. I really didn't feel any fear the
Speaker 1: whole time. It was more like an adventure. Um. He
Speaker 1: was robbed and tossed in a ditch, but even this
Speaker 1: didn't cause him to give up pitchhiking in the world.
Speaker 1: I understand, you know, they didn't, you know, they had
Speaker 1: to Yeah, they were robbing me. It's whatever. I feel
Speaker 1: bad that they were so scared. I was fine with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: He took this as a war to carry less cash
Speaker 1: and quote, try to become more devious, which is good
Speaker 1: advice in general in life. Yeah, he's like, I learned
Speaker 1: from everything. Yeah, he's he's really that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: This is a learning opportunity. Yeah. Rao came to love
Speaker 1: the United States and he had a difficult time leaving
Speaker 1: the country after February nineteen thirty five, when he completed
Speaker 1: his BA in architecture. Believe he did because the world
Speaker 1: was beckoning to him. Roll next spent six months in
Speaker 1: South Africa and then a year in Palestine as a
Speaker 1: banker's apprentice. It was there that he first came face
Speaker 1: to face with the consequences of Nazi racial policy. Palestine
Speaker 1: in the late thirties was flooded with Jewish refugees from Germany,
Speaker 1: men women who had been bankrupted by the Nuremberg Laws
Speaker 1: and forced to flee for their lives. One of Wallenberg's
Speaker 1: biographers believes that the conversations he had with Jewish refugees
Speaker 1: left him permanently changed. He felt as if he had
Speaker 1: to do something. I want to note that as soon
Speaker 1: as I said Nuremberg laws, the dog barked again. She
Speaker 1: doesn't care for it. No, she does not like Nazism.
Speaker 1: It's a good dog. It's a good dog. She's continuing
Speaker 1: to grow. Oh, somebody's delivering something, possibly a Nazi, every
Speaker 1: time she hears that word. In nineteen thirty seven, Rolls,
Speaker 1: grandfather and mentor, Gustav died. Roles next four years were difficult,
Speaker 1: or at least they were rich get difficult. He started
Speaker 1: two businesses, both of which failed, but he had family money,
Speaker 1: so these failures were more like hits to his pride
Speaker 1: than financial disasters. It is possible that some of his
Speaker 1: failure had to do with his inability to really focus
Speaker 1: on commerce. As the Third Reich War on and the
Speaker 1: Second World War sparked off, Rae grew more and more
Speaker 1: concerned for the Jews of Germany and of Europe. For
Speaker 1: a long while, his ability to help was limited to
Speaker 1: providing food aid to a family of refugees who had
Speaker 1: fled to Sweden. But in nineteen forty one, with Hitler
Speaker 1: at the height of his murderous power, Roles uncle Jacob
Speaker 1: introduced him to a man named Kalman Lauer now Lauer
Speaker 1: was a Hungarian businessman who had interests across Central Europe.
Speaker 1: Since Lara was Jewish, Nazi domination of Central Europe made
Speaker 1: it almost impossible for him to you know, travel, do
Speaker 1: not get killed. Exist. He's a rough time to exist
Speaker 1: if you were a Jewish guy in Central Europe. So
Speaker 1: Lower's business was essentially like an exotic food import company,
Speaker 1: and he put Wallenberg in charge of the company's European operations.
Speaker 1: Because Wallenberg looked like the whitest dude ever. Well, they're
Speaker 1: a picture of him up on the site. I don't
Speaker 1: have one on this document because I am cracked out.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I can see the literal red eye. Yeah, yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: Sophie has pulled one up. Oh he had like male
Speaker 1: pattern baldness. He's so cool. He's just a normal guy,
Speaker 1: just a normal guy. If you were central casting white man,
Speaker 1: you would pick Rao Wallaberg. Very normal looking dude. So
Speaker 1: Wallenberg is now in charge of this company's European operations,
Speaker 1: and he starts spending a lot of time in Budapest,
Speaker 1: which is kind of where they're centered. He fell in
Speaker 1: love with the city, which is an easy thing to
Speaker 1: do hud beautiful beauty. One of the prettiest cities to
Speaker 1: see from water that I've ever ye lovely place. Now.
Speaker 1: Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany at the time.
Speaker 1: Hungarians have kind of a history of being on the
Speaker 1: wrong side of any given conflict ideologically, but especially fried food.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, oh man, I had some of the best.
Speaker 1: It was a brick of bacon, like the size of
Speaker 1: an actual building brick that was all like the consistency
Speaker 1: of a cheetoh all the way through. It was so fried,
Speaker 1: so good, so good at fried food, and Hungary pretty
Speaker 1: good at beer, but on the wrong side of your diet. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: fried bacon in World War two and of World War One,
Speaker 1: one day, you know, one day, a lot of rough
Speaker 1: decisions made me tieth century just fry it. They've benefited
Speaker 1: the most from like Germany, just because of how nobody
Speaker 1: thinks about what the Hungarians did during that war anymore,
Speaker 1: because like they're right next to Germany, and oh boy,
Speaker 1: got washed away by all that, by all the German behavior.
Speaker 1: I guess we just let them take the blame for
Speaker 1: this one and start walk away whistling. Well, no one
Speaker 1: saw us. We were really there. They were definitely there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany. It's soldiers fought
Speaker 1: and died in Russia alongside the men of the Rmacht,
Speaker 1: but it was not officially part of the Third Reich.
Speaker 1: Hungarian Jews were forced to wear yellow stars wherever they went,
Speaker 1: just like German Jews um, but they were not sent
Speaker 1: to concentration camps, at least not initially. Admiral Miklos Horthy,
Speaker 1: Hungary's leader, was not a good guy, but he was
Speaker 1: a better dude to having charge than say Hitler if
Speaker 1: you happen to be Jewish, which is a low bar,
Speaker 1: very low bar. But he was not Hitler. So by
Speaker 1: early nineteen four, hungary seven hundred Thousandish Jews were probably
Speaker 1: the most intact Jewish community in Europe. With the war
Speaker 1: turning against them, the Nazi high command decided in essence
Speaker 1: that if they couldn't win the war against the Allies,
Speaker 1: they might at least win their war against the Jews,
Speaker 1: which is very much how they viewed it now. Admiral
Speaker 1: Harthy was not a total fool. It had become clear
Speaker 1: as a bell by nineteen forty four that Germans were
Speaker 1: not going to win this war. He tried to pull
Speaker 1: his country out of the war and out of its
Speaker 1: alliance with Germany. But Hitler was like, n Hitler, I'm Hitler.
Speaker 1: You may have heard of me. Yeah, yeah, we've both
Speaker 1: heard of Hitler. We've all heard of Hitler. The Vermacht
Speaker 1: occupied Hungary on March nineteenth, and Horthy was basically ordered
Speaker 1: to put a bunch of Hungarian Nazi types in charge
Speaker 1: of the country. So he wasn't removed from power at
Speaker 1: this point, but he was told, like, you didn't do
Speaker 1: a nothing, dog, and you better throw some people that
Speaker 1: we like in charge. So once the Nazis were in charge,
Speaker 1: the Nazis did what Nazis do, exterminate Jewish people. By
Speaker 1: July they had deported around four hundred and forty thousand Jews,
Speaker 1: and this was the rapidest deportation and elimination of a
Speaker 1: Jewish population Europe. But then a couple of weeks they
Speaker 1: deported like four hundred something thousand people, most of them
Speaker 1: wound up in Auschwitz, were three hundred and twenty thousand
Speaker 1: of them were exterminated upon arrival. Inter The US government
Speaker 1: kind of belatedly took a couple of years a million deaths.
Speaker 1: But while up until this point the United States is
Speaker 1: a reaction to the Holocaust could best be described as
Speaker 1: piss poor, the Roosevelt administration finally decided to do something
Speaker 1: about this thing. We don't have a word for yet
Speaker 1: because the word genocide wasn't point until after this point,
Speaker 1: but they decided to do something. Murder, murder, rampage, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They sent a guy named Iver Olsen to Stockholm as
Speaker 1: the official representative of the War Refugee Board or w RB. Now.
Speaker 1: Olsen's task was to find someone who could speak both
Speaker 1: Hungarian and German and was willing to travel into one
Speaker 1: of the deadliest parts of the world as the Reichs
Speaker 1: slowly collapsed and try to rescue Jews from Hitler's death machine.
Speaker 1: Olsen met Kalman Lauer, and Lauer recommended his friend Raoul
Speaker 1: Wallenberg for the job. Wallenberg instantly agreed. He traveled to
Speaker 1: Budapest in July ninety four as officially the secretary for
Speaker 1: the Swedish Embassy in Budapest. So we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about what he did in Budapest. But first, do you
Speaker 1: like products? Are you a fan of services? Well, that's
Speaker 1: what we're that's about ends and we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about not a bastard today, the opposite of a bastard hero.
Speaker 1: Uh And yeah, So when we last left off, Wallenberg
Speaker 1: had just sort of made it to Budapest as a
Speaker 1: secretary with the Swedish embassy. But that job title was
Speaker 1: essentially nonsense. Wallenberg had a pretty open sort of mandate
Speaker 1: to just try to save people's lives, and they've given
Speaker 1: him just a job, so that he was technically attached
Speaker 1: to the embassy, right and but was he almost just
Speaker 1: like on a secret mission. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: was happening. Uh So, Wallenberg's one condition for taking this
Speaker 1: job was that he have full permission to do his
Speaker 1: work without contacting the ambassador or any other government officials
Speaker 1: for permission about anything. Basically, he was like, I want
Speaker 1: to be a loose cannon diplomat. He doesn't have to
Speaker 1: play by anybody's rules but his own. And this rarely
Speaker 1: happens in government. But they were like, sure, kind of
Speaker 1: a weird time. It is a weird time. Why not,
Speaker 1: ye can't make the situation worse. Have you guys seen
Speaker 1: what's happening out there? Late July? The only intact Jewish
Speaker 1: community left in Hungary was the Jewish ghetto in Budapest. Now,
Speaker 1: before the Nazis could depourt and exterminate all of them too,
Speaker 1: Admiral Horthy ordered a halt to the deportations, and again
Speaker 1: not because he was a great guy, but because he
Speaker 1: was like, they're definitely going to lose the war, and
Speaker 1: I want to be the guy who tried to stop
Speaker 1: the mass murdering, so maybe I don't get hung Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's an opportunist. He's an opportunist. I mean, you get
Speaker 1: credit for trying to stop the Nazis from killing Jewish people,
Speaker 1: for sure, glad he did that. But again, Horthy's a
Speaker 1: complicated figure in expe, we'll say that. So his his
Speaker 1: halt held for a few months, but it was clear
Speaker 1: to everyone that eventually the Nazis were going to push
Speaker 1: back again, because it's kind of what Nazis do. Wallenberg
Speaker 1: began to focus his efforts on protecting the Jews and
Speaker 1: his care from being arrested or attacked in the hopes
Speaker 1: that the Jewish community in Budapest would just be able
Speaker 1: to sort of wait out the end of the war.
Speaker 1: So he was kind of playing for time. Raoul opened
Speaker 1: a diplomatic office in Budapest. He hired four hundred Jewish
Speaker 1: people to staff it. He didn't pay them because he
Speaker 1: didn't we have the money to do that. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't the point. As embassy employees, these Jews would be
Speaker 1: protected against deep pitation. Wallenberg ordered his men to remove
Speaker 1: their yellow stars. He told them, you are now under
Speaker 1: Swedish diplomatic protection. So this remains the only truly justified
Speaker 1: example of an unpaid internship in history. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was done well once. Let's just say this is
Speaker 1: gonna save your life. Let's just say you work without
Speaker 1: pay and so that we you can't get deported. That's
Speaker 1: that's cool with everybody. Yeah. His next move was to
Speaker 1: start issuing a new type of Swedish passport, shoots pass.
Speaker 1: The government gave him the authority to print fiftud of
Speaker 1: these passes, and he lobbied to increase that number to
Speaker 1: forty and eventually just started printing the Mountain hand them
Speaker 1: ount like hotcakes without permission. Yeah. Wallenberg designed these protective
Speaker 1: passes himself, because again he was an artist. He knew
Speaker 1: German and Hungarian fascists, like all fascists were unduly impressed
Speaker 1: by colorful government documents with impressive symbols on them, Wallenberg
Speaker 1: printed his protective passes and yellow and blue with a
Speaker 1: garish coat of arms that included the three crowns of
Speaker 1: Sweden in the middle. They were covered with stamps and signatures,
Speaker 1: all of which were just nonsense. Just he just knew
Speaker 1: that it made it look more legit. But like, whoa
Speaker 1: on this motherfucker. Alright, alright, I guess we're not committing
Speaker 1: genocide today. Did you see the stamps. It's just really
Speaker 1: ridiculous that it worked, because the Shoots pass was more
Speaker 1: or less alive. But it was a lie that worked.
Speaker 1: By the end of the war, it's possible that he
Speaker 1: issued as many as twenty thousand of them, which means
Speaker 1: twenty human lives were saved by what was, in essence
Speaker 1: a really good set of doodles in bullshit. But it worked.
Speaker 1: Oscar Schindler, for some comparison, saved around human lives, which
Speaker 1: is obviously still an immense, almost unthinkable act of heroism.
Speaker 1: But I'm just trying to point out the titanic scale
Speaker 1: of what Walllomberg accomplished, because he's just getting started at
Speaker 1: this point. So one of the reasons Walllomberg was so
Speaker 1: successful is that he had grasped an incredibly important truth
Speaker 1: about law and government, which is that neither of those
Speaker 1: things are real in any meaningful way outside of the
Speaker 1: heads of the people that live within them. The only
Speaker 1: thing that matters is the belief. If people believe something
Speaker 1: is official, if they believe you speak with the might
Speaker 1: of the government, and they'll get in trouble for disobeying you,
Speaker 1: well then you can make them you almost anything. In
Speaker 1: other words, Wallenberg took advantage of the Nazi tendency to
Speaker 1: just follow orders and used it to save lives rather
Speaker 1: than in them. Now uh, the War Refugee Board in
Speaker 1: Swedish government provided Wallenberg with enough funds to rent thirty
Speaker 1: two buildings. He declared them extra territorial buildings, which was
Speaker 1: again not a thing. Uh. He told everyone that these
Speaker 1: buildings were legally covered by Swedish diplomatic community, and he
Speaker 1: told this lie so forcefully that it wasn't questioned. The
Speaker 1: buildings he rented were built to hold less than five
Speaker 1: thousand people, but Wallenberg, being a pretty decent architect, remodeled
Speaker 1: them and was able to fit thirty five thousand Jews inside. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also operated a soup kitchen and a hospital for
Speaker 1: the people in Budapest Jewish ghetto. Uh yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: hitting with all steam here. A couple of months into
Speaker 1: the job. At this point, on October, the Hungarian Arrow
Speaker 1: Cross movement ceased power into posed Admiral Horthy. Now the
Speaker 1: Arrow Cross was essentially just a Hungarian Nazis you know. Um.
Speaker 1: They were backed by the Germans and acted as an
Speaker 1: even more puppety puppet government than the last one had been.
Speaker 1: The deportations resumed, Wallenberg instantly began confronting trains filled with
Speaker 1: Jews before they could depart for their journey to Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: Sandor Arda, a driver for Wallenberg and member of the
Speaker 1: Jewish Underground, later recalled one such instance quote he climbed
Speaker 1: up on the roof of the train and began handing
Speaker 1: in protective passes through the doors, which were not yet sealed.
Speaker 1: He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down.
Speaker 1: Then the Arrow crossmen began shooting and shouting at him
Speaker 1: to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing
Speaker 1: out passports into the hands that were reaching out for them.
Speaker 1: I believe the arrow crossmen deliberately aimed over his head,
Speaker 1: as not one shot hit him, which would have been
Speaker 1: impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because
Speaker 1: they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had
Speaker 1: handed over the last of the passports, he ordered all
Speaker 1: those who had one to leave the train and walked
Speaker 1: to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in
Speaker 1: Swedish colors. I don't remember exactly how many, but he
Speaker 1: saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and arrow
Speaker 1: Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.
Speaker 1: You would regularly stop trains and just shout at SS
Speaker 1: we even when he didn't have passports, would just brate
Speaker 1: the SS guys in charge of the crowd to let
Speaker 1: whole car loads of people off. Yeah this is There
Speaker 1: was nothing backing him up. He was just going out
Speaker 1: there and being like, these are Swedish citizens, no proof,
Speaker 1: just like just a really good liar and really good
Speaker 1: at bullshitting and pretending. He has the force of the
Speaker 1: power of confidence. It's the power of being a tall
Speaker 1: white guy. But he's like fake it till you make it,
Speaker 1: fake it till you a vertigenicide yeah. Now Nazis being Nazis,
Speaker 1: they did push back against Wallenburg safe houses. On Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: a bunch of Nazis raided one of Wallenburg safe houses
Speaker 1: and they took hundreds of people out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and marched them to the Danube. The
Speaker 1: Nazis tied three people together at a time, shot the
Speaker 1: person in the middle, and then would let the corpse
Speaker 1: pull the other two down under the freezing river. This
Speaker 1: was too safe, bullets, Germans, you know they're Nazis. Uh.
Speaker 1: Wallenberg found out what was going on and he rounded
Speaker 1: up volunteers from his staff, people who could swim, and
Speaker 1: together they jumped into the river and fished out as
Speaker 1: many survivors as they could find, saving fifty or sixty
Speaker 1: people that night. Now they the Arrow Cross had even
Speaker 1: less respect for due process than the last regime it had.
Speaker 1: They took to hunting down and murdering Jews in the street,
Speaker 1: so Wallenberg had to ramp up his rescue operations in
Speaker 1: order to cope. He found aryan looking young Jewish men
Speaker 1: and he put them in Erroo Cross uniforms and had
Speaker 1: them guard as safe houses. He started issuing protective papers
Speaker 1: to everyone and just ignored the fact that the Swedish
Speaker 1: government hadn't actually given them the power to do that.
Speaker 1: When it's funding ranlow, Wallenberg turned to blackmailing local officials
Speaker 1: and businessmen and committing other petty crimes in order to
Speaker 1: finance his rescue operations. At this point, why why not
Speaker 1: fuck it? The world's ending. Yeah yeah. The arrow Cross
Speaker 1: responded by declaring Wallenberg's protective passports to being no longer valid.
Speaker 1: Wallenburg protested to the government and somehow managed to get
Speaker 1: them reinstated, but at the end of the day, Aikman
Speaker 1: and the Nazis who really ran things in Hungary now
Speaker 1: were committed to wiping out the last of that country's Jews.
Speaker 1: By the winter of nineteen four, the Russians had advanced
Speaker 1: enough that the Germans could no longer send Jews to
Speaker 1: Auschwitz on trains. This didn't present a major problem for
Speaker 1: a guy like Aichman, because he's still had the option
Speaker 1: of just forcing the prisoners to go on a one
Speaker 1: d and twenty five mile death march without food or sleep,
Speaker 1: which you know, pretty much kills the same amount of
Speaker 1: people as against Chamber and the European Winter uh tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of Jews were sent off on an enormous
Speaker 1: force march to their doom. Wallenberg gathered up trucks, food
Speaker 1: and medical supplies. He traveled along the road of march
Speaker 1: and handed them out, trying to give the marchers the
Speaker 1: best odds of survival possible, and when he could, he
Speaker 1: attempted to abduct some of them. Here's a quote from
Speaker 1: the book Wallenberg by Katie Martin. You there, the Swede
Speaker 1: pointed to an astonished man waiting for his turn to
Speaker 1: be handed over to the executioner. Give me your Swedish
Speaker 1: passport and getting that line, he barked, and you get
Speaker 1: behind him. I know I issued you a passport. Walloenberg
Speaker 1: continued moving fast, talking loud, hoping the authority in his
Speaker 1: voice would somewhat rub off on these defeated people. The
Speaker 1: Jews finally caught on. They started groping in pockets for
Speaker 1: bits of identification. A driver's license or birth certificates seemed
Speaker 1: to do the trick. The Swede was grabbing them so
Speaker 1: fast the Nazis, who couldn't read Hungarian anyway, didn't seem
Speaker 1: to be checking faster. Wallenberg's eyes urged them faster. Before
Speaker 1: the game is up In minutes, he had several hundred
Speaker 1: people in his convoy. International Red Cross trucks there at
Speaker 1: Wallenburg's behest arrived and the Jews clambered on. Wallenberg jumped
Speaker 1: into his own car. He leaned out of the car
Speaker 1: window and whispered, I am sorry to the people he
Speaker 1: was leaving behind. I am trying to take the youngest
Speaker 1: ones first, he explained, I want to save a nation. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's wild. This is an act of pure balls. Wallenberg
Speaker 1: had no legal basis for what he was doing, but
Speaker 1: he knew something important about fascists, which is that they
Speaker 1: respond to confident leadership. It's kind of their only thing.
Speaker 1: They'll do whatever a loud and certain person tells him
Speaker 1: to do. That's so cool, yeah, he just, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is how naz fine. They just want a confident guy
Speaker 1: to yell at. Yeah. Saving people grew to become an
Speaker 1: all consuming obsession for Raoul. Before he traveled to Budapest,
Speaker 1: he had confided in a friend that his nightmare would
Speaker 1: be to return to Stockholm, knowing that he hadn't done
Speaker 1: absolutely everything in his power to save as many Jews
Speaker 1: as possible. So while he was in Budapest, Walloenberg slept
Speaker 1: just four hours a night at most. He was constantly
Speaker 1: in motion while he was awake. This was necessary because
Speaker 1: the fascists were always moving. To Tommy laugh that, a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old who lived in one of Wallenberg's safe
Speaker 1: houses recalled this. One morning, a group of these Hungarian
Speaker 1: fascists came into the house and said that all the
Speaker 1: able bodied women must go with them. We knew what
Speaker 1: this meant. My mother kissed me, and I cried, and
Speaker 1: she cried. We knew we were parting forever. And she
Speaker 1: left me there an orphan tall intents and purposes. Then
Speaker 1: two or three hours later, to my amazement, my mother
Speaker 1: returned with the other women. It seemed like a mirage,
Speaker 1: a miracle. My mother was there, she was alive, and
Speaker 1: she was hugging me and kissing me, and she said
Speaker 1: one word Wallenberg. I knew who she meant, because Wallenberg
Speaker 1: was a legend among the Jews. In a complete and
Speaker 1: total hell in which we lived, there was a savior
Speaker 1: angel somewhere moving around. After she had composed herself, my
Speaker 1: mother told me they were being taken to the river
Speaker 1: when a car arrived and outstepped Wallenberg, and they knew
Speaker 1: immediately who it was, because there was only one such
Speaker 1: person in the world. He went up to the Arrow
Speaker 1: Cross leader and protested that the women were there under
Speaker 1: his protection. They argued with him, but he must have
Speaker 1: had incredible charisma, some great personal authority, because there was
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing behind him, nothing to back him up. He
Speaker 1: stood out there in the street, probably feeling the loneliest
Speaker 1: man in the world, trying to pretend that there was
Speaker 1: some behind him. They could have shot him then and
Speaker 1: there in the street and nobody would have known about it. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were lented and let the women go. Oh. He
Speaker 1: just kept screaming at He just kept screaming at him
Speaker 1: until he saved hundreds of people. Yeah, that's crazy, Jesus,
Speaker 1: this man, this guy, right, he's hell of it. It's
Speaker 1: almost like a folk hero. Wallenberg became famous among the
Speaker 1: Nazis as well. Aikman called him juw Dog Wallenberg because
Speaker 1: Nazis are not very creative at all. That doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like ro ro Juel, like if if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do that, I'm just saying like there's other yea Aikman.
Speaker 1: They harassed him regularly, and the Nazis even blew up
Speaker 1: his car. At one point he took to sleeping in
Speaker 1: different houses every night in order to avoid assassination. Dawnt.
Speaker 1: The Soviet war machine was closing in on Budapest. There
Speaker 1: were only a hundred thousand or so Jews left alive
Speaker 1: in the Budapest ghetto. Aikeman ordered five D S. S.
Speaker 1: Troops and even more Arrow Cross soldiers to ring the
Speaker 1: ghetto and prepare for what would have been the largest
Speaker 1: gun based massacre of World War two. Now, for a
Speaker 1: little bit of historical perspective, the largest I think gun
Speaker 1: based massacre of the war was the Bobby Yard massacre,
Speaker 1: which I think was one been forty two with the
Speaker 1: innsets grouping unit shot like thirty thou people when they
Speaker 1: line a bunch of people up and then just yeah,
Speaker 1: and they actually had they stopped doing that in favor
Speaker 1: of the gas chambers because like so many of those
Speaker 1: guys went up killing themselves and becoming alcohol excuse that
Speaker 1: you just can't have people do that. It's hard, it's hard,
Speaker 1: it's hard. Fu off off. Now. So yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the plan, and these guys, you know, at this point
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty five year an S. S. Trooper in Budapest.
Speaker 1: Number one, you're probably were wounded fighting the Russians, which
Speaker 1: is why you're in a place like Budapest. So these
Speaker 1: were hard sons of bitches. Uh probably who would have
Speaker 1: been you know, they would have had to be to
Speaker 1: be capable of massacring a hundred thousand people. But that's
Speaker 1: the situation that we're in in ninety five, and we
Speaker 1: will talk about what happens next after somes and we're back. Boy, howdy,
Speaker 1: I do love ads, boy howdy. So we were talking
Speaker 1: about how the Nazis were going to massacre a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people by shooting them to death in the Budapest ghetto.
Speaker 1: Oh the joy, the joy. We're talking about the ads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now about Wallenberg coming to hopefully saved them at the
Speaker 1: last second. Yep, yep ye. So Aikman had ordered this massacre,
Speaker 1: but he was not there in person because he was
Speaker 1: trying to escape Nazi Germany, which he did for a while.
Speaker 1: So the task of murdering all these people went to
Speaker 1: s S General August Schmidt Duber. Now Wallenberg caught onto
Speaker 1: the plan and he went straight to schmid Duber's office.
Speaker 1: He promised the man that if anything happened to the ghetto.
Speaker 1: He would make it his business to ensure the general
Speaker 1: was found personally responsible for the massacre and hanged for
Speaker 1: crimes against humanity. This was pure bluff, but it worked.
Speaker 1: Schmidt Duber called off the massacre. Look, man, I don't
Speaker 1: want to have to get you hung. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get you in trouble, buddy. It's like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about. He's like, you know you're gonna get
Speaker 1: in trouble. I don't know. Let him go. I'll get
Speaker 1: your trouble with some sort of international legal committee that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist right now. The Soviets took Budapest later in January,
Speaker 1: and that should have been the start of Wallenberg's happy ending,
Speaker 1: but rules contact with the American government led the Soviets
Speaker 1: to suspect he was some sort of spy because I
Speaker 1: ever Olson, the guy who had hired him and worked
Speaker 1: for the War refug Board, also worked for the oss
Speaker 1: UM and well, the USSR was not nearly as anti
Speaker 1: Semitic as the Nazis, and they're still pretty anti semitic.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you read about the
Speaker 1: guys who found Wallenberg in there and why they found
Speaker 1: him suspicious is they could not wrap their hands around
Speaker 1: the idea of a guy doing everything that Wallenberg had
Speaker 1: done just to save Jewish people. They're like, there's gotta
Speaker 1: be he's gotta be some sort of a weird spy.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? Yeah, there's no way this man
Speaker 1: just has goodness of the heart. Yeah, there's the way
Speaker 1: that man just wants to save human lives. So Rao
Speaker 1: was arrested and we don't really know what happened to him.
Speaker 1: The most likely story is that he died sometime in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties in the KGB's infamous Lubyanka prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fucked up right. The Swedes were so concerned with
Speaker 1: having good relations with the USSR and staying neutral that
Speaker 1: they took no effort to save the life of a
Speaker 1: man who was a citizen of their country, a government employee,
Speaker 1: and one of the greatest Swedish heroes ever born uh
Speaker 1: In April of nineteen five, the U s State Department
Speaker 1: even offered Sweden for help in asking the Russians about Wallenberg,
Speaker 1: to like pressure them a little bit, and Sweden said no.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to compromise their neutrality by trying to
Speaker 1: save this guy's life. Uh. In nineteen forty six, after
Speaker 1: intense public demand, the Swedish Foreign Minister and went to
Speaker 1: Moscow to ask Joseph Stalin in essence what happened to Wallenberg.
Speaker 1: And he did ask him that, but immediately afterwards he
Speaker 1: said that he personally thought Wallenberg had probably died in
Speaker 1: Budapest and basically gave Stalin an opening, and Stalin took
Speaker 1: the opening and just didn't say this was untrue. So
Speaker 1: that's the line the government went with for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you never give Stalin an opening. You never give Stalin
Speaker 1: an opening, not j Staal. That's what he's gonna is
Speaker 1: what he's gonna do. So in nineteen fifty seven, after
Speaker 1: Stalin's death, the Soviet Union finally admitted that Wallenberg had
Speaker 1: in fact survived the war. They said he died of
Speaker 1: a heart attack in captivity in nineteen forty eight. This
Speaker 1: remained the Russian government's official stance until well after the
Speaker 1: end of the Cold War. We still don't really know
Speaker 1: what happened to Raoul, although it's safe to say the
Speaker 1: Russian government imprisoned, probably tortured in one way or the other,
Speaker 1: definitely murdered him uh now at the end of World
Speaker 1: War Two was a chaotic time. Estimates very wildly on
Speaker 1: how many lives Wallomberg saved. The most common estimate is
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand human beings, but it maybe several times
Speaker 1: that many. Because his activities provided a blueprint several other
Speaker 1: embassies used to rescue Jewish people as well. Wallomberg almost
Speaker 1: certainly saved more lives than any other member of the
Speaker 1: righteous among nations, which is sort of a title that
Speaker 1: the Nation of Israel has awarded the non Jews who
Speaker 1: saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Nobody saved more people
Speaker 1: than Raoul Wallomberg. And in fact, a hundred thousand lives
Speaker 1: is uh one six of the total number of Jews
Speaker 1: dead in the Holocaust saved by one guy. Wow. Gideon Housner,
Speaker 1: the man who prosecuted Adolf Aikman and later was the
Speaker 1: chairman of Yad Vashan, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, said
Speaker 1: this about Raoul Wallomberg. Here is a man who had
Speaker 1: the choice of remaining in secure, neutral Sweden when Nazism
Speaker 1: was ruling Europe. Instead, he left this haven and went
Speaker 1: to what was then one of the most perilous places
Speaker 1: in Europe, hungry and for what to save Jews. He
Speaker 1: won his battle, and I feel that in this age
Speaker 1: when there is so little to believe, in, so very
Speaker 1: little on which our young people can pen their hopes
Speaker 1: and ideals, he is a person to show to the
Speaker 1: world who knows so little about him. This is why
Speaker 1: I believe the story of Rold Wallenberg should be told
Speaker 1: in his figure, in all its true proportions, projected into
Speaker 1: human minds. M hm, that's that's the story. Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: God damn the Russia always everything. Well, I mean, they
Speaker 1: did beat the Nazis, but yeah, and they go and
Speaker 1: take the one man who like basically was out. You're
Speaker 1: screaming at Nazis until they were like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm confused. These voices allowed I guess like the Hungarian
Speaker 1: Jewish community wound up, even though it survived later than
Speaker 1: most of them were, being like one of the most
Speaker 1: completely destroyed Jewish communities in all of Europe, and virtually
Speaker 1: the only Hungarian Jews who survived did so because of
Speaker 1: what burke, Oh my god, hundred thousand lives. Do you
Speaker 1: think they tortured him just to find out who he
Speaker 1: was working for and just wouldn't believe it, would you
Speaker 1: know it could be this nice? Yeah that's crazy to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a man. What do you think happened to him?
Speaker 1: I think he was probably thrown in a prison, tortured
Speaker 1: for a little while, thrown into a prison. I think
Speaker 1: it's very possible he did die up a heart attack.
Speaker 1: He was on the thirty two when all this happened.
Speaker 1: But you know, you torture somebody for a while and
Speaker 1: you starved them, you know. So he started doing this
Speaker 1: in his early thirty's, just thirty two when he got
Speaker 1: the job thirty two. He's just like, well, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: a save some lives thirty two with his only professional
Speaker 1: training and architecture, and just was like, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go lie until I've saved a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people and then did it. I imagine at thirty two,
Speaker 1: I will still be doing nothing. Well what I like
Speaker 1: about podcasting? Podcasting? Yeah, yeah, he's a Well that's why
Speaker 1: he's a good person to, uh, to fill people's minds with,
Speaker 1: especially on a show where we otherwise just talk about
Speaker 1: reckless evil and the insane deadliness of human hate. This
Speaker 1: guy who grew up and learned one of the most
Speaker 1: important truths you can learn as a tall white guy,
Speaker 1: which is that there's all it's a superpower. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're a tall white guy and you just balls
Speaker 1: your way into a situation with confidence, nan out of
Speaker 1: ten people will listen to you. Night Nazis, Nazis. I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I mean, we're supposed to kill these people,
Speaker 1: but look at how tall and white he is, and
Speaker 1: he's got that paper with all the stamps on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess, I guess we don't kill
Speaker 1: these people. It's crazy. It's wild. Get all the train,
Speaker 1: Get off the train, Get off the train. Look at
Speaker 1: how tall this guys. Get off the train. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing story. Yeah, never heard of him. That's wild.
Speaker 1: I don't even I am so upset with the USSR. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty frustrating. Sweden. Yeah, God, that is so annoying.
Speaker 1: It's like you just the man did so much. It's
Speaker 1: so much in like five or six months, saved a thousand. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we're neutral. Yeah, yeah, so be like Raoul Wallenberg, print
Speaker 1: some fake passports and go save people. Speak loudly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: be tall, do crime, save lives. Yellot fascist, yellot fat,
Speaker 1: yell at fascists, but productively yellot fascists to get them
Speaker 1: to be less fashion. Do you think that would work
Speaker 1: with the alt right? If you just want to just
Speaker 1: spoke loud, like guys, I don't know about this. It's
Speaker 1: worth shop. I don't know. He's talking quite loud. And
Speaker 1: waffle house, yeah, waffle house, yeah, yeah, and just give
Speaker 1: them heart disease through waffle house. Just poison all the waffles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Budapest way, fry everything. Oh yeah, I do
Speaker 1: want to go back to Hungary. You need more. It's
Speaker 1: actually quite cheap too, yeah, very inexpensive place. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: recommend kind of a dictator in charge. Now, that part
Speaker 1: is not great, isn't. Europe is just like us. They
Speaker 1: go back and forth. The same thing with Poland it's
Speaker 1: happening over there as well. Yeah. Yeah, people have some
Speaker 1: fascism in charge. Forget how bad it went the last time,
Speaker 1: and they're like, what if we try bad again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe not everyone will die this time. Yeah, Well we're
Speaker 1: on a wave. We better hope. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: Wallenberg's waiting in the wings getting their degrees in architecture
Speaker 1: right now, learning how to use their power as tall,
Speaker 1: balding white men to shout the world and do a
Speaker 1: better place I hope. So I need someone to just
Speaker 1: tell me where to go. I know. That's that's why
Speaker 1: it works. Yeah. So this is a great story about
Speaker 1: the power of lives and bullshit to save lives. I
Speaker 1: love that part of it because I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: aalizing bullshite. Great thing to be able to do. Anna
Speaker 1: pluga bless You can listen to my podcast with sharene
Speaker 1: Units called Ethnically Ambiguous on the House Stuff Works Network. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter, Anna host n. I
Speaker 1: tweet about stuff. I retweet Robert every once a while.
Speaker 1: Robert just posted a really crazy video how to get
Speaker 1: out of like speaking of heroes, when you fall through ice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he did it by falling through ice on the
Speaker 1: video and then like calmly explaining the things that you
Speaker 1: need to do to extricate yourself from that situation. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's truly like well, and it teaches you these things.
Speaker 1: There's a similarity in that video between what Wallenberg did,
Speaker 1: which is that when the guy first falls in the ice.
Speaker 1: You can hear in his voice that he's in a
Speaker 1: pretty dire straight because it's shocking and and that's why
Speaker 1: most people dies, that they panic in that moment of
Speaker 1: extreme pain. And he walks you through that, like you
Speaker 1: just have to breathe for a while and calm down
Speaker 1: and realize the cold's not going to kill you right away.
Speaker 1: You have time, it passes, You have time to think
Speaker 1: through your actions and calmly and decisively extricate yourself in
Speaker 1: the situation and in every dangerous situation I've ever been,
Speaker 1: and that really is the key, is like, Okay, my
Speaker 1: body is telling me to take certain actions right now,
Speaker 1: but maybe I should think for just a second and
Speaker 1: like figure out calmly, Like you almost never need to
Speaker 1: take that sort of panic thrash response. It's all about
Speaker 1: moving with purpose. And yeah, yeah it's great video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look it up somewhere. It's on your Twitter. Look up
Speaker 1: guy falls through ice YouTube or my Twitter. Just today,
Speaker 1: but I will have tweeted probably fifty times a rollback
Speaker 1: form nonsense. Yeah, yeah, I don't even know what day
Speaker 1: it is. So thanks for having me, Thanks for being
Speaker 1: on Yep, you can buy a T shirt, you know,
Speaker 1: I should, you should buy a T shirt, and you
Speaker 1: listening should buy a T shirt from t Publix behind
Speaker 1: the Bastard store phone cases as well, cocaine spoons. Sophie
Speaker 1: is saying that they're they sell branded coke spoons now fantastic,
Speaker 1: So Fleetwood Mac, if you're listening branded coketotes, branded coke tootes, yep. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Also Fleetwood Mac. We're really really aiming for that. Sweet
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac immigrants sending to blow cocaine up your butt.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I right, Okay, you can find my book A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Ice. It's a great Christmas gift, although this
Speaker 1: will probably be running like the day before Christmas. But
Speaker 1: you can buy a kindle book anytime. Amazon Prime man
Speaker 1: speaking of gigantic evil machines that destroy the support the evils.
Speaker 1: Oh god, this paper is even from Amazon. Why Amazon
Speaker 1: selling paper? Do everything, Robert, There's nothing you can at
Speaker 1: one point came through the hands of Amazon. Anyway, Amazon,
Speaker 1: if you want to throw some ad rev oar No boy, No,
Speaker 1: by the way, my home generates misery made by Amazon.
Speaker 1: Wait what yeah, I live in a Prime home. No,
Speaker 1: you're lying. It's not it's coming. Oh no, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm sure we will all live in Prime homes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I live in the Prime apartment complex. There's no bathrooms,
Speaker 1: there's a hole in the wall. You have to deliver
Speaker 1: three packages every morning. Part of your ready to just
Speaker 1: start working Amazon. Amazon has started to do this thing
Speaker 1: where like they just have random people delivering stuff. They
Speaker 1: do they're not good at They just show up in
Speaker 1: random cars. Just see packages lying everywhere now where. It's like,
Speaker 1: you guys don't know how to do this job. They
Speaker 1: really they it's third party all the way. They just
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, you can do it. Half of them
Speaker 1: don't deliver your packages. You're like, why do you have
Speaker 1: this job? But random people just did everything for nothing,
Speaker 1: and that's how our company works. And I get a
Speaker 1: billion dollars a day. That's the Jeff Bezos planned. He's
Speaker 1: another guy just was like talking very loudly, and we're
Speaker 1: all like, yeah, that's why I have so much respect
Speaker 1: for the one guy who doesn't use that power for evil.
Speaker 1: Rou Wallenberg, so he was in charge of Amazon. Probably
Speaker 1: just be a company dedicated to saving Syrian refugees. Amazon Prime,
Speaker 1: you just literally get we just ship them out of
Speaker 1: the country. You're just delivered to your house, and just
Speaker 1: take care of them, help them started your life. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're listening Amazon, that's what you should be doing
Speaker 1: to the Greek the islands in Greece. I will stop
Speaker 1: talking smack if you just start shipping people out of country.
Speaker 1: Cameroon too, can maybe use it. Ugly stuff going on
Speaker 1: there anyway, anywhere anywhere where there's some serious strife with
Speaker 1: the people Honduras. Ship people out of there. Send them
Speaker 1: to Ohio. No, that seemed to mean to them. Send
Speaker 1: them to Michigan. Yeah, Rollenberg would appreciate that. Yeah, Michigan,
Speaker 1: nice place, beautiful, beautiful. All right, Well, this has been
Speaker 1: the episode Mary Holidays. Enjoy your winter times, eat egg nog,
Speaker 1: fight Nazis. I love about you.