Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the
Speaker 2: podcast that you already listened to this week. Otherwise it
Speaker 2: won't make any sense because this is part two. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest, much like my
Speaker 2: guest in part one, very similar person actually to my
Speaker 2: guest in part one is Caitlyn Durante.
Speaker 3: Hi, Kaitlin, No, I'm Datelin Karante. Ah, similar but different.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll have to go over all of it again.
Speaker 2: Let me just scroll back up script.
Speaker 3: I'm so confused.
Speaker 2: Already, just kidding.
Speaker 3: It's me, Caitlin.
Speaker 2: Did you get did you get goofed? Did I goof you?
Speaker 2: I was goofed? Yeah, well call me goofy because I
Speaker 2: ride with the skateboard with the wrong foot in front,
Speaker 2: because I know about skateboards and Allie's I swear I'm
Speaker 2: a real punk art producer. Is Sophie Hi, Sophie Hi?
Speaker 1: Someone just say me this video of h Hairs and
Speaker 1: two Balls talking about tacos and I'm not using spices
Speaker 1: and I can't focus on anything else.
Speaker 4: She's like, what do you what do you put in
Speaker 4: your your taco? And he's like nothing, Wait, who's the
Speaker 4: who's the heat in this sentence, that is her running
Speaker 4: mate Tim Walls.
Speaker 2: Oh, not tracks.
Speaker 1: She's like, you don't season it, and he's like.
Speaker 2: No, I'm from the Midwest.
Speaker 3: I mean I could have absolutely guessed that.
Speaker 1: She said, do you put any flavor in?
Speaker 2: He goes, oh, no, he doesn't do his own cooking.
Speaker 2: I just think that's.
Speaker 1: Really funny that he's like, no, It's like it's a
Speaker 1: shell with unseasoned meat and some cheese, probably the pre
Speaker 1: shredded kind. I support everyone.
Speaker 2: Well, also supported but unknown about what spices they used
Speaker 2: is Rory, our audio engineer, Hi, Rory, Hi, Riri Hi.
Speaker 2: And our theme musical was written for us by un woman.
Speaker 2: And this is part two in a two parter on
Speaker 2: Francis Perkins, the progressive person who Madam, Oh, I don't
Speaker 2: know how to talk. I'll just go back to my script,
Speaker 2: the thing with the reading and the story I'm telling.
Speaker 2: Where we last left our hero. She had become the
Speaker 2: Secretary of the Department of Labor, the first Madam secretary,
Speaker 2: and she desegregated the Department of Labor, which was shocking
Speaker 2: that that was a thing that had to be done.
Speaker 2: And she created the ins which is a thing that
Speaker 2: is shocking that it made the world better instead of worse,
Speaker 2: because usually when I think of the I s, I
Speaker 2: don't have positive connotations. Although now that ice is around,
Speaker 2: the ions looks rosy in comparison. But Franklin Desmond, I
Speaker 2: don't know his middle name, Roosevelt.
Speaker 3: Took office or Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: Right, just named himself after his wife over a D
Speaker 2: in front of it. Yeah, excellent. There's a joke about
Speaker 2: the fact that Eleanor Roosevelt was a lesbian in there,
Speaker 2: but I'll leave it to the audience because he was one.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to make a anyway, or at least
Speaker 2: was queer. FDR took office only about a month after
Speaker 2: Hitler came to power in Germany. Both happened in early
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three. The biggest issue for most Americans was,
Speaker 2: of course, the Great Depression, but folks were looking at
Speaker 2: Germany and a lot of folks were really nervous because
Speaker 2: Germany wasn't looking so great. Well, some people were very
Speaker 2: excited because they were fascists also, Yes, but was it
Speaker 2: you I had on a guest when I talked about
Speaker 2: Hollywood and the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yes, definitely me. It was me.
Speaker 2: It's been a while. The podcast has been running for years.
Speaker 1: Whenever any of us like, do the amount of podcasts
Speaker 1: we do, it's like, sure, I maybe I was there.
Speaker 2: I remember every way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember the type set people who put the people,
Speaker 3: the letters in the things.
Speaker 2: The printers. You were here for hobo printers. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: was a good episode.
Speaker 3: That was a great episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've been on not a brag or anything, but I've
Speaker 3: been on this show maybe four maybe this is my
Speaker 3: fifth time.
Speaker 1: I don't wow, five timer club. Do you get a
Speaker 1: do you get a pull blaser? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Where's my jacket?
Speaker 2: We're going to send you a sword?
Speaker 3: Oh well, I would prefer what are they called? What
Speaker 3: is it a flail?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do have one of those on my wall,
Speaker 2: but that rocks. My friends were like, actually I won't
Speaker 2: I'm not going to name them, but two of my
Speaker 2: friends who've been on this show before found a flame,
Speaker 2: like a cast bronze flail at a thrift store or something,
Speaker 2: or an antique store, and we're like, m hmmm, how
Speaker 2: did Margaret's flail get here? So they got it and
Speaker 2: brought it to me because they knew it was mine.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, But the main purpose of that is hitting Nazis,
Speaker 2: and don't worry. So Nazis are going to die in
Speaker 2: this story. And FDR was a Democrat, and the Democrats
Speaker 2: had not done their full one point eighty were the
Speaker 2: center left instead of the center right party. Thing yet right,
Speaker 2: they're not the most progressive party yet, although they're well
Speaker 2: on their way. And so a ton of his cabinet,
Speaker 2: because he's trying to hold onto the old Dixiecrat crowd,
Speaker 2: a ton of his cabinet are like the children of
Speaker 2: Confederate soldiers and like believers in the Lost Cause and
Speaker 2: all kinds of right wing, bigoted bullshit. And America was
Speaker 2: not exactly devoid of anti Semitism. So there are these
Speaker 2: immigration quotas per country, like we talked about, but from
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three to nineteen thirty the German quota was
Speaker 2: never filled because it was up to the US consult
Speaker 2: in any given country to decide who to grant emigration
Speaker 2: visas to. And in nineteen seventeen, the law had given
Speaker 2: the consuls incredibly broadly way to declare someone unfit. If
Speaker 2: you're going to be a public charge, you can't come
Speaker 2: and for some weird reason, all of the Jews were
Speaker 2: bankrupt in Germany. The weird reason is that the Nazis
Speaker 2: took all their stuff and they had to declare bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, so even like ostensibly middle class Jews, right, were
Speaker 2: no longer middle class and could not prove that they
Speaker 2: wouldn't be public charges in a successful way. Right. So
Speaker 2: the consul in Germany is denying Jews the chance to
Speaker 2: emigrate to the US, determining that they're unfit, and Perkins
Speaker 2: is furious. She basically starts a turf war with the
Speaker 2: State Department over who had it control of immigration, because
Speaker 2: ostensibly she had the I ins, but the State Department
Speaker 2: was like controlling all this other stuff, right m And
Speaker 2: the State Department was all about restrictionism, which means don't
Speaker 2: let anyone come here, and the labor department is now
Speaker 2: all about accepting refugees. Sort of. It's a mess. And
Speaker 2: the first week she's in office or office isn't, I
Speaker 2: don't know whatever. First week she's at work, five different
Speaker 2: men told her that they were in charge of immigration.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so that's like in office space when he
Speaker 3: has eight different bosses and they're all on his case
Speaker 3: about TPS reports.
Speaker 2: Where he should just burn down the building to get
Speaker 2: a stapler back.
Speaker 4: M hmm.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Her first plan to get Jewish immigrants in from Germany
Speaker 2: was to set up a series of charge bonds. And
Speaker 2: so this is that people don't become public charges. There
Speaker 2: was a loophole in the nineteen twenty four law that
Speaker 2: anyone who's you know, it bans anyone who's at risk
Speaker 2: of becoming a public charge, but it allows the labor
Speaker 2: secretary to offer that potential immigrants could offer bonds that
Speaker 2: covered in case they needed assistance. And again they put
Speaker 2: this in assuming that the labor secretary would always be
Speaker 2: right wing, so it wasn't be a problem. And so
Speaker 2: that like rich people could get in if they can
Speaker 2: come up with five hundred dollars from this or that source,
Speaker 2: which is about twelve thousand dollars today, this would be
Speaker 2: deposited as like assurance against them needing further assistance. And
Speaker 2: this isn't great, right, we should just let people in
Speaker 2: so that they don't get murdered. And you know it's okay,
Speaker 2: My taxes can go to pay for people's not starving
Speaker 2: to death. My taxes go to a lot worse stuff
Speaker 2: than that. You know, tell me about it, but it's something, right.
Speaker 2: Setting up this charge bond system is something, and it
Speaker 2: starts immediately getting more people over and a Jewish employee
Speaker 2: the Labor Department wrote the legal argument for this, and
Speaker 2: the State Department pushed back with a loophole of its
Speaker 2: own and saying that she was like threatening national security
Speaker 2: because if anything threaten national security, then be overridden by
Speaker 2: the State Department. Blah blah, blah, blah blah. Another group
Speaker 2: that fought against these charge bonds and Jewish immigration from
Speaker 2: Germany was the repeated villain of this pod, the American
Speaker 2: Federation of Labor the AFL, And it was actually fear
Speaker 2: of pissing off the AFL because they were an essential
Speaker 2: ally to this, like because they're pushing for the new Deal, right,
Speaker 2: and so they need labor on their side. The bond
Speaker 2: system gets put into place, but it's not really used
Speaker 2: because they're afraid of pissing off not just the AFL,
Speaker 2: but like all the people who are really mad about this,
Speaker 2: and so some people are starting to get rescued. Even
Speaker 2: some Jewish Americans are scared of letting Jewish immigrants in
Speaker 2: this is not overall the case, but there's this massive
Speaker 2: unemployment problem, and some folks are like, oh, if more
Speaker 2: Jewish immigrants come in, there's going to be more anti
Speaker 2: Semitism here, which is probably true, just not a good
Speaker 2: reason to not let people in.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Overall, the arge bond thing was like sort of a success,
Speaker 2: more folks started being able to come over. This isn't
Speaker 2: enough for her because it isn't solving the problem, and
Speaker 2: she is dedicated to social justice, not making sure she
Speaker 2: looks good. She's not virtue signaling, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, So her goal is anyone who is a refugee
Speaker 3: or just wants to immigrate to the US should be
Speaker 3: able to Is that her stance?
Speaker 2: I am uncertain if she's entirely open door policy, I
Speaker 2: am uncertain. I get the impression that she probably like
Speaker 2: wants refugees to be able to come here, and like
Speaker 2: probably wants the overall quota, like probably doesn't like the
Speaker 2: quota system. But like, you know, I think she's still
Speaker 2: not totally open door, but I'm not certain. Actually I
Speaker 2: don't have any like specific counter evidence that says she
Speaker 2: isn't totally open door. Sure, but I feel like it
Speaker 2: would have come up specifically as like one of the
Speaker 2: many things that people yelled at her about.
Speaker 3: Right, that's true.
Speaker 2: So her next plan is she's like, all right, can
Speaker 2: we at least fucking let German Jewish kids in? Can, like,
Speaker 2: they can't steal your jobs? Can we just fucking let
Speaker 2: kids in? Probably she'd said this without the cussing, because
Speaker 2: she was devoutly Christian. She formed the Children's Bureau of
Speaker 2: the Ins and partnered with a group called the German
Speaker 2: Jewish Children's Aid. The situation in Germany was continuing to
Speaker 2: get worse. Of course, Jewish parents suddenly didn't have jobs
Speaker 2: and they couldn't provide for their kids, and basically they
Speaker 2: were like, well, we all need to get out, but
Speaker 2: if I can get my kids out, that's something. And
Speaker 2: you know, they're like, all these Jewish groups are like, well,
Speaker 2: the US is too xenophobic to take us, but maybe
Speaker 2: it'll take our kids as a temporary measure. You know,
Speaker 2: the kids will come home once it's danger is passed, right,
Speaker 2: because no one knows exactly what's going to happen in Germany. Sure,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately this means that all these kids that get
Speaker 2: fostered through this program, most of them never see their
Speaker 2: parents again. But Perkins had to go to war with
Speaker 2: the State Department yet again to get this to happen.
Speaker 2: But she succeeded, not anywhere near to the degree that
Speaker 2: she wanted, right, Like, she manages to get an agreement
Speaker 2: that ten kids a month can come over.
Speaker 3: That's so few, but I know, better than nothing but
Speaker 3: a pitiful number.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that I found so fascinating about this
Speaker 2: because when I first started reading this and thinking about
Speaker 2: her as a potential topic, she has like access to
Speaker 2: the you know, she's one of the people running the
Speaker 2: federal government of the United States, right, so you sort
Speaker 2: of expect her to be saving like tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of people's lives, right, right, But in the end, almost
Speaker 2: everyone who is saving people from the Holocaust is doing
Speaker 2: it on like an individual level, like at scale, by
Speaker 2: continuing to do it over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: But people are saving like a bus load of people
Speaker 2: or a train car's worth of people, or ten people
Speaker 2: here or two people there, you know, and it all
Speaker 2: adds up. It didn't add but enough, right obviously, because
Speaker 2: the Holocaust happens. But that was what was so fascinating,
Speaker 2: is that, Yeah, it's like so few, but like, you
Speaker 2: know it's something right now?
Speaker 3: Is this the case of that five hundred dollars?
Speaker 2: No thing?
Speaker 3: So it's okay, So they didn't have to provide any
Speaker 3: kind of like security deposit kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So what they're doing instead is that they're placing them
Speaker 2: with foster families, and the foster families are agreeing to
Speaker 2: make sure that the kids don't become public charges. And
Speaker 2: so there's this huge bureaucracy in order to get I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure she would have been okay with like, can
Speaker 2: we just please bring these kids over and we'll figure
Speaker 2: it out, But in order to get anyone to go
Speaker 2: along with it, they have like this whole bureaucracy going
Speaker 2: around and like inspecting the foster families and like making
Speaker 2: sure I mean, and you do want to place kids
Speaker 2: with like safe homes, right, But yeah, five hundred and
Speaker 2: ninety seven kids from nineteen thirty four to nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: like ten kids or so are coming over a month
Speaker 2: until the US enters the war, and they're placed with
Speaker 2: I believe Jewish families. I know the only examples I
Speaker 2: saw were with Jewish families. So it's also not a
Speaker 2: like we're going to turn them all Christian or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know. And this program was overseen by a working
Speaker 2: class Jewish woman who is raised by immigrants herself in
Speaker 2: Saint Louis, And they had to like beg for permission
Speaker 2: to fundraise to make sure the kids wouldn't become public charges,
Speaker 2: not beg for the funds. Those were reasonably easy to get, right, Like,
Speaker 2: people came forward to save kids, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of gofundmes back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a depressing, like nothing ever changes
Speaker 2: when we think about like how much people are specifically
Speaker 2: fundraising to get families out of Palestine right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well right when you were saying it's only like
Speaker 3: ten people a month, I'm like, yeah, like happening on
Speaker 3: a like pretty individual basis. It reminded me of like
Speaker 3: how individual families have set up gofundmes to you know,
Speaker 3: flee from the genocide. But yeah, it's it's really yeah,
Speaker 3: history repeats itself, doesn't.
Speaker 2: It in real nasty ways, and like and the fact
Speaker 2: that so much of that fundraisiness specifically to cover like
Speaker 2: visa fees and things, right or should just be which.
Speaker 3: Is like can you just I don't know considering their
Speaker 3: circumstances not have that. Yeah, just like yeah, just say decide, oh,
Speaker 3: to save these people from death, yeah and genocide, let's
Speaker 3: waive the fees. Like what is no? I absolutely so depressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that. I don't know. It really stuck
Speaker 2: with me as I was reading this as thinking about
Speaker 2: yeah exactly, that about how individuals and and they had
Speaker 2: to keep this entire project out of the public eye
Speaker 2: because they're afraid of stirring a anti Semitic backlash because
Speaker 2: this like army of children, you know, coming over to
Speaker 2: grow up and eventually steal American jobs. Like like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to work. No one wants to worry. Everyone
Speaker 2: just wants enough money to get But I mean, I, okay,
Speaker 2: that's not sure. I liked making stuff. I like being
Speaker 2: part of a thing that I care about, but.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I don't know, but I don't like doing labor.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I want my swimming pool for free.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And that's why this podcast is brought to
Speaker 2: you by by Margaret and Caitlin swimming Pools dot com.
Speaker 2: We don't live in the same place, so we're going
Speaker 2: to need more than one. Sophie, do you want in on.
Speaker 3: This it might be salt water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's by regular swimming pools for Margaret and Kaitla. Well, Kaitlin,
Speaker 2: what kind of swiming pool you want?
Speaker 3: I need to give it some thought because I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: it would just be like there's just that one kind
Speaker 3: of swimming pool. And then you said saltwater and I
Speaker 3: didn't even really know that was a thing. No, I
Speaker 3: didn't either, So I have to do some research. Yeah,
Speaker 3: are they like better? Are they more sustainable?
Speaker 1: I was like allergic to chlorine as a kid, and
Speaker 1: so I always wanted a saltwater pool. I mean I
Speaker 1: grew out of the allergy, but as a kid, I
Speaker 1: like could go into pools at like birthday parties.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean you are like just submerging your body
Speaker 3: into harsh chemicals. Yeah, so makes sense. Yeah, salt water,
Speaker 3: salt water, that's that's the ocean. The ocean is made
Speaker 3: of that, that's that's natural.
Speaker 2: Okay, saltwater baths are around.
Speaker 1: Actually, can you just buy each of us in ocean?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yes, please Okay, And then that is our sponsor
Speaker 2: is the Fund for Buying oceans and or pools For
Speaker 2: Sophie Caitlin and Margaret, and if you hear any other
Speaker 2: ads there mistakes and please take it up with management.
Speaker 2: Here they go and we're back. So a year after
Speaker 2: they started this whole plan, on November ninth, nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 2: the first nine Jewish kids made it to New York.
Speaker 2: They got off the USS New York into New York.
Speaker 2: The kids kept up correspondence with their families for about
Speaker 2: a decade, and then one by one the families were
Speaker 2: murdered by the Nazis, and the temporary fostering was soon permanent,
Speaker 2: and many of the kids were adopted into their new families.
Speaker 2: And then we're going to talk about the pogrammi is
Speaker 2: pogram of them all, Crystal Knocked, and how it changed
Speaker 2: immigration and how it should have changed it way more.
Speaker 2: There have been all kinds of programs in Nazi Germany
Speaker 2: between nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty eight, But the
Speaker 2: night of November ninth, nineteen thirty eight, the Nazis through
Speaker 2: like the mother of all programs, Crystal Knocked, the Night
Speaker 2: of Broken Glass, the Essay and the SS through like
Speaker 2: the two pair of military groups of the Nazis alongside
Speaker 2: the Hitler Youth, which is the third paramilitary group, but
Speaker 2: of kids alongside enthusiastic German citizens went around and killed
Speaker 2: people and rape people and did all kinds of that
Speaker 2: shit and smashed everything up. And this particular riot I
Speaker 2: had never heard about what it was. In response to
Speaker 2: you never heard about the Herschel Greenspan, the Jewish kid
Speaker 2: who killed a Nazi. No, yes, I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 2: about him. Sovie has heard about him, but I'm gonna
Speaker 2: tell you about him.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 2: I think he was cool, even though, like a lot
Speaker 2: of things, sometimes you do things and they turn out
Speaker 2: badly for everyone. But I understand why people did him,
Speaker 2: because krystal Knock was in response to a rather justifiable
Speaker 2: assassination done by a seventeen year old Jew named Herschel
Speaker 2: green Span. He'd been born in Germany, but he was
Speaker 2: never a German citizen because his parents were Polish Jews
Speaker 2: and Germany was racist. He grew up really fighty. He
Speaker 2: was known to respond to anti Semitic taunts with his fists.
Speaker 2: He dropped out of school at fourteen because of the
Speaker 2: discrimination he faced, and so they snuck over to Paris
Speaker 2: and he kind of lived like kind of bohemian life.
Speaker 2: He would like recite Yiddish poetry and hang out in
Speaker 2: the cafe and watch movies and like just be like
Speaker 2: a cool Paris guy, you know, ohope kid, And soon
Speaker 2: enough he was a stateless person. France didn't want him,
Speaker 2: Germany didn't want him, and Poland did this thing where
Speaker 2: they were like, everyone who's lived somewhere else for five
Speaker 2: years is no longer Polish. Fuck you. He stayed with
Speaker 2: his aunt and uncle, who honestly didn't want him either
Speaker 2: because they didn't have enough money, and also they were like,
Speaker 2: what are you doing and you're spend all your time
Speaker 2: hanging out cafes, why don't you get a job. So
Speaker 2: he went underground because he was wanted for deportation, and
Speaker 2: then things continue to get worse for him. His parents
Speaker 2: were deported from Germany back to Poland, alongside twelve thousand
Speaker 2: other fourign born Jews, but Poland wouldn't take them because
Speaker 2: they had just declared everyone not Polish anymore, right, so
Speaker 2: twelve thousand people are stranded at the border. Those who
Speaker 2: tried to escape back into Germany were shot. Herschel asked
Speaker 2: his aunt and uncle to send money to his parents,
Speaker 2: but his aunt and uncle didn't have the money to spare,
Speaker 2: so Herschel went out. He bought a revolver in twenty
Speaker 2: five bullets, and he walked to the German embassy in Paris.
Speaker 2: He went to the front desk and he said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm a German citizen and a spy with an important document,
Speaker 2: and I need to see the ambassador. So they brought
Speaker 2: him to a junior ambassador named Ernst vaum Roth, who
Speaker 2: was a Nazi. Herschel shot him five times in the
Speaker 2: stomach and shouted, you're a filthy bouche, which is a
Speaker 2: slur for a German, kind of like calling someone a krout.
Speaker 2: In the name of twelve thousand persecuted Jews, here is
Speaker 2: your document. He didn't try to escape. He let himself
Speaker 2: be taken into custody, and he confessed, and he carried
Speaker 2: a postcard in his pocket for his parents. And this
Speaker 2: part made me tear up when I first read it.
Speaker 2: It said, with God's help, my dear parents, I could
Speaker 2: not do otherwise. May God forgive me the heart bleeds
Speaker 2: when I hear of your tragedy and that of the
Speaker 2: twelve thousand Jews, I must protest so that the whole
Speaker 2: world hears my protest. And that I will do forgive me.
Speaker 2: And when he was arrested, he told the police being
Speaker 2: a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog.
Speaker 2: I have a right to live and the Jewish people
Speaker 2: have a right to exist on this earth. Wherever I
Speaker 2: have been, I have been chased like an animal. And
Speaker 2: so the Nazi died, which is cool, But the rest
Speaker 2: of the Nazis use as a pretense for the Night
Speaker 2: of Broken Glass, so that's less cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they called him the boy Avenger or something like that,
Speaker 1: if I'm remember incorrectly. Oh shit, in like press the
Speaker 1: boy Avenger, which is such a funny thing. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe the transition isn't there, but I was like, the
Speaker 1: boy of Avenger, that's you said his name. That's the
Speaker 1: first thing that popped in my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, And it's like, a it's so funny how
Speaker 2: in the moment a lot of people are like, WHOA,
Speaker 2: that's a step too far, and like in retrospect, like,
Speaker 2: of course, shooting the Nazi officials justified when you've been
Speaker 2: made stateless by the Nazi government, Like no one reasonable
Speaker 2: doubts that in retrospect. And then yet when I would
Speaker 2: never compare anything to current events. But like say, for example,
Speaker 2: in current events, when people are deprived of any kind
Speaker 2: of liberty and forced to be foreigners in their own
Speaker 2: place that they're from, they sometimes act out violently, and
Speaker 2: that is obviously justifiable. But like people can't hang with
Speaker 2: it at the time, you know, Nope, because it whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 2: people can make their own people can draw their own
Speaker 2: comparison here besides the ones that I'm obviously drawing. Yes,
Speaker 2: during Crystal Knocked, ninety Jews were killed, thirty thousand Jews
Speaker 2: were arrested, a thousand of those died in concentration camps
Speaker 2: before the twenty nine thousand were actually released back, which
Speaker 2: I mean obviously didn't go great for them. More than
Speaker 2: two hundred synagogues were smashed up. In modern dollars, there
Speaker 2: was six point seven billion dollars in damages. And you know, morally,
Speaker 2: it was not wrong to shoot that Nazi. Strategically, it's
Speaker 2: a messier question. Crystal Knocked was absolutely a nightmare, but
Speaker 2: it was also a revelation to the world because the
Speaker 2: Nazis came out of the gate like super antisemitic in
Speaker 2: the early nineteen twenties, but by the time they took
Speaker 2: power in nineteen thirty three. They were a little bit
Speaker 2: trying to downplay that, right, They were like, oh, we're
Speaker 2: like trying to win elections and shit, we should focus
Speaker 2: on economic issues. And by the time of the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six Olympics they had taken down all the anti
Speaker 2: SeMet posters and shit to keep the world from hating them.
Speaker 2: Crystal Knocked revealed who they were, and it marked the end,
Speaker 2: or at least the downturn of Western powers seeking to
Speaker 2: appease Hitler, and the Western world got together to fundraise
Speaker 2: for Herschel's defense, and in one of the sort of
Speaker 2: interesting things about it, in the US, folks raised forty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in a matter of weeks, which is almost
Speaker 2: about a million dollars in modern day money. And this
Speaker 2: was raised primarily and in name, it was raised entirely
Speaker 2: by non Jewish organizations, because the non Jewish organizations did
Speaker 2: it so that it didn't look like a conspiracy by
Speaker 2: Western Jews and therefore be used as an excuse to
Speaker 2: persecute Jews in Germany.
Speaker 3: Even more so, Herschel wasn't killed, he was arrested, but
Speaker 3: I just kind of assumed that they would.
Speaker 2: Have, Yeah, no, so he like, we don't know when
Speaker 2: he died. The tail stays interesting. Actually, I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 2: follow it through because he's like, his legal defense is
Speaker 2: one Jewish lawyer and one non Jewish anti fascist lawyer, right,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna you know, Germany wants a big show trial,
Speaker 2: but it's not a German trial. It's a French trial, right,
Speaker 2: because this was a shooting at the embassy in Paris. Yeah,
Speaker 2: German embassy, okay, right, yeah, And so he wanted his
Speaker 2: legal defense to be shooting that man was good. And
Speaker 2: there's actually precedent in France for this about like shooting
Speaker 2: an anti Semite who is like conspired to kill everyone. Right,
Speaker 2: it's the Shalamsavartsbard defense, which we did a whole two
Speaker 2: parter about. But it was this guy who survived a
Speaker 2: bunch of programs. It's a Ukrainian anarchist jew who like
Speaker 2: survived a bunch of programs and then ended up in
Speaker 2: Paris and shot and killed the Ukrainian nationalist who was
Speaker 2: responsible for programming his family and then like stood by
Speaker 2: the corpse and was like, yeah, I shot him. Of
Speaker 2: course I did. Fuck that guy. And then like the
Speaker 2: jury was like, yeah, fuck that guy and let him off.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very influential trial a lot of people
Speaker 2: since then to various effects, including actually, we recently covered
Speaker 2: an Armenian assassin who used the sholum sports part of
Speaker 2: defense successfully, but he wanted to be like, shooting that
Speaker 2: guy was good. His defense attorneys were like, uh, what
Speaker 2: if you don't do that? And they had this defense
Speaker 2: set up in place for him that he did not like,
Speaker 2: which was claim that you are gay and so was
Speaker 2: the Nazi that you shot and it was a lover's
Speaker 2: quarrel and had nothing to do with politics. Um, okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it sounds goofy as hell. It is goofy as hell.
Speaker 2: And at first I'm just like this is the most
Speaker 2: a fuck this right when I'm reading about this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's like the ideas that are like, well, if
Speaker 2: you say it was a political thing, they're definitely going
Speaker 2: to hang you. And it's like this kid doesn't care
Speaker 2: if he hangs, well, guillotine him, but he doesn't care
Speaker 2: if he gets guillotined, right, he like wrote his goodbyes,
Speaker 2: you know. But everyone's afraid that if it's a big
Speaker 2: political show trial, it'll be used to justify more programs
Speaker 2: in Germany. And so it's this weird thing where he's
Speaker 2: like kind of being asked to fall on a sword
Speaker 2: and like be embarrassed to history in order to save
Speaker 2: people's lives, and it's weird. Herschel refused to claim that
Speaker 2: he was homosexual. He was like, I'm a virgin, but
Speaker 2: I am straight. Prosecution and defense both wanted to delay
Speaker 2: the trial, so it was delayed. The defense wanted to
Speaker 2: delay it so that the public uproar around it would
Speaker 2: calm down, and I think the prosecution just like kind
Speaker 2: of didn't give a shit. I'm not sure he never
Speaker 2: went on trial because in nineteen forty, the Nazis approached Paris,
Speaker 2: and this kid's fucking life. The prisoners were all evacuated
Speaker 2: and the convoy was then like attacked by German aircraft
Speaker 2: and a whole bunch of prisoners escaped and Herschel made
Speaker 2: it out on foot, but then he turned himself in
Speaker 2: the surrendered, and so he was extradited to Germany in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty. And it's so funny to me because when
Speaker 2: I think about like the Nazi government, I don't think
Speaker 2: about them like bothering to obey international laws and shit, right,
Speaker 2: because I'm like pretty sure it's like illegal to invade countries.
Speaker 2: Like I'm not sure, you know, I should talk to
Speaker 2: my lawyer before I do anything direct with this, hmm.
Speaker 2: But like I don't imagine Germany is like a big
Speaker 2: like international rule of law follower right now. But they
Speaker 2: extradited him illegally, and that later kind of catches them up,
Speaker 2: like as if it matters to them, because fucking laws
Speaker 2: are weird. And he gets extradited to Germany in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty and he was actually housed reasonably well because the
Speaker 2: Nazis wanted him healthy enough to put on a big
Speaker 2: show trial, because they wanted to say this wasn't an
Speaker 2: angry teenager. This is a conspiracy of the international jewelry.
Speaker 2: That's the way they called it in this like this
Speaker 2: direct quote. And so after years of custody in Germany,
Speaker 2: Herschel finally he's like, all right, I will fuck the Germans.
Speaker 2: I am going to say I did it because I
Speaker 2: was gay. And it's because he like doesn't want them
Speaker 2: to be able to make the show trial out of him.
Speaker 2: He does not want to be a pawn for the Nazis, so.
Speaker 3: They're trying to make an example out of him, and
Speaker 3: he's like.
Speaker 2: No, yeah. At first, when he's in Paris, it's kind
Speaker 2: of a like lack of agency for him to claim
Speaker 2: to be gay, you know, But now it's kind of
Speaker 2: a way of taking agency where he's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: fuck with you. You all are going to try and
Speaker 2: make a show trial, and I'm not going to let
Speaker 2: you because if you if you do it, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh it was a lover's quarrel, then like y'all are
Speaker 2: going to be idiots and everyone's going to laugh at you,
Speaker 2: and Nazis hate being laughed at, you know. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: this torpedoed the show trial. It didn't happen. It like
Speaker 2: went up to Hitler and Hitler was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know about that homosexuality, you know. And after that history
Speaker 2: loses track of him by far and away. The most
Speaker 2: likely thing is that he was killed in Nazi custody
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty two, but his trial wasn't canceled, it
Speaker 2: was just indefinitely delayed, so they had a reason to
Speaker 2: keep him alive. And there's a nineteen forty six photo
Speaker 2: from Paris of a man who looks like an awful
Speaker 2: lot like him. Okay, but he probably died. And the
Speaker 2: main reason I like buy it is that he was
Speaker 2: totally close to his family and his parents and he
Speaker 2: loved them dearly, and he like kind of did it
Speaker 2: for them, right, And his parents survived the war and
Speaker 2: he didn't reach out to them.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen sixty his parents were like, could you
Speaker 2: please announce him dead? Like, could we stop this? Yeah,
Speaker 2: but maybe he's somewhere one hundred and three years old
Speaker 2: thinking to himself like, hell, yeah, at least I shot
Speaker 2: that fucking Nazi though, right, let's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's I'm okay with rewriting and revising history if
Speaker 3: it's a situation like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why we're working on our best selling screenplay
Speaker 2: Green Span the Anti fashion who wasn't gay but pretended
Speaker 2: to be in order to get away with having killed
Speaker 2: Nazi and not being used on a show trial. That's
Speaker 2: a good title for a movie.
Speaker 3: Really good title. I would, actually I would. I think
Speaker 3: we should add a few more words to it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's we're still workshopping.
Speaker 2: Well, like when we get to like the third or
Speaker 2: fourth in the series, you know, we can like really
Speaker 2: go somewhere with that, you know, like in space. Can
Speaker 2: we add in space to the end, well yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then and then another you know entry into
Speaker 3: the into this franchise could be like a heist movie,
Speaker 3: and then time travel has to be part of it.
Speaker 3: The third movie of every trilogy has time travel. Okay,
Speaker 3: don't don't question me on that. Don't look it up.
Speaker 3: It's a fact. Every third movie is a time travel movie.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this will be no different.
Speaker 2: He's going to go back in time and save the whales.
Speaker 2: I think, actually, well a future and time, well, no,
Speaker 2: in the past anyway. Well, terms of what we said it,
Speaker 2: we're still workshopping it exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so don't steal our idea now. Listeners copyrighted. All
Speaker 2: my ideas are copyrighted me my dog. I don't know
Speaker 2: if y'all can hear it, but my dog groaned when
Speaker 2: I said that, because he knows that that's the thing
Speaker 2: that beginner writer is always obsessed about and it is
Speaker 2: almost never actually a real worry.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. You know when you like kind of a
Speaker 3: way to copyright sort of was to like mail yourself something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like there would be like the postmark date. If
Speaker 3: if you say something on a podcast and then it
Speaker 3: gets published, is that kind of like copywriting?
Speaker 2: I mean I think so. I mean, like the way
Speaker 2: the copyright as I understand it works, as soon as
Speaker 2: you publish something, it is copywriten. You don't have to
Speaker 2: like file a formal blah blah blah at all. Right,
Speaker 2: Like in the US, copyright law is like fairly extensive.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I guess I don't know enough about it,
Speaker 3: which I should. They skipped over that day in grad
Speaker 3: school when I it's getting my master's degree in screenwriting
Speaker 3: something I never mentioned.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, I didn't know that. Well, actually, in a
Speaker 2: weird way, makes sense for screenwriters to like not get
Speaker 2: taught that, right, because like you all are usually writing
Speaker 2: for someone else that's copyright anyway, right.
Speaker 3: That, Or I mean, screenplays don't get published. They are
Speaker 3: just a blueprint for a movie. Yeah, so it's like
Speaker 3: it's rare that Yeah, you like you don't really I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, copyright lize laws still apply, but a screenplay
Speaker 3: is very different than most other like written pieces of work,
Speaker 3: where no one's intending to be like, yeah, I wrote
Speaker 3: the thing, and now I'm going to publish it. It's
Speaker 3: more like I wrote the thing and hopefully someone wants
Speaker 3: to make a movie out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know who does want to make movies?
Speaker 2: Any of our advertisers who happen to be movies.
Speaker 1: Yes, we do occasionally get movie sponsors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. Those ones I actually listen to because
Speaker 2: I like movies.
Speaker 3: Movies Rock.
Speaker 2: This a podcast brought to you by watching movies. It's
Speaker 2: like the fast forward button on your life.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say, if you like watching
Speaker 1: movies and you're like, oh, I wonder if that movie,
Speaker 1: you know, pass the Bechdel test, and like, what if
Speaker 1: we talked about it from an intersectional feminist lens? Like
Speaker 1: where could I hear that? Caitlin, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it could be done.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Probably back deel cast you silly, silly,
Speaker 3: I was goofing again. It was another goof.
Speaker 2: By riding backwards on your skateboard.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Well here's ads and we're back, and now we're talking
Speaker 2: about after Crystal Knock. Because of the light hearted nature
Speaker 2: of our show.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: After Crystal Knocked, public sentiments started to slowly shift towards
Speaker 2: helping Jewish refugees. Not enough that, frank and overall, like
Speaker 2: the US as an institution did embarrassingly good, not embarrassingly
Speaker 2: like criminally bad.
Speaker 3: At this sounds right, but.
Speaker 2: There start being a few more levers of power, like
Speaker 2: it starts, public sentiments are shifting. Usually not enough. And honestly,
Speaker 2: like our hero who worked tirelessly to save people, isn't
Speaker 2: going to save that many more people, but we'll talk
Speaker 2: about it. She is going to save some more people.
Speaker 2: In the US, there was a bill called the Wagner
Speaker 2: Rogers Bill that would have allowed ten thousand German Jewish
Speaker 2: children a year to come to the US outside of
Speaker 2: the quota system, right, and it had bipartisan support, including
Speaker 2: credit where's credit is due because I already talked shit
Speaker 2: on them twice this episode. The AFL did back it,
Speaker 2: The American Federation of Labor did back this, so did
Speaker 2: the xenophobic former President Hoover. But only twenty six percent
Speaker 2: of Americans supported the Let's let kids in bill, Oh
Speaker 2: my god, which is really damning. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: reasons why the US shouldn't exist, but this is among them.
Speaker 2: All the usual busy bodies came out against this bill,
Speaker 2: the Daughters of the American Revolution, the American Legion, all
Speaker 2: of the child of Confederate blah blah, you know whatever
Speaker 2: those fucking groups are. You know, the American Legion spokesperson
Speaker 2: said basically like, well, what's next twenty thousand Chinese children,
Speaker 2: as if that would be like bad.
Speaker 3: The moral bankruptcy that just exists at the core of America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the I've got mind, fuck you of countries.
Speaker 2: And of course this entire time, people are like, there's
Speaker 2: a conspiracy by rich Jews who own all the politicians.
Speaker 2: That's why all this is happening, because anti Semitism never
Speaker 2: fucking changes. When destitute Jews are trying desperately to not
Speaker 2: escape genocide to themselves but get their fucking kids out,
Speaker 2: people are like, seem suspicious. Yeah, they own all the politicians.
Speaker 2: And the bill failed and ten thousand extra kids a
Speaker 2: year were not saved. Francis Perkins supported that bill, but
Speaker 2: not with much political weight because she'd already burned all
Speaker 2: of her political capital because she'd tried to do the
Speaker 2: right thing for defending a different immigrant in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 2: The longshoremen, which are like the dock workers who load
Speaker 2: and unload ships staged a massive strike and was organized
Speaker 2: by the ISLA, the International Longshoremen's Association, which at the
Speaker 2: time was part of the afl that moderate union that
Speaker 2: I keep talking about, but this union is more radical
Speaker 2: roots than that, And this strike is the second I
Speaker 2: promised you, two strikes that change a lot of things
Speaker 2: about American labor. The earliest West Coast longshoreman organizing had
Speaker 2: been done by friends of the Pod, the Industrial Workers
Speaker 2: of the World, who I work into every episode, apparently
Speaker 2: by accident. And after this strike that we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about, they form a new union. The strikers form
Speaker 2: a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which
Speaker 2: is still around and is proudly independent, and they're actually
Speaker 2: kind of cool, and I just want to shout this
Speaker 2: out because this is unfortunately a deviation from the norm
Speaker 2: and American labor. For about twenty five years they were
Speaker 2: part of the AFLCIO, but in twenty thirteen they actually
Speaker 2: quit over a series of issues, including the fact that
Speaker 2: AFLCIO had a more anti immigrant stance, and the ILWU
Speaker 2: was like, no, we support all workers everywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: we're an international union, Like fuck you. So they're cool
Speaker 2: and their roots are this strike And nineteen thirty four
Speaker 2: workers went on strike across the entire West coast of
Speaker 2: the United States. This started with twelve thousand workers walking
Speaker 2: out on the jobs. Soon sailors, engineers, firemen, and other
Speaker 2: folks started joining them in solidarity, and you had thirty
Speaker 2: five thousand maritime workers across the West coast. The Teamsters
Speaker 2: refused to handle strike breaking cargo. And it's cool because
Speaker 2: the head of the Teamster union was like, I don't know, maybe,
Speaker 2: But then the Teamsters themselves, like the rank and file,
Speaker 2: were like, we're not fucking touching that.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Six workers were shot dead by cops during this strike.
Speaker 2: In response to one day where two of the workers
Speaker 2: were killed, the entirety of San Francisco shut down in
Speaker 2: a general strike. In response, one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: workers walked out for four days, which caused the mayor
Speaker 2: to declare a state of emergency. This basically just like
Speaker 2: scares the piss out of capitalists, you know.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a successful fucking strike.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, why.
Speaker 3: Don't we do these anymore? Like across industries, you know, like.
Speaker 1: There's I would say, there's a couple of different dancers.
Speaker 1: Margaret might have different opinions than me.
Speaker 2: No, I tell you, I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I would say the two things are people can't afford
Speaker 1: to and the second thing is people are cowards and
Speaker 1: like are afraid.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think a lot of that is that. I
Speaker 2: think that we just like we don't have this like
Speaker 2: culture of fighting anymore.
Speaker 1: No, we're very okay with like this is my life,
Speaker 1: this is what I get in sative, this is.
Speaker 2: What I deserve because like now we get like I
Speaker 2: don't know, even people who are like struggling to pay
Speaker 2: rent and can barely afford food have smartphones and can
Speaker 2: watch TV and listen to podcasts and you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but I think a lot of it is
Speaker 2: just the culture. And like also a lot of it
Speaker 2: is just like organizing this hard work.
Speaker 3: It is and it's easier to be complacent and so
Speaker 3: we just do that. Yeah, yeah, damn.
Speaker 2: And I think, actually, I mean, labor is coming back,
Speaker 2: but this is building on decades and decades of work
Speaker 2: right when this stuff happens. The strike was successful. It
Speaker 2: reinvigorated West Coast labor and increased it unionized all of
Speaker 2: the West Coast ports. I believe all of them are
Speaker 2: still unionized today. But I didn't look that up. And
Speaker 2: there was a whole mini red scare over this thing,
Speaker 2: like red Scare one point five, right, because the first
Speaker 2: one was in nineteen seventeen, and then second one was
Speaker 2: like more like nineteen forties or something. Don't fact check me.
Speaker 2: And this mini red scare had really wild knock on effects,
Speaker 2: like fucking up the political career of the Secretary of
Speaker 2: Labor Francis Perkins and diminishing therefore her capacity to save
Speaker 2: kids from Germany.
Speaker 3: That sucks. How did it affect her?
Speaker 2: Oh on my tip, oh yay. One of the leaders
Speaker 2: on this strike was a former wobbly like former IWW
Speaker 2: guy named Harry Bridges, who was like really briefly in
Speaker 2: the IWW, and then he was really briefly in this
Speaker 2: like union that was probably communist and so people don't
Speaker 2: like when people used to be communists in the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties and forties in the United States. His biggest problem,
Speaker 2: his most immediate problem, was that he was an Australian immigrant.
Speaker 2: And for three years after this thing, like no one
Speaker 2: gives a shit and everyone's like, all right whatever, and
Speaker 2: then like in nineteen thirty seven. Someone's like, wait a second,
Speaker 2: he's an immigrant. We can use that against him, we
Speaker 2: can deport him. And so the US government really really
Speaker 2: wants to deport him for advocating for the overthrow of
Speaker 2: the US government. There's a problem. There's two problems. One
Speaker 2: is that he didn't advocate for the overthrow of the
Speaker 2: US government, at least in any way where there was
Speaker 2: any evidence that he did. So that usually isn't a
Speaker 2: problem for the US government, especially during the Red Scare.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, whatever, he's an immigrant, we'll just deport him.
Speaker 2: But Francis Perkins got in their way because progressives who
Speaker 2: did not like communism stood up for him and their argument.
Speaker 2: I mean, Francis Perkins leaves in democracy and free speech,
Speaker 2: like just like actually to the core of her being
Speaker 2: is like, well, you can't deport someone for their ideological position,
Speaker 2: you know, especially if there's no evidence of them holding
Speaker 2: that ideological position. But like overall, like.
Speaker 3: But even but still you can't do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she burned her credibility by standing up for
Speaker 2: what she believed in. Here she won. Harry Bridges was
Speaker 2: not deported. He actually led that union that I was
Speaker 2: talking about for like decades, but people fucking hated her. Now,
Speaker 2: this is part of why she I think she tried
Speaker 2: to stay behind the scenes all the time, right, is
Speaker 2: because like misogyny and shit would go after her in particular, right,
Speaker 2: and she got just tons of hate mail calling her
Speaker 2: a commie jew. She regularly spoke about how both fascism
Speaker 2: and communism were bad.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay one of those is right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and like Bolshevism is looking so good, right,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, but she's not a red you know,
Speaker 2: like she's a progressive, and people somewhere along the way
Speaker 2: lost the ability to tell the difference. Right, And she's
Speaker 2: also one of the most devoutly Christian people in Washington,
Speaker 2: And so whenever people are like, you're an atheist commie
Speaker 2: and a Jewish atheist comedy and she's just like.
Speaker 3: What the fuck, She's like, No, none of that.
Speaker 2: This doesn't stop Congress from trying to impeach her, and
Speaker 2: impeachment procedures are set into motion against her, and she
Speaker 2: would I think, have become either the first or second
Speaker 2: secretary of an apartment to ever be impeached. She is
Speaker 2: not impeached. She like narrowly avoids it right, Okay, but
Speaker 2: now she has to tread more carefully. And so even
Speaker 2: though like she's been not stripped of her title, but
Speaker 2: she's like kind of lost her access to like leavers
Speaker 2: and making alliances and shit like that. Right, she's kind
Speaker 2: of a pariah. She goes on to save thousands more people, okay,
Speaker 2: and her political capital is gone, but she's the Secretary
Speaker 2: of Labor. They hadn't impeached her. She continued to pursue
Speaker 2: systematic solutions to the problem, which never work, and I'll
Speaker 2: talk about some of them later, but she also worked
Speaker 2: on countless individual well not countless, we have account She
Speaker 2: worked on about three thousand individual immigration and visa cases.
Speaker 2: She looked for loopholes to get people visas, like non
Speaker 2: quota visas, like not immigration visas, but like, hey, come
Speaker 2: on over, just visit for a little while. Like you know, oh,
Speaker 2: you're like kind of a professor but not really a professor.
Speaker 2: Let me let me show you how to point out
Speaker 2: that you're really a professor, so you can get this visa.
Speaker 2: Ok And like she does this over and over again.
Speaker 2: There's this book that comes out in twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: by Rebecca Brenner Graham comes out from Citadel Press in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. I have an advanced reader's copy and
Speaker 2: a lot of my research, not all of it. A
Speaker 2: lot of it comes from these other articles and things
Speaker 2: on the other part, but a lot of the stuff,
Speaker 2: specifically about working to try and get Jews out of Germany,
Speaker 2: comes from this book. I really highly recommend it. The
Speaker 2: book is called Dear Miss Perkins because she got thousands
Speaker 2: of letters. I said, dear Miss Perkins, my husband is
Speaker 2: trapped in Germany and I would like him not to die. Please,
Speaker 2: how do I make that happen? You know? And she
Speaker 2: answered letters constantly explaining, and it wasn't always like loopholes
Speaker 2: like some of it was just like explaining to people
Speaker 2: how to get through these bureaucratic hurdles and things like that.
Speaker 2: She personally advised the playwright Bertolt Brecht and helped get
Speaker 2: his Christian but anti Nazi family into the US, where
Speaker 2: he arrived in nineteen forty one. Later, of course, since
Speaker 2: the US is also a nightmare state, he was driven
Speaker 2: away from the US by the House of un American
Speaker 2: Activities and he moved back to Berlin. After World War Two,
Speaker 2: Congress continued to hate her. And the reason we know
Speaker 2: how many people she saved through this way is that
Speaker 2: they financed her report to figure out how many people
Speaker 2: were coming not as refugees but as like visitors on
Speaker 2: vi at her visas from various European countries, and the
Speaker 2: overwhelming majority of these thousands of people were quote visiting
Speaker 2: from Germany. So this is how they were like, Ah,
Speaker 2: you're up to no good. You're working behind her back.
Speaker 2: Is they like proved as if it's a bad thing
Speaker 2: that there's like three thousand extra people who aren't dead,
Speaker 2: you know, right, So she tried to yet another tactic
Speaker 2: after this, This is her last big legal strategy that
Speaker 2: she tries. She's like, can we make separate quotas for
Speaker 2: these people if they're all going to Alaska? And this
Speaker 2: is complicated because Alaska, Okay, all the US is a
Speaker 2: colonial project, right, but nineteen thirty nine, Alaska is like
Speaker 2: extra colonial project. It is not a state. For another
Speaker 2: twenty years before that, it was a territory and people
Speaker 2: there had fewer rights and shit. Indigenous people had been
Speaker 2: granted citizenship in the continental US, but had specifically been
Speaker 2: left out of territories like Alaska, m H and so
Speaker 2: basically she's like, well, we're trying to do our settler
Speaker 2: colonial thing up there, because she's this is one of
Speaker 2: her whatever, she's not on top of being anti colonial,
Speaker 2: and she's like, well, maybe the xenophobes will let us
Speaker 2: set up a Jewish colony in Alaska, you know, they
Speaker 2: can help do land clearing and civilize the place. And
Speaker 2: they go through enormous efforts to try and make this
Speaker 2: project happen. Right, Congress is too xenophobic and anti semitic
Speaker 2: to even let her continue the American expansion is project
Speaker 2: by settling Jews in Alaska, even though Jews would not
Speaker 2: have been allowed to leave Alaska or become US citizens.
Speaker 3: And they were still like nope, yeah, oh thank you,
Speaker 3: that's someone. That's how anti semitic we are. Yep, okay.
Speaker 2: One of the things that people kept saying is Alaska's
Speaker 2: too cold for Jews. And now the Jews in question
Speaker 2: were like, we don't care. We'd like to not die please,
Speaker 2: that's fine, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: We'll build a fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's, of course it's frustrating because it's this
Speaker 2: anti Semitic trope that Jews are all physically weak, which
Speaker 2: of course has found its inversion in the Zionist hyper
Speaker 2: masculinization of the IDF, where it's like we're the strong
Speaker 2: Jews blah blah blah, like we two can commit a genocide.
Speaker 2: The government couldn't get Francis Perkins out of the Department
Speaker 2: of Labor. So you want to know how they finally
Speaker 2: like kind of got her because they couldn't appeach her.
Speaker 2: M tell me they got the ions out of the
Speaker 2: Department of Labor. Okay, they restructured the government to keep
Speaker 2: her from being able to continue to be in charge
Speaker 2: of immigration. They did that specifically for that reason. So
Speaker 2: it's half and half. It is very very heavily influenced
Speaker 2: by her and wanting her to not be in charge
Speaker 2: of this. It is also about they move it to
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice. The other reason they do this,
Speaker 2: because Perkins wouldn't have gone along with this, is that
Speaker 2: as they're getting ready to enter World War two, they
Speaker 2: want immigration cracked down on because they're afraid of like
Speaker 2: Nazi spies everywhere, and they're like, we want to fingerprint
Speaker 2: and investigate everyone who comes over to the country, and
Speaker 2: Perkins is like that goes against the idea of like
Speaker 2: settling refugees here, right, and so it's like it's about her,
Speaker 2: but it's not like it's not though we hate Perkins, Bill,
Speaker 2: you know, Perkins sees immigration as a civic function, not
Speaker 2: a criminal function, and does not want it in the
Speaker 2: Justice Department. But increasingly FDR is treating it as a
Speaker 2: criminal thing, a justice thing. He adds one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty new FBI agents looking for suspected Nazi spies. Immigrants
Speaker 2: are the top suspects. All the right wing people around
Speaker 2: the nation are like, well, how do we know that
Speaker 2: that person who is going to die in Germany isn't
Speaker 2: a Nazi spy, you know, mm hmm, And like, yes,
Speaker 2: there were Nazi spies, that's true, Okay, Yeah, like whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, deal with them. I don't know, right whatever, Anyway.
Speaker 3: I feel like most of them probably start of working
Speaker 3: for the American government.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Under Perkins, the i S had not fingerprinted immigrants.
Speaker 2: Now under the Justice Department, their first project was to
Speaker 2: track down, identify, and fingerprint four point seven million immigrants
Speaker 2: living in the country. And so the like militarization of
Speaker 2: the vorder is a real old concept.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now she's still getting thousands of letters like dear miss
Speaker 2: Perkins letters right for people asking for help, and instead
Speaker 2: she like sadly responds to them all that it's out
Speaker 2: of her hands, and she fords their request to the
Speaker 2: ions at the Department of Justice, and so ends her
Speaker 2: ability to help refugees by and large. In the end,
Speaker 2: she served as Secretary of Labor for twelve years, holding
Speaker 2: that position longer than anyone else ever has. After leaving
Speaker 2: the government, she went back to teaching, then passed away
Speaker 2: from a stroke at the age eighty five. At her funeral,
Speaker 2: she had chosen the following Bible passage to read, be
Speaker 2: ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,
Speaker 2: for as much as ye know that your labor is
Speaker 2: not in vain with the Lord. And this had been
Speaker 2: one of her favorite passages her entire life, and it
Speaker 2: just defined how she worked. She would just be steadfast,
Speaker 2: she would just do the work. And in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three there was a small ceremony placing stones atop her
Speaker 2: grave in the Jewish tradition to honor her efforts to
Speaker 2: save so many lives during the Holocaust, and to close
Speaker 2: it out. We keep saying that progress isn't linear and
Speaker 2: then we have to keep fighting. We can't rest on
Speaker 2: our laurels. Israel is in the process of genociding the
Speaker 2: Palestinian people. Yet, according to the BBC, of the sixty
Speaker 2: thousand refugees resettled in the and twenty twenty three, only
Speaker 2: fifty six of them were Palestinian.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: In fact, there have been less than six hundred total
Speaker 2: Palestinian refugees accepted in the US in the past ten years,
Speaker 2: I believe as of twenty twenty three, when this article
Speaker 2: came ounta to quote that article, the numbers are so
Speaker 2: low in large part because Palestinians cannot follow the same
Speaker 2: pathway into the US as other nationalities. The nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: one Refugee Convention that established the United Nations High Commissioner
Speaker 2: for Refugees and defined the criteria for refugees around the
Speaker 2: world explicitly left out Palestinians living in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria,
Speaker 2: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
Speaker 3: And what was their justification for why they did that.
Speaker 2: I don't know the answer to that. I assume it
Speaker 2: is to play cad Israel. Yeah, and there's this thing
Speaker 2: happening now where Republicans are trying aggressively to prevent Palestinian
Speaker 2: refugees from coming to the US. But Democrats are not
Speaker 2: doing Perkins level work to get folks here, and so
Speaker 2: the system is entirely rigged against Palestinian refugees. So it's
Speaker 2: the difference between absolutely no Palestinian refugees because we hate them,
Speaker 2: and almost no Palestinian refugees because we encoded our legal
Speaker 2: system to make it so that they can't get here.
Speaker 2: And I think it also has to do something with,
Speaker 2: like I looked a little bit into this more. I
Speaker 2: think it has something to do with like how the
Speaker 2: consular system works and things like that, and how Palestine's
Speaker 2: like now recognized as a state and shit like that.
Speaker 2: You know, credit where it's due. Biden did announce in
Speaker 2: February of twenty twenty four the Palestinians who had otherwise
Speaker 2: face deportation would have that delayed at least eighteen months
Speaker 2: because it's like not safe to deport them.
Speaker 1: Currently eighteen whole month.
Speaker 3: The bar is so low, the bare minimum.
Speaker 2: The bar is like under the floor, ye, dig up
Speaker 2: the floor boards, yeah, and hell yeah. Instead just overseeing
Speaker 2: a system of making it impossible for refugees to get
Speaker 2: out while funding a genocide.
Speaker 3: Directly sending billions of dollars to Israel.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, like was it twenty billion this week or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, oh my god.
Speaker 2: That's the story of Francis Perkins and the brief moment
Speaker 2: or someone in the US government try to do something good.
Speaker 2: And part of the reason I find the story so
Speaker 2: fascinating is that what she succeeded at was the individual
Speaker 2: level of writing letters to explain to people how to
Speaker 2: work through the visa system, you know, Like, and she
Speaker 2: did a lot of good work with like you know,
Speaker 2: those like the hundreds of kids who made it over
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, right, you know, but the big
Speaker 2: systematic things weren't able to be changed from within the system.
Speaker 3: Bummer but unsurprising, And it is cool that she was
Speaker 3: able to leverage what power she had to do what
Speaker 3: she could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like that's like a lot of
Speaker 2: the like girl Boss. Modern feminist politicians are like kind
Speaker 2: of into bringing up her legacy, and I'm like, until
Speaker 2: you burn your bridges by doing what's right, like I
Speaker 2: won't hear it. Yeah, you know, but right, they're the
Speaker 2: ones virtue signaling. Yeah that's true, Yeah, very much so wow. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's our episode. Francis Perkins the first, the first liberal
Speaker 2: I've had on this show, but like, you know, took
Speaker 2: it real seriously. Did the work pretty cool? That's what
Speaker 2: we ask at people. Yeah, And if anyone wants to
Speaker 2: do the work with you of script writing, or if
Speaker 2: you want to shout out something else out, here's your plugs.
Speaker 2: What do you got?
Speaker 3: Yes, you can take my screenwriting classes that I teach
Speaker 3: online and I have a batch coming up in September,
Speaker 3: so you can go to my website, Caitlyn Toronto dot
Speaker 3: com slash classes and find out more information about those.
Speaker 3: And you can always listen to my podcast that I
Speaker 3: co host with Jamie Loftus and we discuss movies through
Speaker 3: an intersectional feminist lens. And it's called the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: and you can listen to that wherever you find.
Speaker 2: Podcasts, And if you google Margaret Kiljoy Bechdel Cast, you
Speaker 2: can hear the three of us talking about one of
Speaker 2: my favorite punk movies, which is about Swedish punk teenage
Speaker 2: girls called We Are the Best.
Speaker 3: It's so such a good movie, such a good episode. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you've never listened to the Bechdel Cast, before start there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh plugs, uh Weird Little Guys. You should
Speaker 2: listen to a podcasts called Weird Little Guys. You should
Speaker 2: also listen to Hood Politics a prop and you should
Speaker 2: listen to Better Offline. And that's it. Those are the
Speaker 2: only Coolzone Media podcasts. Besides, it could happen here and
Speaker 2: behind the Bastards And wait is that it? I don't know, Oh,
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute of fame? Oh my god, how about I
Speaker 2: forget that one?
Speaker 3: Hello?
Speaker 1: Oh, listen to Saddle Old Girk because you might get
Speaker 1: a second season next year.
Speaker 2: Whoa, I want a second season of that because I
Speaker 2: want more rich Russia. Well, actually, if they're not really
Speaker 2: the bad guy, that means in this.
Speaker 1: One we'll have another hand or Hand series this year.
Speaker 2: Also, that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just not it's at all girk.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'll see you all next week when
Speaker 2: I bring you more Cool People Who Did? I can't
Speaker 2: do a cool voice with it. When I bring you
Speaker 2: more Cool People did Cool Stuff? Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
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