Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, history fans, We're taking the day off, but
don't worry. We've got plenty of classic shows to tide
you over. Please enjoy these flashback episodes from the TDI
HC Vault. Hello, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
(00:21):
a show that uncovers a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gabe Luzier, and today we're reflecting on
one of the many despicable practices utilized by Nazi Germany
during World War II. After the day was September one,
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nineteen forty one, the Nazi regime ordered all Jews in
Germany over the age of six to publicly identify themselves
by wearing a yellow star. The decree was made in
accordance with Nazi racial laws, which falsely claimed that Jewish
identity was a matter of biological inheritance. Anyone caught without
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this so called Jewish badge was liable to be punished,
either with fines, imprisonment, or even execution. Of course, wearing
the badge was no guarantee of safety either, since it
effectively put a target on the wearer's back. The decree
was intended to make it easier for officers of the
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Third Reich to identify, track and control German Jews. Its
secondary purpose was to inflict a sense of isolation on
Jewish families, to make them feel embarrassed and alone, outcasts
within their own country. On both counts, the dehumanizing badges
proved all too effective. This specific form of persecution is
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closely associated with the Nazis, but they actually weren't the
first to employ it. In Baghdad, Jewish residents were forced
to wear identifying badges in the ninth and tenth centuries,
and in Europe, the first record of the practice dates
back to the thirteenth century, when Jews were legally compelled
to wear pointed hats to distinguish themselves from the rest
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of the population. Similar laws were enforced throughout Europe for
the next three hundred years, but by the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the practice had mostly fallen out of favour,
that is, until the Nazis revived it to aid in
their holocaust. In May of nineteen thirty eight, Nazi propaganda
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minister Josef Gerbels became the first to suggest a quote
general distinguishing mark for German Jews. The idea was raised
again six months later by security police chief Reinhardt Heidrich,
but in both cases the proposals were rejected for fear
that identifying Jews with badges would result in the creation
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of ghettos in German cities. Of course, in the years
to come, the Nazis would eventually embrace both practices. The
first European Jews required to wear badges were those living
in German occupied Poland. In November of nineteen thirty nine,
local governments there began instituting the practice, and within a month,
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every Jewish resident over the age of twelve was forced
to wear a white armband emblazoned with a blue star
of David. From there, similar laws were gradually adopted by
other German occupied countries and eventually by Germany itself. On
September one, nineteen forty one, Reinhardt Heidrich finally got his wish.
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He commanded that all Jews over six years of age
must wear a yellow star of David on their outer
layer of clothing at all times. The six sided stars
were to be four inches long and worn on both
the left side of the chest and on the back.
The word Jew was to be inscribed in the center
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of the star. This was Heydrich's way of ensuring what
he described as quote the control of the jew through
the watchful eye of the whole population. His order applied
to Jewish residents not only in the Reich, but in Alzas,
in Bohemia, Moravia, and in the German annexed region of
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Western Poland. Forgetting or refusing to comply with the order
could easily result in death, so those affected had to
scramble to fashion the badges from whatever materials they could find.
As a result, the stars can look drastically different. Some
were hand stitched, while others were sown by machine. Heidrich's
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decree filled in the gaps left by earlier orders, extending
the public labeling of Jews to nearly every corner of
Europe under Nazi control. Belgium and the Netherlands followed suit
in the spring of nineteen forty two, and most parts
of fan Pants imposed the badges not long after. In
March of nineteen forty four, Hungary became the final country
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to require the wearing of badges. One notable holdout to
the policy was the nation of Denmark, where Jewish badges
were never introduced due to the danes vocal opposition to
anti Jewish measures. There's a popular legend that Danish King
Christian tenth wore a yellow star in solidarity with the
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Jewish population. However, there was no need for him to
do so, as German occupiers never tried to introduce the
star to Denmark. That said, the king did make clear
his feelings on the matter, saying quote, if the Jews
are forced to wear the yellow star, I and my
whole family shall wear it as a badge of honor.
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The German government's use of identifying badges was just one
of many craven tactics employed to stigmatize, humiliate, and segregate
the Jewish people. The yellow stars and other such markings
made it easier to separate these supposedly inferior citizens from
the rest of society, effectively paving the way for their
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eventual deportation and systematic murder. Many of those badges survived
the Holocaust and now reside in the homes of Jewish
families and in museums throughout the world. They were intended
as symbols of shame for those who wore them, but
today they are reminders of the resilience and courage of
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the millions who suffered and died under a hateful regime.
The only shame the yellow badges represent belongs to the
people who forced other human beings to wear them, and
to those who looked the other way as it happened.
I'm Gabelusier and hopefully you now know a little more
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about history today than you did yesterday. If you have
a second and you're so inclined, please follow the show
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show. You
can also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts,
or you can write to me directly at this Day
at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing
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the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another Day in History Class.
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Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that tallies the gains and losses of everyday history.
I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode, we're talking about
a true crime farce from the early days of American history,
the time when a wrongfully accused man was able to
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reclaim his good name thanks to a comical misstep by
a not quite criminal mastermind. The day was September two,
seventeen ninety eight, over one hundred and sixty thousand dollars
was stolen from the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenter's Hall,
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marking the first recorded bank heist in American history. The
theft occurred early that morning and had all the telltale
signs of an inside job. There was no evidence of
forced entry, not on the doors of the building nor
on the vault itself. That technically made the crime a
burglary rather than a robbery, as the latter involves the
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use or threat of force and intimidation, whereas a burglary
is merely theft by unlawful entry. But whatever you call it,
the crime was a big deal. After all, nothing like
it had ever happened in the country before. Carpenter's Hall
was constructed in seventeen seventy by the Carpenter's Company, the
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oldest craft guild in the United States. In seventeen seventy four,
the building served as the meeting place for the First
Continental Congress, and it was later home to the Philadelphia Library,
as well as the First and Second Banks of the
United States. Banking institutions were especially attracted to the hall
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as its solid construction provided a safe place to operate
while they put up their own buildings. In seventeen ninety eight,
the building's latest tenant was the Bank of Pennsylvania. In
August of that year, the bank was in the process
of moving in, but first it needed to make a
few changes to make the building more secure. First, and foremost,
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the doors of the vault had to be upgraded, and
to do that the bank hired the services of a
local black bas smith named Patrick Leon. The twenty nine
year old Scottish born craftsman had emigrated from London five
years earlier. He worked as a journeyman until seventeen ninety seven,
at which point he established his own shop in Philadelphia,
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which at the time was the nation's capital. Leon had
been hired by Samuel Robinson, the man in charge of
overseeing the bank's move into Carpenter's Hall. One day, the
blacksmith was hard at work on the new vault doors
in his shop when Robinson stopped by with a carpenter
whom Leon had never met before. According to a later
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account by Lyon, the stranger seemed to take a special
interest in the vault's locking system, but since he was
there as Robinson's guest, Leon said nothing of it. Besides,
he didn't have time to be suspicious. Philadelphia was in
the midst of a yellow fever epidemic, and Leon had
been on his way out of town when he received
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the vault door rush job from the bank. More than
five thousand city residents had already contracted the disease that summer,
and nearly thirteen hundred of them would die from it.
Leon didn't want his name added to that list, so
he worked to complete the vault doors as fast as possible.
Shady visitors or not, Leon finished the job without being infected,
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but the same couldn't be said for his nineteen year
old apprentice, Jamie. Once the blacksmith had delivered the doors
to the bank, he dragged his sick apprentice aboard a
ship and traveled to Lewistown, Delaware, in search of help. Unfortunately,
Jamie died two days after their arrival. Leon decided to
remain in Delaware for the time being until the wave
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of sickness in Philadelphia had passed. While he was there,
he began hearing news of a break in at Carpenter's Hall.
The papers reported that someone had slipped into the vault
and made off with one hundred and sixty two thousand,
eight hundred and twenty one dollars in cash and Spanish gold,
the equivalent of nearly four million dollars today. The theft
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had taken place just two days after Leon's departure, a
fact that made him look awfully suspicious in the eyes
of Pennsylvania police. He soon discovered he was the prime
suspect and wanted for questioning. He hastily returned to Philadelphia
in the hope of clearing his name, But try as
he might, Leon couldn't get the police to believe his story.
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They arrested him on the spot and threw him into
a twelve by four foot cell in the Walnut Street Jail.
To be fair, Leon was the most obvious suspect due
to his role in upgrading the vaultdors and his immediate
flight from the city just before the heist. Authorities were
convinced he had made himself a spare key and then
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returned to the city under cover of night to let
himself into the bank. Even when Leon offered proof that
he hadn't returned to fear Philadelphia until after the robbery,
authorities maintained that he was still somehow involved. The timing,
they argued was just too perfect to be coincidental. But
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of course it was just a coincidence. The real culprit
turned out to be Isaac Davis, the stranger who had
visited Leone's shop in late August. Davis was a member
of the carpenter's company that owned the hall, and had
pulled off the heist with the aid of a bank
porter named Thomas Cunningham. An inside man in the most
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literal sense. Cunningham had actually stayed inside the hall overnight
and then used his key to let Davis into the
vault when he arrived. The pair hadn't intended to frame
the blacksmith. That was just a happy accident, or happy
for them at least. Leon went on to spend the
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next three months in police custody, desperately hoping not to
catch the yellow fever that was running rampant through the jailhouse.
Authorities had few other leads, so it's likely that Leon
would have stayed there even longer if not for a
gloriously stupid move on the part of Isaac Davis. Within
a few days of the theft, Thomas Cunningham had himself
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died of yellow fever that left the entirety of the
loot in the hands of Isaac Davis. He wasn't sure
what to do with such a large sum of money,
so he just started depositing it into several different Philadelphia banks,
including the very bank he had just ripped off. It
didn't take long for bank officials to realize that Davis
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had suddenly come into quite a bit of money. In fact,
when the various banks conferred with each other, they found
the deposits added up almost exactly to the amount stolen.
On September second, when Davis was questioned about where he'd
gotten so much money, he almost immediately admitted to the crime.
Soon after, the governor of Pennsylvania granted him a full
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pardon in exchange for a full confession and the return
of all the money he'd stolen. Davis complied, of course,
and as a result, he didn't serve a single day
in prison. As for Patrick Leon, the man who had
nothing at all to do with the theft, he remained
in jail even after Davis's confession for three weeks. The
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police continued to insist that Leon had supplied an extra
key to the vault. Finally, with no evidence to support
their accusation, and no jury willing to convict him, the
charges were dropped and at last Leon was released. It's
worth noting that two guards had been on duty outside
the bank on the night of the heist, and they
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had also been jailed on suspicions. They too were eventually released,
but it's astonishing that three men were imprisoned indefinitely while
the admitted criminal walked away scott free. Patrick Leon tried
to make the best of a bad situation by writing
a tell all book about the whole messy ordeal. His
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first hand account has proven invaluable to historians, as it
supplied much of the information we have about the heist today.
It also provided an unintended lesson on the importance of brevity,
as Leon gave his book a ridiculously long title. It
reads as follows the narrative of Patrick Leon, who suffered
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three months severe imprisonment in Philadelphia jail on merely a
vague suspicion of being concerned in a robbery of the
Bank of Pennsylvania, with his remarks thereon quite a mouthful,
but in his defense, he was a blacksmith by trade,
not a writer. Long winded title. Aside, Leon's book actually
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helped him find justice in the end, as it attracted
the attention of several prominent lawyers. With their help, Leon
was able to sue the state in eighteen oh five
for malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment. In the end, the
jury took his side and awarded him twelve thousand dollars
in damages. That ruling was appealed by the defense, but
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was settled out of court with Lyon for nine thousand
dollars before the second trial could begin. That reduced award
was still a very tidy sum in those days, representing
several years worth of wages for a tradesman. The money
allowed Leon to start his own business, manufacturing hand pumped
fire engines. The venture proved quite successful, and by all accounts,
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he was able to live the rest of his life
with all wants provided. He even managed to avoid dying
of yellow fever. Way to go, Pat, I'm Gaybelusier and
hopefully you now know a little more about history today
than he did yesterday. He can learn even more about
history by following us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at
(18:03):
TDI HC Show and if you have any comments or suggestions,
you can always send them my way at this day
at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again soon for another day in History
class