Part One: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising & Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust

Margaret talks with Miriam about the desperate last stand of the Jews of Poland and the fight to preserve Jewish culture from extermination.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did cool stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and every week I bring
you a new story about rebels and revolts and weirdos
and whoever else I think it's cool. This week, I'm
super excited to bring back our first returning guest, Miriam Rocheck.
You might remember her from the Paris Commune episodes. Uh
specifically might remember her as the lesbian tallship sailor who

(00:23):
wants allegedly, alongside the rest of the crew, stole the
tourist boat from the bosses who were stealing wages from them,
and ran the boat themselves. But in addition to I
mean allegedly done that, Miriam is also a history nerd
and my friend, this parts not alleged. That part is
is true. Yeah, that's true, it's proven. Yeah, um, and

(00:45):
a great number of other things besides Miriam. How are
you doing today? Doing pretty good? Excited to be your
first returning guest. Yay. And we have Sophie on the call,
who's not count as returning guest because Sophie is always here,
Sophie is ever present, Sophie is our producer, and Sophie,
you're with me in the less cool waters of having
never stolen a tall ship? Is that accurate? No, Okay,

(01:11):
maybe Sophie's just better at covering her tracks than me. Yeah,
if he does have good security culture, not that I
would know, because no one ever knows if people have
get security culture. Mm hmm. People know when people have
bad security anyway. Also not joining us, but present in
spirit is Ian, our editor, and the theme music was

(01:32):
written by a woman, and you should check her stuff out.
Both Ian and on woman have stolen ships before because
they're not here to claim otherwise. So, Miriam, this week,
what a fun topic. I can't wait. This week we're
going to talk about the wors Slaw ghetto uprising, which
was desperate attempt by the Jews of Poland too honestly

(01:55):
not really free themselves from the Nazis, but to die
on their own term. Um. I have not cried nearly
so much researching an episode as I did this time.
But I'm gonna I'm not gonna like linger on the
atrocities of the Nazis in this episode, both Miriam and
and dear listeners, I will I will tell you that. Um,

(02:17):
it seems like that's pretty covered elsewhere. When when you say, Miriam,
I yeah, I think that those such things are are
generally known. Um to the extent that there are people
who don't know, I think most of them are not
so much ignorant as just lying about the facts. But um, yeah,
I think I think it's pretty common knowledge at this point.

(02:40):
I hope it's pretty common knowledge at this point. Yeah.
And if you're you know, young enough that you haven't
heard of this particular thing, there's a really bad thing
that happened. And I don't want to be the one
to tell you all the details. You can find the
details somewhere else. It's worth reading about. Unfortunately. So there's
three major political players in the uprising to tell you
the story that I do want to tell. There's three

(03:00):
major political players, and I've got my biases, so I'm
going to be forthright about them, because a lot of
the history is like, doesn't announce their biases and then
mostly tells the story of one of these different players.
So I'm just gonna be forth right. I like the
Boond where the anti Zionist socialists. I like the Boond.
I'm not surprised by this, but it makes me happy.

(03:21):
So before World War two, they're up to all this
really cool stuff, since they're cool people and all of that,
and I'm going to focus on telling the story from
from their perspective, in part because it's the tale with
characters who are often left out of other retellings of
the uprising. So this isn't the story of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising. This is a story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Yeah, yeah,

(03:43):
it sounds great. We're gonna start with a lot of
fun background. And I'm not actually even saying fun sarcastically here,
like you might think based on the the later part
of the story. I think I gotta say, like, I
I appreciate Um the way that you are being, you know,
sensitive about this. I do think that there's like a
gingernus to the approach that UM maybe comes from not

(04:07):
being Jewish and having grown up with these stories, because
I think that there's a tendency, like I've heard a
lot of stories about the Holocaust from members of my
own family that are like, oh, here's a funny story.
It just it took place in a concentration camp, um,
and it is incredibly jarring. I think if you did

(04:28):
not grow up with that where like, well, you know,
that's that is where two of my grandparents spent like
the majority of their adolescence. So they have one or
two funny stories from there, and like a lot of people,
I think they sometimes prefer to tell those funny stories
versus other stories. They have also obviously told me other stories,
But um, I think that that sort of gingernus around,

(04:50):
like now we're gonna be talking about this thing, something
really horrible happened, and we want to be really careful
about it's sort of absent in like people close or
to it, where it's like, oh, let me tell you
about this, like great buddy of mine, Oh yeah, and
then he died. Of that sort of approach that, um,
that is sort of the only way you can relate

(05:10):
to your past if this thing is, if the Holocaust
is as present in your past as as it is
for people who lived through it. So I guess I
want to say that like, well, I appreciate the sensitivity,
and I think that it is like warranted, and um,
you know, shows shows that you are really thoughtful and

(05:30):
respectful of this topic. Um, it's not necessarily the way
that I'm used to talking about this. Well, you should
feel free to a head or you're part of the
conversation however you would like. In today's episode, for sure, Margaret,
would it help if I broke the ice by telling
you my favorite Holocaust joke? You just wish people can

(05:53):
see the look on your face? All right, Well, I'm
gonna tell him. You can edit it out or whatever
if you decide to. But an old Jewish man, a
Holocaust survivor, dies at the end of a very long life.
Hundreds of grandchildren don't even worry. He's very very happy. Um.
But he dies and he stands before God, and the
very first thing he does is he tells the Lord

(06:15):
a Holocaust joke, and God goes, you can'ts that's not funny,
And the man laughed himself. He goes, well, I guess
you had to be there. Ye, it's meta, even it
is a little meta. I hope you like it. I
do like it. We're not cutting it, okay, all right,

(06:42):
So I'm gonna talking about this guy. This guy's name
is Bernard Goldstein, and he lives on in fulk history.
As far as I understand, as Comrade Bernard, can I
call him Bernie? You can? I actually even do? In
this script sometime because I him already. Okay, cool. Yeah.
So he's a socialist, and he's my favorite kind of socialist,

(07:05):
which is the kind that the Soviet Union and also hated.
And his life provides a through narrative to what I
want to talk about. So I'm gonna start with Comrade Bernard,
and I'm gonna draw from his book Five Years in
the Warsaw Ghetto more than any other single source. Uh,
you know, I don't know. He's a very good storyteller
and tells a lot of stuff around the Warsaw Getdo

(07:26):
that I hadn't heard before. Well, and the fact that
he wrote a book called Five Years in the Worse
Sa Ghetto tells me something very important about him, which
is that he survived. And I'm really glad to know
that going in. Yes, that's the Oh so now you
can't handle never mind, I look, yes, I prefer it
when people don't die. Yeah, all right. So in the

(07:51):
English edition of this book, there's this touching introduction written
by Leonard shot Skin, who translated the book from Yiddish.
So it talks about how Leonard was raised in the
US Polish Jewish socialists and about how all his life
is a kid, he heard stories about Comrade Bernard, who
ranks higher than Robin Hood as the full hero of
his childhood. But the translator Leonard wasn't like a politics guy,

(08:12):
at least not by what I could find of him.
He was a bookseller. He wrote books with titles like
besides this book. His books have titles like the Mathematics
of Books Selling. He mostly cared about inventory management at bookstores.
And I really like this because it it grounds all
of this. It talks about how like politics, leftist politics,
they're just normal, like their pain is this thing that

(08:35):
separates us from other people. But I don't know, there's
just this this thing we have, this way that people live.
And you can just be the bookseller guy who spends
all of his time thinking about inventory management while also
being super excited about and translating from Yiddish the the
book Five Years in the Worst Slow Ghetto about a
diehard socialist. Yeah, I love that. So. Comrade Bernard or

(09:01):
Bernie was born in a small city in Poland in
nine about three hours from Warsaw, which was under Russian
Zarist control at the time. I like to imagine that
his parents named him Comrade Bernard. I'm guessing they didn't.
It's probable that that came later. They had the you know,
not a gender revealed party, but like the whatever, the

(09:24):
early equivalent of that was just what it's a comrade,
exactly red instead of pinker blue. Oh, now I want
to do that. And so, but his name or at
least him being a comrade, did not come much later
than his birth. By the time he's thirteen, he's reading
anti Zarist text illegally. By the time he's sixteen, it's

(09:47):
nineteen o five in Russia and for for anyone listening,
Russia tried super hard devil leftist revolution in nineteen o five,
and little Comrade that's probably what his friends called him.
He sure ship wasn't going to let that happen without
him having something to do with it. So in May
five he joins up with the boond in a forest

(10:08):
for a secret revolutionary meeting, and the boond there this
and you know, Mariam, please fill in or correct me
about any of this. They're this secular Jewish organization in
Russia at the time, and they do all this neat
ship like, they insist on their right to organize as
Jews within the larger revolutionary framework at a time when
the Bolsheviks were like, no, we want everyone to do

(10:29):
everything our way. And a third of their members were
women at a time when that was not at all
the norm. They also weren't Zionist. This is one of
their major distinctions from a large chunk of other parts
of the of of Judaism at the time. Or not Judaism, sorry,
but like Jewish culture, like organized Jewish nationalism or jamized

(10:50):
Jewish identity. Yeah, yeah, totally. Uh. They didn't care much
about the Holy Land. They saw themselves in Poland, for example,
as citizens of Poland who are going to fight for
their rights where a were and Bernard wrote about the
Boond quote it was organized to fight both against Zarism,
which was oppressive to the Jew as a worker and
as a Jew, and against the feudal elements in the

(11:11):
Jewish community itself. From its beginning, the Boond was much
more than a political organization. Even in the early days,
it undertook, in addition to its political functions, the educational
function of establishing Jewish schools and raising the vernacular Yiddish
to the status of a recognized language. It undertook the
cultural function of encouraging the new poets, dramatists and novelists

(11:32):
who are using the Yiddish language, refining it and making
it a literary tool. It undertook the function of organizing
the Jews into trade unions to defend their economic interests
against Jewish or Christian employers. It established health resorts and
recreational facilities. It taught a new ethics of the brotherhood
of men, of mutual respect and the dignity of the individual. Yeah,

(11:54):
I just like them so much. I love the Bond,
you know, and like I love my favorite cool pie
full episodes where we get to talk about people who
create entire societies of mutual aid and solidarity. So you
have the Boond and they also they caught a lot
of hate from the government. The government didn't like Jews
and it didn't like socialists. So you could probably guess

(12:17):
their opinion about socialist Jews. Uh cancels itself out. They're
they're cool with it now, Yes, I think that's I
think that's what happened. So I also before we before
we go on, I just want to like, because I
think you did give like a great and perfect summary
of of the Boond and their whole deal. Um. But

(12:39):
the one thing that I want to like clarify before
we go on, not because I think you don't understand this,
but because I think, Um, it's like a thing that
comes up talking to people often. Um is the whole
idea of like secular Jewish culture that I think a
lot of people think of being Jewish as as being
of a particular religion. And while it can mean that, Um,

(13:03):
Jewishness is also a culture and like a cultural context
and community that can be entirely separate from any religious beliefs.
And like the boond is a great example of that,
because they were Jewish and secular, and like the way
that they were secular was Jewish, right, So they weren't
just by being secular, they did not stop being Jewish. Um.

(13:25):
And like I think it's important, like when you talk
about Yiddish culture and Yiddish language, like in Yiddish, the
word Yiddish means Jewish. Um. If you talk to really
old Jews, they'll say that they grew up speaking Jewish
at home. Um. What what we would usually say is
that they grew up speaking Yiddish. So like when they
say that they're having you know, Yiddish literature, Yiddish theater,

(13:49):
Yiddish poetry, Yiddish language. It's indistinguishable from saying Jewish um,
all of those things. So just um, the religious aspect
is not like a defining aspect of Jewishness in this context.
And I just think it's it's important to to point
that out because I think that for people coming from
say Christianity, where like if you stop being Christian, you

(14:12):
stop believing in the religion, you stop being Christian. Um,
that is not true of Judaism. Um. You can stop
believing in God or never believe in God, as many
Jews don't and um, like the guy in that joke,
maybe um, and you're still Jewish, um if you you know,
you can still have participation in Jewish culture and Jewishness.

(14:33):
And the boond is like one of my favorite examples
of ways that people do that or did that. Yeah yeah,
as a Miriam and I have this conversation constantly, But
as a as a lapsed Catholic, I'm jealous of that
because there are some aspects of that culture that I'm
interested in, but I don't believe in the Christian God.
I just don't. And also or the church or anyway,

(14:58):
let's move on. So talking about Margaret's no religious beliefs anytime. Yeah, So,
comrade Bernard, he's in the forest now. It's in the
forest with four hundred of his new best friends and
they're having a meeting, a secret meeting during the revolution,
when all of a sudden they're surrounded by soldiers, cavalry
and infantry. Soldiers, both cavalry and infantry rather and the

(15:20):
soldiers are like, who is your leader? Oh? I love
when they do that, I know. And do you want
to know what they said to them? Miriam, I'm gonna
give you a hint. It's the single best thing to say.
The cops. I'm going to remain silent, and I want
to speak to a lawyer. I was they didn't say ship. Okay,
that works too, Yeah, I was gonna say nothing. They
didn't say nothing, and maybe they talked some ship. I don't,

(15:43):
I don't know, but they sure ship didn't own up
to having a leader or out any leader. It happened
a lot occupy. You will say who's your leader? And
then like it got boring after all, just not saying anything.
So people would give like joke answers, just like mhmm.
Point to random people, say Spartacus, you know whatever, just

(16:05):
just to pass the time, you know, while being harassed
by cops. One time in New York, we had this
pirate march and the cops were like, what are y'all doing?
What's this about? And I was like pirates And they're like,
was this the protest of the war? And I was like, no,
we like pirates. And we were like walking around taking
the streets dressed up like pirates, and it's like a
couple of hundred of us. It was so much fun.

(16:25):
The cops does not know what to make of us anyway.
They're really, who's your leader? And you didn't answer because
they didn't say who's your captain? Some meaning right exactly,
like it depends that we vote or anyway, we'll do it, okay.
So the soldiers insisted upon knowing who the leader was,
the bundest held strong. Boon just held strong. They linked
arms and they started singing revolutionary songs, and fucking soldiers

(16:49):
went in with swords. It was not a massacre, at
least not by the terms that you might be expecting
based on that particular setup. But it was not pretty.
Eighty of the four hundred were wounded by sword, and
Bernie has a wicked scar on his chin from a
saber cut for the rest of his life. Um, I
don't know that anyone died in this. It would be

(17:10):
kind of amazing if nobody did. Well, that's kind of interesting, right, yeah,
because you're like, okay, well, there's like a sort of
one sided sword fight that no one died in. But
the implication is that no one died. Wow, I don't know,
all had really high hit points. Okay, I don't know,
so Bernard. So he gets arrested, everyone gets arrested, and

(17:31):
all of the prisoners are made to run a gauntlet
while soldiers like beat the ship out of them. And
he's already wounded at the start of this, and the
whole time he keeps his red flag wrapped around his
body under his clothes hidden because like, you can't let
the enemy take the flag symbols and they're importance and
all that ship people with flags, they get really into that, say,

(17:52):
I'm like especially okay. Anyway, so he ends up in
the hospital right where in he's sixteen. He's full of
p in vinegar. So he just pieces out of the hospital.
He just does himselfa I'd rather not be under arrest,
goes home. Sixteen year olds are indestructible. Yeah, so he's
all in on the boons now. He moves to Warsaw

(18:14):
the next year, six and he goes off to help
some for workers strike. I think the word for for
workers furry. I think that's correct. Yes, So he's off
to help the furries with their strike. Him and the
representative of the furry strike. They sit down and negotiate
with the bosses, and the two of them get arrested again.
He's sixteen, he's on his seventeen whatever. Sixteen's on his

(18:34):
second arrest, and the whole negotiated and a strike thing
had been a ploy. They were like, oh, yeah, we'll
totally negotiate with you, but really they just wanted to
arrest the leaders, so they arrested them this time. He
can't break out, is easy, I guess he's not in
the hospital. He gets thrown into general population. And apparently
the revolutionaries and the socialists were actually sort of tougher

(18:57):
on crime than the cops because the cops are all crooked,
and so a lot of the prisoners don't like the socialists.
At this particular point, and so they're beating the ship
out of Bernard until one guy in Joel is a thief.
It's like, oh no, that's my Sally from last year.
Leave him alone. So the one upside is that he
had already been in jailsome and the Furies on the outside. Okay,

(19:19):
I think it's actually Furier. I'm not sure it's Furyest.
We should stick with Furries, okay, but hear me out
Fury Furrier, Furious, all right. So the fury Ists are like, fuck, no,
let our people out of jail. So there's a big
boycott of the fur industry in and I guess the

(19:40):
boond maybe organizes this. That's kind of implied, but it's
not really explicit. And this is really bad. This boycott
is really bad. So the bosses bribe the cops to
let Bernard and the other guy out of jail. All right,
that's not the way I expected that to go down,
but whenever, it works. Right. So he's seventeen. He has

(20:02):
direct actioned his way out of prison twice, once with
his feet, once with the solidarity of an entire fucking movement.
But um, I have bad news for the Russian peasantry
of nineteen o five six. They don't win. The five
Revolution fails, lots of people are in jail. The radical
wave ebbs Comrade Bernard. He keeps trying to organize, but

(20:22):
people are sick of losing, sick of fighting. Bernard doesn't
mind fighting and doesn't mind losing. He gets arrested organizing
the carpenters. He gets arrested organizing the painters. He gets
arrested organizing by the ironmongers. Nice collect them, I know,
I know. Fifth Time is the charm, and he gets
exiled to some tiny Polish village. They're like, we're sick

(20:45):
of you, and so you would guess, right, Miriam, at
this point, do you think he's gonna stay content with
his new lot in life and just stay quietly in
this Polish village, biding his time until material conditions change
and are better for revolution. I mean, if I had
to guess, based on the fact that he's a topic
person on this podcast, I would say that he hangs

(21:06):
out in a small Polish village, maybe picks up woodworking,
and um tells people to vote in their local elections.
You'd think that, but he actually escapes exile and heads
back to Warsaw and in. Okay, so I don't know
if you knew this, but you know, people are really
anti Semitic. I've heard that. Yes, okay, this is like

(21:29):
a whole big thing going back through history, and you
know Russia's like exper for it. Yeah. Then there's blood libel. Yep,
heard of that one too. It's this whole anti Semitic
like meme kind of that's like Jews ritualistically killing Christian
kids and bathing in their blood. That a reasonable one

(21:50):
sentence of it. Yeah, I know there's um there's sometimes
part of the story is that we take the blood
of Christian babies and use it to make moths for Passover,
which anyone who's ever eaten mazza would be able to
tell you is clearly not true, because um, it would
have flavor in its blood, taste like something probably Yeah, yeah,

(22:13):
um mansa just tastes like dry. It just tastes like
the texture of dry. Um. I really liked it as
a kid. I mean it's you know, it's fine. You
can even put things on it, um, as many things
as possible usually you're eating. But yeah, it does not
does not have anything in it besides flour and water

(22:34):
and salt, so definitely not not blood. What about of
Christian kids though, um, not even of Christian kids? All right, well,
then that explains what happens next. Because there's this Ukrainian
Jew named Menahem Bayliss, and he's in his forties, he
has five kids, he's completely indifferent to religion. He's a
superintendent of a brick factory. And in his town a

(22:58):
Christian kid has found mutilated and Manahem is a Jew,
so he gets framed up on it and he gets
accused of blood libel, and this becomes worldwide news. All
of the like coolest writers and scientists and ship in
Russia write letters and defense of the guy against anti Semitism.
And two things of note happened around this trial. First

(23:18):
and more relevant to our story. Comrade Bernard and the
rest of the boon, they organize a general strike over
the trial. Nice, and do they do that by tweeting
general strike? Now, I'm I think so, I'm not actually
aware of other ways that you could organize a general
strike besides calling for one to your three thousand followers
on Twitter. Yeah, that seems to be the way people

(23:40):
tried to do it. Yeah, So that's probably what they did.
But actually they probably did organization and his organization rules,
and it's a way you get things done, and you
you kind of just like, can't funk with the Jews
at this point without them doing ship right back to you.
And an awful lot of the working class in all
of this area is Jewish. Speaking of general strikes, here

(24:02):
is a word from our sponsors, all of whom would
be incredibly happy if people were to get together with people,
create systems of organization by which to exert their will
as a laboring class, and shut down the economy until
such time as society is reorganized along better lines and

(24:28):
we are back. Okay, So there's this general strike. I
don't know the effects of the general strike, right, and
I wanted. I tried to find more about this, but
I didn't find enough in time. But the other thing
about this trial that's so interesting. You have this rapidly
anti Semitic court. The jury is twelve Christians, seven of
whom are ultra nationalists, and they find him innocent. WHOA,

(24:50):
how badly do you have to funk up a frame
up to get results like that? Yeah, that's that's um.
Either the frame up was very bad, or the jury
was somewhat influenced by the like general strike going on
outside the window. Yeah, I'm I'm guessing a little of both.
There was like it was like comically bad. They were like,

(25:12):
I noticed the child. I hate to talk about the
child this way, but like noticed the child has thirteen wounds,
which is a very important number in the evil Zionist
blood libel land. And then like the corners like as
fourteen wounds on the the kid his fourteen wounds. So

(25:34):
they let him go, and I just I was like,
basically I heard about the general strike and I was like,
I need to find out why. And I was like,
oh my god, of course they had a blood libel case. Okay,
So back to Bernard Bernie or Comrade for short. In
nineteen fifteen, he gets arrested and it was shocking to
you this time he's had a secret trade union meeting

(25:58):
that should have been more secret it was, I guess.
And then Germany invades Poland. This is the World War
one time, not the World War two times, and prisoners
like Bernard, who's in jail at this point, get taken
deeper into Russia. He gets out on parole, so he
immediately gets himself a fake passport and fox off back
du Kiev, whereupon he gets busted for parole violation and exiled,

(26:24):
this time to Siberia. I've already I'm starting to think
he's not very good at avoiding a rest. That's true. Well, okay,
he makes times. It's like, all right, you're you're a teenager,
and yeah, you know, I get it, but like it
does seem like it's happening an awful lot. But you

(26:45):
know what, he gets all of this practicing. All the
steaks are low. Oh, this works out really well for him.
He is, having failed numerous times, he eventually comes out
winging on the not get arrested front. His book is
better than any fantasy novel I've ever read. And I

(27:06):
say this as a fantasy writer who deeply cares about fantasy. Okay, so,
exiled to Siberia. I've lost count of his arrests and
flights from the law. But this is exile number two,
and he does when it's Siberia, they really mean it.
I know, and so um, I don't know. Do you
think he's going to connoct some elaborate escape plan and

(27:27):
then pull it off? I mean that or he's just
gonna like walk away and be like I'd rather not. Sophie,
what's your guess? Uh, I've already read ahead. I can't
I'm so biased that I can't without lying. Unethical for
you to guess Sophie reads the scripts along. I was like,

(27:51):
I read what happens, so it won't be elaborate scheme.
It is. This will be shocking to almost no one.
So it's a little bit of a laborate scheme, and
it's a little bit just taking advantage of circumstances. So
he gets sick, like actually sick, and he wants to
go to the doctor. But this is Siberia and he's
a prisoner, so the doctor is fifty miles away. So
he goes to the head cop guy and he's like, hey,

(28:12):
but let me let me go to the doctor so
I don't die. And the head cop guy he's suspicious.
I mean, okay, fair, this is this is comrade Bernardi,
you know. So he starts inspecting Bernard, like lifting up
his eyelids to see if he's sick. You're a nurse,
is that a thing? Hey? A classic eyelid check. That's

(28:33):
how you know. That's how you know if someone's sick. Yeah, yeah,
totally yeah, And so so Bernardi gets sassy and he's like,
oh you're a doctor now to the guy who's like
lifting up his eyelids. Just not what I would say.
I wish I would have this cur that was some
of lifting up my eyelids, and they control whether I
live or die. I don't know. I don't know what
I would say. Yeah, when when somebody who is allowed

(28:54):
to kill me has their fingers in my eye, that's
like not a moment to get sassy in in my opinion.
But but but the evidence says so the head cop
doesn't like this, so he smacks Bernard. So Bernard, he
in turned as, also does not like this, so he
picks up a kerosene lamp and breaks it over the
CoP's head being measured and considered. Response, Yeah and okay,

(29:18):
immediate effects are negative. The guards come in and beat
the ship out of him. Um, but the story does
the rounds everyone. Comrade Bernard broke kerosene lamp over that
cop guy's head, and all the exiles get worked up
and excited, and they they send a petition and finally
the governor of the region intervenes and is like find whatever.

(29:39):
Bernard can go see the doctor if it'll shut these
people up. Direct action gets the goods. How sick could
he have been if he's up for breaking a kerosene lamp?
Fair enough, okay, But I'm a whimp blake. When I'm sick,
I can't do anything, so I guess the doctor. And
the doctor was like, oh funk, you're sick, um, but

(30:02):
it's not tuberculosis. Don't worry, dear listener, it's pneumonia. And
the doctor is a bud, a fellow exile. I assume
they called each other buds all the exiles. I don't
see any reason why they wouldn't have. So the doctor
is like, okay, he has to stay here for treatment
because he's sick. And so then Bernard gets better and
the head cop guys like, give me back my Bernard.

(30:23):
But the doctor is like, oh no, he's still recovering,
even though he was fully recovered. So I guess it's
just like stay there, and he gets a basically gets
his doctor's note that's like I don't have to go
to exile today, and he spends his time like hunting
and fishing until but it's therapeutic hunting and fishing. Yeah totally, yeah, yeah, yeah,
convalescence or whatever until the fucking Russian Revolution happens. Nice,

(30:50):
he just waited it out. Yeah yeah, you're like all right,
was And honestly, that's one of the main lessons I
get from a lot of reading history is that like,
sh it's gonna change. The existing systems might not be
the systems in the future. There's like long chunks where
it doesn't change. It's not there's no guarantee, but whatever. Okay,

(31:11):
So because like it seems like the main reason not
to die, so you get to live through so many
historical events, at least when things are really bad. I
don't know, whatever, Okay, I'm not telling you why did
or at least at least to live through different historical
events than the ones that are currently happening to you.
And like, I don't know, it's like you have to
tell the story of the Russian Revolution or tell the
story the warsaw gattab up present. You don't have to,

(31:32):
but I'm choosing to, and because I think it provides
good context. Because all of these people, they're not numbers,
they're people. They have beliefs, they fight for those beliefs
before the events that they're remembered for. They're still doing
all kinds of ship As soon as the exiles here
about the revolution, they're like, it seems like we should
be in charge of this town instead of the cops.

(31:53):
So they round up all the cops and disarmed them
and raise the red flag over the town. Fuck. Yes,
you're giving me like way more excited about the whole
red flag thing than I would normally, right, right, especially
because he stays on the right side. Okay, anyway, so
in the middle of nowhere Siberia, I guess I have
to do to have a revolutionist round up the cops,
disarm them, raise the flag. I mean, I guess they

(32:15):
could have done that at any time. Yeah, I mean,
you know, Okay, so then they probably would have gotten
reinforcements if there hadn't have been a revolution happening. Right,
And so this this unaware of the revolution or the
fact that the revolutions hit this small town, like headhead
cop guy, the head cop guy's boss shows up and
the revolutionary has taken prisoner and Bernard Goldstein is supposed

(32:35):
to kill him since he's the one who suffered the worst, right,
So they tie him to a tree, get out the
old revolver, and this head cop guy just breaks down
sobbing and tear, and so Bernard's like bucket and doesn't
kill him. And he says, basically to quote the translator Leonard,
the victorious revolution must show a humane attitude, even to

(32:58):
an evil servant of the czar. Wow. I know he
wasn't a Bolshevik. Yeah, So Bernard he fox off out
of exile because he's not an exile anymore, and he
winds up in Kievan, Ukraine and he helps organize a
Jewish militia and then helps overthrow the fucking reactionary government.
I love that for him. Yeah, I'm going to be

(33:20):
picturing him swinging, like swinging a kerosene lamp, like just
sort of on the barricade. Goes yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
I feel like, oh, I don't funk with Comrad Bernie
over there. You're gonna get a kerosene lamp to the face.
And so he's like, all right, Poland is independent now,
so I can go home. So he goes home to
Warsaw and he gets involved in the boons there and

(33:40):
Poland isn't having a communist revolution at this point, but
the labor union is getting strong again, and he goes
and he just throws himself into labor organizing after multiple
successful revolutions, and he goes and he he works to
organize the least organized trades, the places that are most
resistant to socialism and trade unionism, because he's just like
fucking made out of charisma, Like any problem me as

(34:03):
he rolls charisma to solve it, or sometimes he rolls
kerosene lamp attack, which is I think a Decks based attack. Yeah,
I would think so. Yeah. And he he winds up
head of the defense groups or militias or whatever who
fight off Polish nationalists and fascists and ship like that.
And in Poland at least the the boons trying to
organize for socialism ends up with one other enemy to fight,

(34:26):
the communists. Yep, to quote Leonard Chatskin again, who is
pulling mostly from a biographical sketch that introduced the original
Yiddish version of this book. In their campaign to split
the labor movement and destroy the socialists, the communists stopped
at nothing. They used intimidation freely. They would often send
groups armed with revolvers to break up workers meetings. Once

(34:49):
they even attempted to disperse a national convention of the
Jewish Transport Workers Union with gunfire. They did not shrink
from a shooting attack on the famous Metam Sanatorium for children.
The attacks were carried out by tufts, who received from
the Communists and ideological justification for their own predilection for violence.
And so there's these street fights happening, right, But the

(35:12):
Socialist militia overall, they actually still refused to go on
the offensive against the Communists. They they're training for it,
but they're like, it'll just be a fucking blood bath,
and they like, I don't want to shoot their fellow workers. Um,
they would defend themselves though, Yeah, if only the Communists
also didn't want to shoot their fellow workers. Yeah. Yeah,

(35:34):
So the Communist Party, even though Bernard is literally a
huge part in why Socialists aren't like going on the
offensive against the Communist the Communist Party declares a formal
death sentence for our man, comrade Bernard, the one who
has led to successful revolutions. What makes them think they're
going to be able to carry that out? Like at
this point, how do you know, Yeah, one day he's

(35:56):
coming home, probably from organizing something in or doing some
dramatic weird thing that everyone's friend or whatever, because he's
a full hero. And he's ambushed by a bunch of
gunmen but he's armed too, and he shoots back, and
he drives the attackers back, he wounds one of them.
The attackers grab their wounded friend and funk off, and

(36:17):
the Communists don't funk with him anymore because he fucking
shot one of them. He tried to kill him. Wise decision. Yeah,
this guy has unlimited hit points and unlimited charisma. I know, right,
it's kind of American, Like, okay, so this is like
one of the things, right, Like I can't back up
most of this with multiple sources. There's not in English
that I've been able to find a lot written biographically

(36:39):
about about him. But it then goes on to basically
paint him as the kind of the king of mutual
aid and warsaw. He's out there organizing people, he's keeping
everyone calm, he's mediating disputes between workers, he's like getting
workers to work on their hygiene. Like there's this whole
aside something else we could have used to occupy from time. Well,

(37:05):
like at one point he goes to this party and
that there's like fancy food and drink at this party
at this worker's house. But but Bernard shows up and
the guys like wife and kids are in like rags,
and he walks out and like, oh no, what's the
what what happened? And he's like, you can't spend money
on this stuff while like your your family is like

(37:27):
not being treated well until they have decent clothes, until
you've taken care of them. I will not. And so
then instead of getting mad, the person like solves the
problem and then invites him back and they have a
new party where everything's better. I didn't even write that
one down in the script. I just got excited about it.
I like this guy a lot. I know, I'm really glad.
I know he wrote a book, you know, because that

(37:48):
means he's going to make it. Yeah. And he's not
the leader of the boond or anything like that, right.
He he's leading a bunch of the militia and he's
doing a lot of organizing. But he's definitely not the
King of mutual Ady. He's not the monarch of anything. Wait,
who is the king of mutual aid? Margaret? Who did we? Uh?
Did we ever pick them. What's the coronation ceremony isn't

(38:10):
until next year. There's going to be the what's the
word for when everyone gets together and fights the death battle? Royal?
But anarchist revolution? I meant to say election. Can we
pretend that I set election? I tried to say the

(38:30):
phrase anarchist election, and it wouldn't come out of my mouth.
It turned into anarchist revolution, which makes more sense as
a concept, a less sense as a joke. Yeah, whereas
that everyone fighting each other to find out who is
the king of mutual aid is more like the Bolsheviks
stealing the okay? So uh So one of the problems

(38:50):
is happening for everyone, including especially in the Bond and
especially for Jews in Poland. Is that anti Semitism, which
was already real bad, gets real worse when Hitler comes
to power over in Germany. No way, I know you'll
be shocked to though this. You think everyone would be like, oh, well,
we don't like Germany. So okay. So even before Hitler invades,
Warsaw got real real ship for Jews. There's pickets at

(39:13):
Jewish businesses. Jewish students keep getting segregated in classes, there's
random attacks. The government isn't helping. Only community defense organizations
can help, which actually includes a decent number of non
Jewish Polish workers. The basically the hard work of the
boone kind of pays off here. Most of the socialist
workers in Poland don't go fascist. It's kind of a

(39:34):
terrible act of history that a lot of socialists went
fascist during the nineteen thirties. But the Polish support of
Jews was spotty, as we'll get too soon, and the
Jewish militias were often alone. But if nothing else, they
managed to kind of keep the numbers of their overt enemies,
that the fascists from shooting through the roof the boonest
militias they set up flying squads and they wait by

(39:55):
the phone ready to like run off in defense of
anyone who's being attacked. And at one point the Fascist Party.
There's a couple of Fascist party, but the ones that
are like we are the Fascist Party are called the
Phalanga and they they bombed the headquarters of the Boon.
They set a time bomb there, so Jewish and Polish
socialists march over to the Phalanga headquarters and smash up

(40:18):
the entire building and then beat the ship out of
everyone they find there nice and then there's another bulk
hero moment. This is the one that I doubt the most.
I just want to let you know I've already decided
to believe it. I don't have a counter argument to this, Okay,
So it's it's there's this program in a nearby town

(40:38):
because a Jewish guy killed the Polish guy and I
SAIDMI has freaked out, and Bernard and someone else from
the Boon they go over there and they make contact
with the non Jewish socialists in that town, the Shoemaker's Union,
and they try to figure out how to stop the program.
And at one point, a right wing mob torches an
abandoned Jewish house. The people who lived there had gone
into hiding somewhere else, and the fire spreads to the
house next to it, which happens to be non Jewish,

(41:00):
and fucking Bernard runs into the burning building, gets the
kids out of the blaze, and then runs up to
the roof, being like, we need water, we need water,
come come fight this fire. And the crowd, which is
not the angry mob crowd that has moved on, this
is the crowd of like curious workers and ship. You know,

(41:21):
it's like, holy fuck a Polish houses on paraphrasing here,
holy fuck a Polish houses on fire. And this Jewish
guy saved everyone. Fuck the right wing, fuck the pogrom,
and Jews in town came out of their barricaded houses
and race relations were saved in the town. I absolutely
choose to believe that. I also have questions about how

(41:42):
he got off the roof. Yeah, I mean, it must
not have been that on fire or something, right, Like,
why would you run into a house save kids and
then run up to the maybe as okay, so he
he ran in, got the kids out, and then ran
back in just to get up on the roof and
yell yeah maybe or maybe he like passed the kids
out the second story window to people waiting below, or

(42:04):
like could be maybe tied bed sheets together to make
a rope just to go full. I don't know, but
what I do know. And then he got up there
on the roof and he was like a Buddhist on
the roof. It sounds crazy, you know, Sorry, there was
gonna be one fiddler on the roof reference in this portion,
Like I was, we weren't going to get away without one. Oh,

(42:27):
that's fair. And you know what else, we're not going
to get away with or get away without thanks? That
was that was really slick. Yeah, well what are we
advertising today, Margaret? Well, okay, so of course we are sponsored,
as always by the concept of potatoes and boil them,
mash him stick a ministe. Yeah, but what do you

(42:51):
what do you want to be sponsored by something that's
wholesome and not an actual product, oh um, or a
specific brand of a product. You know. I like music, okay,
the concept of of music of you know, sound played
for enjoyment and expression. Okay, So the early Quakers are

(43:11):
not sponsors today's podcast. Yeah, that's that's probably true, but
the modern Quakers could be. So we are sponsored by potatoes, music,
and all of these other things. And we are back.

(43:31):
And I've got one more story. I was a bunch
of stories, but one more of these specific ones. Six.
It's an election in Lots, which is a city that
I should have looked at. How to pronounce the second
biggest city in Poland. I think it's loads loads But
you know, if I'm wrong, people can be mad at
me about it, getting mad at Miriam at I right, okay?

(43:54):
On Twitter? Yes, I was about to see the exact Okay,
so the Index they're the other fascist party. They're the
National Democrats and basically in loads, how did you say, Well,
I said loads, you know if you start saying it,
and then I turned out to be wrong, Like that's fine.
So the Index that the other fascist party, the National Democrats,

(44:17):
and they're basically like, if Jews show up to vote,
we'll fuck you up. And the Socialists they don't have
the numbers necessary to protect all the polling places or
to bring the fight to the enemy. So Bernard he
goes to the local Jewish crime lord. Who's this tiny, old,
wrinkly dude named mandel A, the King of the Strong
who rules a chunk of the underworld that is both
Jewish and Christian. These are fantastic right and these books

(44:44):
are not left wing. There their politics is I want
to be a crook, which I believe is its own
political affiliation. On the map then diagrams with a a lot
of other ones. Oh, for sure, you find crooks in
in most political affiliation. But yeah, I like when that's
just somebody's whole thing that tells you a lot about

(45:06):
where they'll go in any given situation. And this guy,
he's the king of the strong. He has such strong
control over the crooks that he's able to convince even
the Christians that they have to go fight to defend
the Jews. So the crooks and the socialist militia, the
latter mostly imported from from Warsaw. They're like, hey, fascists,

(45:27):
if you show up, we'll fuck you up. And it
probably would have been a fair fight right at that point,
because you've got kind of equal numbers. And do you
know what fascists think of fair fights, Miriam, I don't
think that's like their preferred approach. It's not so they
didn't show up. There's a few small fights here and there,
but basically, democracy and more importantly not fascism was protected

(45:50):
by a bunch of thieves who are just sucking rules.
I love that. And in case you're wondering, you know, like, oh,
maybe Comrade Bernard's getting too big for his britches, right,
he's like, you know, roll on charisma and everything. Maybe
everyone knows. No, he's not making other people. He's throwing
down and fights. In his forties. At one point he
gets arrested while fighting and they're going to send him

(46:12):
to a concentration camp. And I really don't know what
that means in pre Nazi context U in Poland, I don't,
I don't know. And but basically the head of the
BOOND just like you, You're not going to do that
to Bernard, And so it didn't happen. Um. And then
in this meeting, the chief of police is like, who's

(46:32):
in charge of Warsaw? You or me? Don't ask the questions.
You don't want to hear the answer. To their officer,
he did not want to know the answer to that question.
In in in case you think that there are a small faction.
By eight the anti Zionist secular socialist Boond was receiving
the overwhelming majority of all Jewish votes in Poland, Like
seventeen out of twenty seats were occupied that were occupied

(46:54):
by Jews. Are Buddhists? Hell yeah, And that's the story
before we get to the fucking German invasion in the
Warsaw ghetto. That's just some light context. To quote Bernard again,
it was at the highest point in the Jews climb
towards recognition as a human being with national and social
rights that Hitler struck him down. So this is a
whole war thing a World War a second one. On

(47:19):
September one nine, Germany invaded Poland again, and Poland is
way the Funk out matched the Boond and the Polish
Socialists they buddy up immediately in defense of the country.
The Boon tosses around the idea of telling the rest
of Warsaw, like, hey, we should resist as a city,
but they decide not to because they're like, we can't
get everyone killed, especially not as like the Jews, it

(47:43):
will go really badly. And also the Boon is like
kind of more strategic in its use of force than
a lot of the other political actors. It seems like, um,
this is not to say what was strategic or ethical
in this situation. This is just kind of what they
chose to do. Instead. The Boond kind of like fucked
of out of the city mostly and fought outside the
city and the resistance. Um, except then the rest of

(48:05):
Warsaw decided to resist the Nazis anyway, I think, spurred
on partly by the Polish socialists, and so then the
Boond also went and fought, and that whole thing, and
they get this besieged. Warsaw gets besieged and gets super
fucked up by the Germans. Things are looking dark for
our heroes. But then on September, a glimmer of light
in the north, like a dawn, like a red dawn.

(48:26):
The Soviets are coming. Surely they'll save us here in Poland.
I know you're never gonna say a good thing about Soviets.
I gotta find at some point, bake me out like that.
At some point, I'm gonna find some people Soviets, because
there are that the actual rank and individuals Soviets. For sure.

(48:49):
For sure, I just um when you when you use
it as a collective noun in that way, I just
don't believe you that there that anything is going to happen. No,
but the unfortunately the Polish resistance did look to the
Soviets coming and thought that they were there to help them.
But just kidding. The Soviets are allied with the Nazis.
There's this whole thing, the Molotov ribbon Trup packed where

(49:10):
Stalin and Hitler were. I guess Molotov and ribbon Trup
divvy up Poland like a turkey. Two years later, of course,
Germany invased the USSR and they become enemies. But at
the beginning of the war, Soviets are like a little
bit buds with the Nazis and go off and capture
some of Poland together, and the Polish Army was ordered
under orders not to fire on the Soviets because they
thought the Soviets would hopefully help them or save them.

(49:34):
Um I, Miriam, how old were you, Like I was
in my thirties before I realized that the Soviets started
off World War Two friendly with Germany. Um I was not.
I was, I was younger, but I I grew up
with a somewhat more direct connection to some of these issues.

(49:54):
And also, uh just I don't know, I think I
got quite a bit of World War two history and
in school, so yeah, that was something that I knew
that they had started out as allies at the Nazis
and then later on. It's it's funny because it's kind
of like, um, America, like America doesn't like to talk
about the fact that, um, the USSR was part of

(50:16):
the allies later in the war. UM, and people who
like the USSR don't like to talk about the fact
that they were the allies of Nazi Germany early in
the war. So it's like, uh, just very uh very
an oddly touchy subject. The USSR was fighting on it
at any given time. Yeah, totally. And I think they

(50:37):
were like, not technically allies, but they were close enough
friends to invade a country together. Um, which is I mean,
if that's not ally ship, that's that's hashtag ally ship
right there. I was thinking more like friends with benefits
than partners. Sure, I don't know. Okay, So the Soviets
they capture and execute several prominent members of the booned

(50:58):
and the Polish Socialists. Uh later, Actually, the Nazis are
like storming around Warsaw trying to find this one particular
socialist socialist leader, thinking he escaped somehow with living underground,
but nope, the Soviets had already found and executed him.
I don't know my displeasure with the Soviet Union is
being adequately expressed on the show, Margaret, How do you
feel about state communism, everything Union in particular, Every single

(51:22):
time I research history that should have nothing to do
with the Bolsheviks. They're there as villains, not living up
to what they promised that they were supposed to be. Well,
they're like they're like the opposite of the Quakers. Who
keep popping up in near resons like pretty chill. Yeah, totally.
Um So the Soviets they rounded up and summarily executed
twenty two thou Polish officers, and what's called the Cayton Massacre.

(51:46):
They arrested at least a quarter of a million Polish
soldiers and sent like forty three thousand of these prisoners
to their friends with benefits the Nazis. I suspect that
this did not help the Polish resistance against Nazism. I
going out on a limb here. I'm not a historian.
It seems like starting out with the disadvantage, Yeah yeah,

(52:07):
so or saw scarcely withstands the siege from the Nazis,
and the whole city's fucked up as hell. Thirty thousand
people are killed, ten percent of the city is destroyed.
People are left carrying their water up from the river
and there's not enough fuel to boil the water. And
the Nazis immediately set to work turning the Poles against
the Jews, which was often easy to do in this

(52:29):
time period. They set up soup kitchens for our arians only,
and they encourage Poles to rat out any Jews they
find with the audacity to try and actually eat food.
And I'm going to skip some of the details about
some of the bad things, um, because I'm sensitive. But

(52:52):
right from the start they forced all the Jews to
register and go off and do slave labor in rotation.
They set up the Juden rot U din rot Uh,
which is ostensibly the self government of the Jewish people,
and immediately task it to build themselves a ghetto. One
of the members of the June Rat at this point
is a also a member of the boond Archer's Ego Boom,
and he just flatly refuses. He says, I'm gonna I

(53:16):
will fucking die before I help organize the building of
the ghetto, and he gives speeches publicly to this effect.
And this resistance from within the Judn Rat delays the
construction of the ghetto by by months. Uh. He might
not have been the only one to resist, but I'm
not I'm not sure, And I want to tell his
story really quickly because he's really cool. Archer's Ego Boom

(53:38):
was born in to a desperately poor Jewish family. He's
one of ten kids. By the time he's ten, he
was working in factories. I think g lovemaking factories, he
gets involved in labor organizing, he joins the boond and
soon he's part of the city government in the city
of lots Loads. When Germany invades, though, he leaves his
temporary safety and goes to Warsaw to help organize the defense.

(54:00):
In particular, his whole thing is he's coordinating between the
Jewish and the Polish militias to make sure that everyone's
fighting on the same side. And when Nazis to control
the city, they demanded twelve hostages from the city. They're like,
we want twelve of your high profile people so that
we can kill them if you all resist, right, and um,

(54:20):
the mayor picks this, uh, this Jewish woman and Artur
volunteers in her stead like literally like straight uponer games.
It's just like, no, it's gonna be me. I'm going
to be the Nazis hostage. And then he's let out
after a bit after they released the hostages, I think,
and he posed the building of the ghetto and his

(54:40):
friends and family smuggle him out of the city because
he has been real public about this. And I watched
an interview with his cousin about about this. Part of
the Yiddish history project. He goes around Europe in the
US and he's trying desperately in Vain to convince the
world what's happening to the Jews in Nazi occupied territory.
Eventually he winds up in London and he joins an

(55:02):
advisory board of the Polish government in exile. There there's
actually this whole thing where the Polish government exile recognizes
the Jews substantially more than the Polish government, not an
act the resistance movement in Poland. And while he's off
doing this in in London, he's like, well, funck no,
I'm not organizing with Zionists, right, because this whole split

(55:23):
in the movement because he's a Buddhist. And then eventually,
after the word of the mass killings reached him, he's like,
you know what, we have bigger fucking problems. Uh. And
he works to get the Buddhist and the Zionist on
the same page, political disagreements being less pressing than stop genocide. Yeah,

(55:45):
And he does everything he can. He writes all the petitions,
he gets audiences with all the world leaders, he talks
to all the press, he compiles all the data on
death camps, he gets all the numbers. His wife and
one of his kids are killed in Warsaw while he's gone. Ah,
he and others take massive risks to get this information out.
They smuggle a Polish socialist into the ghetto to get

(56:05):
information out, and no one will fucking listen. Sort of
skipping ahead on the timeline to tell his story, he
takes the only action he can think of left, and
he kills himself in protest of not only the Nazis
but the fucking Allies ignoring the plight of the Jews,
and he leaves a letter. The responsibility for the crime

(56:26):
of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland
rest first of all on those who are carrying it out,
but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity,
on the peoples of the Allied nations, and on their governments,
who up to this day have not taken any real
steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon
this murder of defenseless millions of tortured children, women and men,
they have become partners to the responsibility. I am obliged

(56:49):
to state that although the Polish government contributed largely to
the arousing of public opinion in the world. It still
did not do enough. It did not do anything that
was not routine, that might have been approp it to
the dimensions of the tragedy taking place in Poland. I
cannot continue to live and to be silent while the
remnants of Polish Jewelry, whose representative I am, are being murdered.

(57:11):
My comrades in the Warsaw Ghetto fell with their arms
in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was
not permitted to fall like them together with them, but
I belong with them to their mass grave. By my death,
I wish to give expression to my most profound protest
against the inaction in which the world watches and permits
the destruction of the Jewish people. And then he had

(57:35):
his body cremated in solidarity with those who were killed
in the camps. And I cried a lot well, right
in this episode. UM, I mean, I'm I'm that's I'm
glad that you read that. Um. It's one of the
big lies of US history is that um America thought

(57:57):
in World War Two in order to save the Jews. Yeah,
um in America could not have given a fuck. Um. Yeah,
it's um very you know it's powerful to hear a
voice who was trying to get people to care at
that time. Yeah, I correct me if I'm wrong, But

(58:19):
it kind of feels like the only people were fighting
for the Jews were the Jews and then some of
the some of the leftists in various places. Yeah, I
mean I think that's that's accurate. There were there were
other people who were like helping and very I don't
want to make a break state because there were there
were people who were helping in various places and like

(58:40):
for various ideologies and reasons, but like as far as um,
it's like the most powerful world governments. No. Yeah. So
there's one more thing I want to talk about today,
which is there's an annoying question that goes around why
didn't the Jews fight back? And Miriam, I think you've

(59:04):
prepared something on that topic. Yeah. I kind of wanted
to to have something to say to like the potential
straw man there. Um. Yeah, because that that is a
question that gets asked and like, I mean, obviously in
the context of what what you have just said, the
answer is they fucking did. Um. But I don't I

(59:27):
also I don't think that that's like what people mean,
they don't mean like, well, why weren't why didn't the
bund as if people like know or care about the
bund But um, you know, why why weren't there organized militias?
You know, why weren't there things like that? I think
they mean, like why didn't everybody fight back? You know,
why didn't people being pushed into cattle cars fight back?

(59:51):
Why didn't people being pushed into gas chambers? Fight back?
And UM, I wanted to just like talk about that
real quick, yeah, because this is brought up in sort
of two overlapping contexts, both of which I really have
a problem with. Um. And the first is just it's

(01:00:12):
basic victim blaming. And I want to say, like we
we talk about victim blaming a lot um in in
our you know, like current conversation, and it's usually in
the context of sexual assault. And when people talk about
victim blaming, they imply that, like, the reason it's wrong
is that it's it's cruel and harmful to the victim,

(01:00:32):
which is absolutely true. Like that is one of the
reasons that's wrong. Um. But the real danger of victim
blaming to me is less is more that it lets
the real people responsible off the hook, UM, it misses
the point about who and what actually causes harm. And
here in this context, I'm not actually talking about the Nazis.

(01:00:52):
I'm talking about non Jews who could have fought back
but didn't. UM. You know, and you you have obvious
already talked in previous episodes about some non Jews who
did fight back, and I know, you know we've started
to talk about Jews who did as well, and I
know we're going to talk about that more. But UM,

(01:01:13):
that way of fighting, that like forming of small, dedicated
groups that take up arms. That's like, that's what you
do when there has not been a mass movement to
protect you. UM. And there should have been a mass
movement of non Jews opposing the Nazi targeting of everybody

(01:01:34):
they targeted, and it was you know, these so called
Aryan non Jews who were the people in Nazi Germany
who actually had power. And if there had been a
mass movement of such people opposing genocide, it would have worked.
And I can I can actually offer like proof of that, um,

(01:01:56):
anecdotal proof, UM, which is that in nine forty three,
basically all of the Jews remaining in Berlin were arrested
eighteen hundred of them were Jewish men who were married
to non Jewish women, and they were separated out and
sent to a specific prison awaiting deportation, and their wives,

(01:02:16):
their non Jewish wives came down to the street outside
the prison, which is called the Rosenstrasse Um and said, hey,
give us back our goddamn husbands. And they refused to leave,
and they ended up staging a large, non violent, very
public demonstration just demanding their husbands back, and they had

(01:02:40):
great popular support. Um despite the government basically trying to
stop the word of this protest from getting out, despite
the fact that it was happening during Allied bombing raids,
and despite the fact that they were, you know, German
women publicly talking about their marriages to Jewish men in
people walking by joined in the protests. You know, women
would have to go off to work or to take

(01:03:02):
care of their children, and other women would come and
take their place. And they just kept doing this until
eventually the Nazi government gave them their husbands back. They
literally released these people, including ones who had already been
deported to to concentration camps, They brought them back and
released them to their wives. It worked none of the

(01:03:24):
women were attacked, arrested, or harmed in any way during
these protests. So that's, you know, very cool and inspiring story. Um.
And you know, I'm absolutely respect and in awe of
what those women did, but it also speaks very badly
of every other German who could have done what these

(01:03:48):
women did just as easily. Right. If they had cared
as much about their neighbors as these women did about
their husbands, they could have stopped a genocide. You know,
if they had cared about the murders of Jews and
roma everyone else, there would have been no Holocaust. And
I mentioned you know that there were eighteen hundred men
at Rosenstrasse were married to non Jews, but there were

(01:04:10):
ten thousand Jewish Berliners who were arrested at that same time,
and it was only those eighteen hundred men who were released.
If Berlin had cared as much about all ten thousand,
this would have been very different. And so the question
to me isn't, well, why didn't the Jews fight back,
you know, the people who were already marginalized and under threat.

(01:04:30):
It's why didn't everyone else, people who already had power
and who the Nazi government would hesitate about slaughtering on
mass Why didn't they step up? That's the question that
we should be asking. And the other reason that the
other thing I wanted to address about this question is
the other place it gets brought up is in a
Zionist context, which I think you've sort of alluded to

(01:04:52):
a little bit. Zionists really like to set up a
dichotomy between the brave, strong, fighting Israeli and like the meek,
murderred diaspora jew which is a bullshit dichotomy, you know,
partially because what Israel does is not fighting back. It's
a colonial occupation that displaces murders in prisons and marginalizes

(01:05:14):
Palestinians and then punishes them for fighting back. And partially
because this dichotomy has victim blaming. And you know, I
would argue internalized anti Semitism baked into it, and it's
it's this, it's dismissive and disrespectful of actual Jewish history,
you know, portraying the diasporas nothing but oppression. And I
love the diaspora, which is the source of my culture.

(01:05:35):
Um and as much as Zionist don't want to admit it,
it's Jewish history. It's most of Jewish history. UM. So
that's what I wanted to say, you know, before we started,
or you know, not before we start, but before we
before we continued. Um. And Uh, the Jews who fought
back were amazing. They were right to do so, but
they should not be used as a weapon against people

(01:05:56):
who were murdered by Nazis, which like feels almost too
obvious to say, but you know, I'm saying it. Um.
And I think that people sometimes have this thought, was like, well,
they were ruined to die anyway, you know, so what
do they have to lose by fighting back? And it's like,
I don't know, how about the possibility of survival? Um.
Every member of my family who did survive the Holocaust
did so by not fighting back. Um, you know, by

(01:06:19):
just doing their best to stay alive or waiting for
the chance to get away. Um. My great grandmother was
able to save her daughter, my grandmother that way, along
with several other women. UM. And I don't I think
it's on anyone who hasn't been in a situation like
that to to judge the decisions people made under that
kind of threat. You know, I I love this history
of resistance, but like I I'm aware of the ability

(01:06:42):
of people to turn that history of resistance against against
victims of oppression, and uh, I'm not down with that.
So I just wanted to to make that really clear.
And I'm sorry because I talked for a long time
and none of it was funny. I mean, you're the
one who is a key is in me of being
too serious. So you want me to tell another joke.

(01:07:05):
You want me to tell another joke about anti Semitism.
I can't say no. I feel like I have to
say yes. But it's I'm gonna I'm gonna make awkward
faces the whole time and then but yep, okay, please
tell me a joke about anti Semitism. All right. So
there's this uh, there's this town. There's got it's got
one jew in it um and he's he's a merchant,

(01:07:25):
he's a he sells ribbons door to door. And he
knocks on this man's door and he says, hello, would
you like to buy some ribbons today? I sell ribbons
and the guy who was a total anti Semite is like,
oh yeah, I'll buy some ribbons. I will buy as
much ribbon as it takes to measure from your belly
button to the tip of your penis. Get the funk
out of here. And so he goes on. He's like okay,

(01:07:48):
and he writes that down. He goes on his mary
way and then the next day the anti Semite wakes
up and there's a truck backing up to his house
and he comes to the door and he's like, what
is going on? And the ribbon merchant is there and
it's like your delivery. You see, my belly button is
right here. But I was circumcised in Poland that you

(01:08:09):
said penis. I was like, this is a circumiance. Cut
that one too. If you need to. I just had
to break the tention. I simply will. All right, Well, uh,
that's going to do it for today. When we come
back on Wednesday, we're going to talk about the ghetto
itself and the resistance movements within it both, and you know,

(01:08:31):
hopefully we'll get to talk more about some of that
stuff you're talking about about what resistance gets privileged and
talked about, and what resistance doesn't you know? All right,
final thoughts about oh yeah, yeah, thoughts, plugs, anything you
wanna tell people about. I would like people to go
find uh. I fact Fund on Twitter. Um, that's at

(01:08:53):
I f A, k f U, n D and uh.
I fact fund buys individual first aid kit for people,
and if you send them a donation, they'll turn it
into first aid kits and they'll put those in people's
hands for free. And that's really helpful. Um, living as
we do in a time where sudden horrible things happen often. Yea.

(01:09:17):
And we'll be back Wednesday day, Yeah, yea. I promise
I won't tell any more jokes. You can tell jokes.
I don't believe inappropriate humor is a coping strategy. I
I really recommend it. I think this whole thing is
a story about people holding onto culture. So see you, Wendy.

(01:09:48):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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