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

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation 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 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to People Who Did Cool Stuff podcast,
where I usually try to shoe worn in as many
jokes as possible, but now I'm contractually obliged to me
slightly uncomfortable about how bleak the story is and all
of that. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and with me
today is Miriam Roacheck. Miriam, how are you doing doing okay?

(00:22):
I'm excited to see how how bleak this gets and
where you can shoehorn jokes in maybe. And Sophie is
our producer. Hi, Sophie h Margaret Hello, already said hi,
Ian as our editor, and I can say Hi to Ian,
but Ian can't say Hi back unless he splices in
his own audio. Hi Ian Hi, Ian high Ien and

(00:45):
on woman wrote our theme song. And so like every
second episode, here's where I say Hey, go back and
listen to the first episode. They're basically all two parters,
and this is part two. Today we are talking about
the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and last episod we talked about
the boond and the situation in general at the start
of the invasion of Poland. But now let's talk about

(01:06):
the ghetto and the aforementioned uprising. That happens in the ghetto,
thus the name Warsaw Ghetto upright. Okay, So Jewish refugees
they fled into Warsaw to the German occupation. They're hoping
for safety and anonymity. In numbers, the Jewish population of
the city went from three fifty people to five thousand people,

(01:27):
which is in a city of like one point three
million people, So a solid quarter of the population. Even
before of the influx refugees were Jewish, and even before
the war, it was the single largest collections of Jews,
at least in Europe. I think only New York City
is in the is in the running for largest Jewish
cities in the world. At the time, it was the

(01:47):
the political center of the European Jewish world. And not
everyone who came after the invasion was refugee either. A
good number of Jewish and Polish fighters smuggled themselves into
the city because that's where they were need it. The
Jewish population couldn't handle the influx, not really. Apartments were crammed,
food was short, people died every day. Jews were fired

(02:10):
from almost every job except for like the most manual
of manual labor. Germans prohibited making clothes and shoes and
shipped for the Jewish market. So people started making shoes
with wooden soles and like fabric uppers, soap and candles
were forbidden. Illegal factories were set up everywhere, and whole
swath of the Jewish population entered into the underground economy

(02:31):
by necessity. And this is this is before the ghetto
itself is created, right, this is just this is just
wartime ship yeah, um, wartime anti Semitism. But yeah, and
so the shortages of basically everything, and the Jews overall
are not turning on each other. They did what disaster
studies have shown time and time again that communities can

(02:53):
do and often do during crisis. They set up elaborate
and organic systems of mutual aid. And this isn't like
a garon go ahead, No, that that like is what
people do. Um, everyone should read a paradise built in Hell. Yeah,
Rebecca Solnt Rebecca Solent. Yes. And so this wasn't a
totally guaranteed thing in this particular situation, because things are

(03:16):
get real fucking dire, and so it took active work
by the various political organizations to keep people cohesive and
mutually supportive, which is maybe the single most important and
impactful resistance they offered up because no one knew how
long this ship was going to go on, right right? Um?
And I like the guns and the dead nazis part

(03:38):
of this story, like an awful lot. Yeah, I mean
like everyone loves that. I can't imagine anyone is a
problem with that. We privileged violent resistance sometimes slightly too
much in history, kind of like you were talking about.
And these mutual a groups. They set up orphanages and
clinics and soup kitchens. They literally invented a new kind
of lamp that burns calcium carbide, like mixed with water

(03:58):
or something. I do not understand this chemically. Look, I
don't know how lamps work. I just know that Comrade
Bernard would take a dude out with that thing. However,
it works absolutely, and they're like lamps. We see, we
see the attraction of lamps. I tried to look. I
tried to figure out what calcium carbide was being used

(04:18):
for at the time, why they could access it but
not these other things. And I couldn't figure it out.
The Boon had soup kitchens, the Zionists had their kitchens,
The Orthodox had their kitchens and the Poual Zionists had
theirs Poal zion is Um is basically Marxist zion is Um.
They split from the Boond when the Boond was like, yeah,
we're good, we don't we don't need Zionism the Boond,

(04:39):
they set up the Socialist Red Cross. They provide medical
care and hide fugitives, which is cooler than just providing
medical care rules, don't get me wrong, But if you
can tie it together with also hiding fugitives, that's just bonus.
I mean doing anything plus hiding fugitives really, like you
could be selling ice cream and hiding fugitives whatever, like,

(05:00):
still cooler than just selling ice cream. I think there
comes a point in history for all over, like again
and again and again, there comes a point in history
where you're sort of morally obliged to do everything plus
hide fugitives. You know, I'm a dog walker and I
hid fugitives. Like great, don't tell me that, sty, Why
did you tell me that? I'm a person who doesn't

(05:21):
talk about hiding fugitives on Twitter or in public. And
also I hied fugitives, right, that's the vibe you need. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
And they also set up illegal schools for kids that
no one was supposed to be teaching Jews, but they
did it anyway, of course, so you could also be
an illegal school teacher, which also rules and the boond

(05:42):
In addition to setting up releaf organizations, they also immediately
set up illegal trade unions because they rule and wanted
to do cool ship, and we're like, well, we gotta
set up trade unions. This underground organization had a cell
structure where each personally knew five to ten others within
their own cell that you know, would report up the
little hierarchy tree of cell structure revolution stuff to prevent

(06:03):
infiltration and torture from bringing the whole thing down, because
if one person gets caught, they can only read out
their cell effectively um and their handler the cells handler.
They make contact with the Polish resistance as well, and
they rely on contacts that they've made during their decades
of political organizing. One of their contacts is a Polish
socialist leader, Anton Zanowski, and he survived German occupation only

(06:26):
to be immediately arrested and killed by the Soviets after liberation.
All right, we have made it six minutes in Margaret's
coming for the Soviets. You do not disappoint, thank you
very much. You're welcome. You're welcome over here all day.
The Boons even had a printing press. Of course, the
Nazis confiscated all the Jewish impresses, leaving only one for

(06:49):
the jude rat Uh. The collaborationist organization. I can't even
say collaborationist, that's how much I hate it. But some
of the Buddhists, they're thinking ahead and they've already hidden
to Mimeo raft machines well ahead of time. Nice. Yeah, no,
they were prepared. I mean you need backup the preppers.
You should take note, like maybe I don't know what,

(07:11):
maybe a photo copier or printer these days. I mean
it's something to think about, right, like how are you
going to just how are you going to make zines?
Like how are you going to distribute information? Which absolutely
is necessary. Yeah, And so the printers and distributors don't
really know each other in order to so neither could

(07:31):
wrap the other out. And most of the distributors of
the illegal papers that they set up are women because
when they're stopped in the street, they're stopped in the
street less often by random press gangs because more men
are being pressed into work, and Bernard Goldstein helps edit
a semi monthly paper that they just called bulletin to
avoid it being too obviously attached to the boond so
that wouldn't be repressed. Um. Once the Gestapo figured out

(07:55):
that it was called bullets In, they changed his name
to the Call and later Storm, which honestly seems like
a way to track the escalation of events that happened.
I was just thinking, it really like just ramps up
as you go. Yeah, but you know, points to them
because like at that time, people naming any kind of
leftist journal like physically could not call it, you know,

(08:18):
the worker's friend or like the banner of socialism or
like red flag like it was. It was a huge
effort on their part, I'm sure as generically as they did.
And like, good job, guys, that meeting must have been awful.
Everyone's sitting in there, tense as hell, being like, but
why can't we call it the workers bulletin? Everyone's a worker, No,

(08:40):
be quiet, it's just the bulletin. But everyone's a worker.
But they don't know that with the silent worker, yeah, totally,
the worker is silent, but not silent. This is how
we have a voice. Okay. Anyway, so they funded all
with this really interesting money laundering scheme because everyone in Poland,
Jewish and Polish are trying to get all their money

(09:00):
the funk out of the country, right because they're occupied.
And the boon has supporters all over the world because
internationalism fucking rules, and especially in New York City at
this particular point. So some Polish person would give the
boond money and then the boond would tell their comrades
in the US okay, now give the same amount of
money to a person designated by the funder. So basically,

(09:23):
like you know that that way, the boond in the
US donates to the boond in Poland, and the person
in Poland gets to get their money the funk out
of the country to their family abroad. So the money
doesn't actually change hands to somebody in the US. There's
just the boond in the US is just paying the
money out. Yeah. So like so, like John wants to

(09:46):
give money to his brother James who's in New York City,
but he can't get his money out of the country,
so he gives money to the boond and then the
boond donates money to I already forgot which name I used,
but the guy in New York. Okay, so then the
New York wound gives the money to to James, right right. Yeah. No,
it took me a while. I was like trying to
figure out how to write this out because like I

(10:07):
had to read the paragraph like four times. But it's
fucking brilliant. Yeah. So no money actually crosses the border, correct,
because the boond is in both places. Um, the money
given to the boond in Poland counts as far as
the boond in New York is concerned. Yeah, because I
love it. In the end, it's like the boond in

(10:27):
the US is giving money to boond in Poland because
borders are fake. Yeah, and probably the ones in New
York were like, but couldn't it be called the workers bulletin?
Like we're financing it? What if it was called worker
revolt paper? Yeah? What about like the Star of Socialism

(10:50):
workers Call to Arms? Yeah totally. Yeah, so the people
Star of Socialism works totally. Yeah. Um, they'll take that
one back, they'll workshop it a little more. Yeah yeah, yeah,
it could be longer. And then finally, at some point
someone just like I already printed it. It's called bulletin.

(11:12):
So I don't know if you knew this, but Nazis
hate books. Yeah, I mean, I guess they like some books,
but overall there's not a books. Yeah. They are the
weird old action novels that I can't remember the name
of the guy who wrote them all. So, and the
Nazis are coming for the books. So the Jews tunnel
secretly into their own library, friend of the Pod tunneling,

(11:36):
and they smuggle books out of their own library, like
among sacks of potatoes, Friend of the Pod, Potatoes and
ship like that, the collaboration we've all been waiting for.
This is it the ultimate team up right, Tunnels and potatoes,
I know. And then they set up libraries everywhere across
the ghetto with all of the saved books. I love that,

(11:58):
and I love a heist, so breaking into your own
library also very good. The Nazis are really into collective punishment,
not just for the Jews but for all of the
Polish occupied territory. So like they find a Polish intellectual
with a radio, and then they just round up hundreds
of Jewish and Polish intellectuals and shoot them in the streets.

(12:20):
A German officer gets killed, or some railways are sabotaged,
entire villages are destroyed. Another time in April, and anti
Semite attacks an elderly Jew, and so a younger Jew
beats the ship out of the anti Semite like you do,
and police arrest and kill the younger Jew, and then
this whole program starts, and the community defense Orgs they

(12:40):
want to do something about it, but they also don't
want to just make everything worse. There's all this collective
punishment happening, and they're like, these are the tense meeting.
They're probably a little less tense than what do we
name the paper, but these are tense meetings. And they
decide upon that age old compromise. They will beat the
ship out of the programaths, but they'll use iron pipes
and brass knuckles and leave the knives and at home

(13:01):
a kinder gentler. Yeah, to be fair, they don't have
a lot of guns. This comes up as a problem
in the near future. But so it starts off in
the Jewish quarter. Even before there's a formal ghetto, there
was racial segregation in the city. All the Jewish workers
crewed up and they and fought off the Pogramas, and
this spreads across the whole city. Non Jewish socialists joined

(13:22):
the Jewish side, and fighting runs until the a p m.
Curfew and everyone goes home and then starts up again
in the morning in a citywide brawl. I'm just I'm
just thinking like that. I don't I don't think that's
like what the curfew is intended to do is to
like just make sure all the brawlers go home and

(13:44):
get a good night's rest before they come back out
and continue brawling. Yeah. I mean, probably from the Nazi
point of view, they're like, look, the fucking Poles are
fighting the Jews. Who fucking cares, you know. But I'm
fully on the side of the people who are fighting.
The pogramas. The date any time going home for curfew
like caught me off guard that that was the move.

(14:05):
But it sounds like if both sides go home and
you just come back in the morning and like they're
still there to fight, Okay, it works out and you've
had a good night's sleep, which is important. And this
goes on for I think three days. And the weirdest
thing about this it works there's no collective punishment response,
maybe because it had been so widespread, and tons of

(14:28):
new people show up to the boon being like sign
me up, please, glad someone's doing something, and the Polish
Resistance starts looking a bit more seriously at anti Semitism.
They're still not great, right, but they like they have
their like moments where they start being like, okay, like
maybe we should care about this because in this case,
uh democratic parts of the Polish Resistance, there's all kinds
of different parts of it. The democratic parties within it

(14:50):
are like, oh, anti Semitism is a Nazi thing, and
we don't like Nazis. I get the impression that the
right wing was still like whatever. And because of the
actions of the Jews who refused to build the ghetto
for the Nazis, the segregation the city happens somewhat more
slowly and not nearly so fast as the Nazis would
have preferred. And in the end this delay didn't necessarily

(15:11):
winding up saving all that many people, but it certainly
could have. Right. That's the thing about war. That's the
thing that really kept hitting me as I was reading this,
like researching this, and also talking with what you were
talking about the end of last episode, Like you don't
know what the funk is going to happen, right, Like
if you delay really bad ship for a month in
the middle of World War two, like that could just

(15:32):
as easily have saved everybody, you know. Yeah, absolutely, and
like enough small delays and enough, like small things can
can mean a lot. Yeah, one neighborhood at a time. Though,
the Nazis start kicking the Jews out of their houses
and stealing all their ship. In October ninety, more than
a year after the occupation, they announced the ghetto, which

(15:55):
the jude and rat had helped organize in the end,
helping build the wall and all that ship. All the
Jews had to move in, all non Jews had to
move out. Hundred and fifty thousand Jews move into the ghetto,
eighty thousand non Jews move out over the course of
two weeks. This is not a sad thing for the
non Jews because they all get to go occupy the
much nicer apartments that they're moving into. Because this is

(16:18):
not entirely but a lot of this is the wealthier
Jews being moved into the ghetto, and the mutual aid
groups spring into action and they help people move, but
they also guard people's possessions that are like strown about
on the street during the course of the move and
the boones roaming the streets with tea and bread, like
making sure everyone has what they need. Um and the
newly established ghetto. The rule is that every room has

(16:40):
to have at least four occupants, but the average was nine,
and pretty much all the public buildings were living quarters
as well. Typhus typhoid and dysentery ran rampant. No medicine
was allowed. In six to seven thousand people died every
fucking month in the ghetto. That's more than one percent
of the population dying of disease every fucking up. Um,

(17:01):
disease and starvation. And to the Nazis, the Jewish Jewish
is a race to a Nazi, right, So this also
means that there's several thousand Catholics with some vague Jewish
heritage who were imprisoned in the ghetto. Um, a lot
of whom start off anti Jewish and a lot of
whom end up fighting alongside everyone else. Uh, because the

(17:25):
funk else are you going to do? Jews were forbidden
from speaking Polish in the city, So I guess this
means that the people who didn't speak yetishor Hebrew, like
literally couldn't talk in public legally. I'm not I'm not sure.
I'm not trying to whoe with whatever. I'm trying to
whoe with them. It's a fucking nightmare for everyone, because
being Catholic doesn't save you if you're right. So they
these were people who who had grown up speaking exclusively

(17:47):
Polish and then got classified as Jewish. Right who were
weren't even culturally Jewish, would have like, would just be
like generationally Catholic. There's also people, of course who converted
away from Judaism, them who were caught up by it
being a race thing. But a lot of the a
lot of these families were like, what do you mean
you know, um, yeah, I don't know, it's Jewish or whatever.

(18:10):
The whole thing is surrounded by a ten foot wall
with barbed wire, and anyone leaving was shot on site.
It's not a nice thing, but you said it in
a cheerful voice, that's right. Yeah. The whole thing was
clearly intended as a death camp. The Nazis were like,
oh great, we'll put all the juice here and then
just die. They don't not take care of themselves will
be dead. Disease and starvation was supposed to do in

(18:32):
the whole population, but folks just wouldn't die. I mean, okay,
a lot of them died, right, but not like the
Nazis hoped. People especially children, smuggled food in through cracks
in the wall, thrown over the wall. They had high
food on janitors, every which way they could could. Live
cows were driven over the wall on portable ramps. People
would roll up portable ramps, which I'm sure you had
to be fast, right, Yeah, I just I did not

(18:55):
expect live cows smuggling too, I know. And all the
animals one could smuggle. I think cows would be like
near the bottom. Just throw chickens over whatever you like. Tribute,
okay anyway, Yeah, as as in the documentary Monty Python
and the Holy Grail and the whole Bonty Python and

(19:16):
the Horse Saw Ghetto. Um they trebor cow in that movie, right,
I'm not believe so yeah, yeah, it's been a while,
it's been a while. Maybe it's a catapult, I don't remember.
Extra ration trucks get bribed through the checkpoints. There's a
lot of briberries. How a lot of this gets done right. Uh.
At one point, someone in a building on the outside
of the ghetto, like literally with lower pipes down from

(19:37):
a window and just pour milk into the people would
like line up with buckets, I guess, and then just
pour milk through the um, through the through the pipe food.
We get packed into coffins and smuggled back into the
ghetto by undertakers who took bodies out of the took
bodies out for burial in nearby cemetery. Um And every

(19:58):
single person involved, the cow, small agler, or the pipe person, whatever,
every person involved on both sides is facing instant death
for doing this. But what the funk else are you
gonna do? You know? And two thousand Jewish men between
the ages of thirty and thirty five served in the
Jewish police Force, which was run by a violently anti
Semitic Jew. And I'm not just calling him that because

(20:18):
he's a fucking Nazi cop, but before the invasion, he
had been part of an anti Jewish political group. There's
always there's always a few. You got your fucking Ben
Shapiro's everywhere. Yeah, So he's he's fucking mad that he
got thrown in the ghetto too, so he becomes the
head of the cop. Yeah, there's all these Jews here. Yeah,
I know. I spent my whole life organizing against myself,

(20:40):
and the Jewish cops helped the Nazis every step of
the way. They guide Nazis to the ghetto on their
mission to find and kill people. They do it all.
There was even tops or cops. There was even Jewish
secret police, a couple hundred that were called thirteen Ers,
named after the address their headquarters, who were working directly
with the Gestapo to stop smuggling and cracked down on

(21:00):
political radicals. Hate it so much? Yeah, oh god, the
cops and the secret police and the juice who literally
worked with the Gestapo and collaborationist merchants and all that ship.
They lived in the ghetto too, but they lived a
very different life. They for a little while. Yeah, this
didn't work out for them long term, it did not

(21:22):
correct they but for a little while they hung out
at cafes and ate their fill and ignored curfew and
lived privileged lives while destroying everyone else. Okay, and then
the Nazis set up factories for their war machine and
forced the Jews to work building parts of the bunkers
and other ship like brush factories and stuff for the
war effort. The workers were paid, which is actually kind

(21:43):
of in an awful way, sort of makes everything worse
because you get this dividing conquered strategy happening constantly in
the Warsaw ghetto and and the dividing conquer right, it
was within Jews, but it's obviously also within the broader population. Uh.
The rations available to us was less than two hundred
calories a day. The rations available to polls was less

(22:04):
than seven hundred calories a day, which is like way better, right,
that's like three and a half times more food. But
those are both those are both starvation diets. Yeah, about
calories is what you need to the average person. Everybody
is different. To not die, you need about twelve calories
a day. Um so seven. Wow, you sure are doing

(22:25):
great there, buddy. Under occupation, German occupiers got around twenty
calories a day. In the face of all this, the
Bone turns its attention to one task above all others.
Get some fucking guns and reasonable. Yeah, they build bridges
with the Polish Home Home Army, which is the resistance movement,

(22:48):
but most especially they're building bridges to get some fucking guns,
and they're being pretty careful not to bring repression down
on themselves and not get too violent too quick, because
the Nazis love of collective punishment. But at one point
one of their printers gets found and tortured and murdered.
He didn't give up any names despite weeks of torture,

(23:10):
which good on him. Um. And the boond comes across
a Jewish cop who's looting his corpse in the street.
So the boond, to quote Bernard Goldstein, dealt with the
Jewish policeman appropriately. I love some evocative understatement. Yeah, probably

(23:31):
didn't like set him up with a nice apartment or something. Yeah,
that I have some I have some ideas of what
that could mean. But you know who else will set you,
will deal with you, set you up in nice apartments.
Um uh, help me out here, I'm drowning. Um. Now,
this is a this this is a trap of your

(23:52):
own devising. I can't get you out of this one.
I don't think there's a way out of this one. Market.
Welcome to some advertisers. H And we are back. We
are back, and we are talking about you know, we
were talking about you didn't come start the show during

(24:12):
the ad probably skipped forward thirty seconds, yeah, and then
another thirty seconds and now we're here, and then you
had to skip back thirty seconds because you overshot, which,
fun fact, is part of the reason that there's a
music bumper between the ads. So that, yeah, it's really helpful.
It's intentional. Yeah, so don't tell the advertisers. Oh yeah, yeah, no,

(24:35):
don't don't worry. Potatoes, don't listen to the show. They
don't have ears, they only have eyes. He said, you
weren't going to make any jokes. Yeah, yeah, Margaret, how
dare you be funny? Never trusting you again? Fair enough? Okay,
so they're being pretty careful not to bring any repression. No,
I can't do it like that either. That doesn't work. Okay,

(24:57):
So you're funny an unintentional in ninety two. Oh my god,
Now I just really set myself up because now I
really you have to get worse. You just have to
embrace it, like yeah, talking about horrible things. It doesn't
you know, like it's you know, you just got a
power through it. The Nazis started importing more and more

(25:21):
people into the ghetto, including well to do German Jews
who get to hang out at the cafes with the
cops and the collaborationists and ship. Some of these Jews
who got imported actually had sons serving in the Nazi army,
so they were rooting for the Nazis the whole time
because they wanted their sons to do well. In the end,
everyone at these cafes suffer the same fate as everyone else,
class for collaboration and known is not enough to save you.

(25:44):
And then also during this time, Roma folks start being
imported into the ghetto as well as check Jews, and
by summer of nineteen forty two, the Nazis are just
walking around shooting people for fun in the streets, and
in July the deport stations begin. Ten thousand people a
day are told that they're off to work elsewhere. The

(26:06):
boond and others know that what's up there, like there's
no fucking way that this is what's happening, and they
want people to to hide or fight. They released a
statement printed out posted everywhere they could. Jews, you are
being deceived. Do not believe that you are being sent
to work and nothing else. Actually, you are being led
to your deaths. This is the devilish continuation of the
campaign of extermination, which has already been carried out in

(26:28):
the provinces. Do not let them take you to your death.
Voluntarily resist, fight tooth and nail, Do not report to
the umschlag plots. Fight for your lives. It's here that
maybe it's worth pointing out that hiding is at least
as valid as tactic as fighting, right, Like they want
people to hide or fight whatever, Like people get so

(26:48):
hung up on fighting. I know. I keep hitting that
point because like, choosing where you die as cool as ship.
But if their purpose is to kill you, not dying
is a really good way to Not dying is great
if at all possible. Yeah, you want to see different history,
You've got to live. Not dying is like one of

(27:09):
my top favorite things to do. I do it every day.
You get that little death of sleep, But that one's okay.
Every day so far, no dying. Yeah, I hope that
we can both continue. Okay, So so Adam Schernikov. He's
the head of the June Rat, and I've been leaving
him out of the story for the most part because

(27:29):
fuck them, fuck the June Rat. But he didn't He's
not like the cops in terms of his motivations. At
the very least, he didn't go at it with the
goal of collaborating. He didn't want to betray his people.
He was trying to use compromise as the way to
help people survive and not die. Right. I think there
were like a substantial number of people who thought, like, oh, well,

(27:50):
if I'm in this position, I can like make things
less terrible, which, like, that's a very self serving belief
you have given yourself there. But it's not totally crazy,
you know, it's not like it's not you know, it
is it is understandable why somebody might think that that's reasonable,

(28:12):
like that that might work. I mean, people still join
the fucking police force now thinking maybe I'll change it
from the inside. And I think that there's like, I mean,
the cops who joined I have I have nothing nice
to say about them, right except for the ones who
later recant. And even then, you know, but this guy

(28:35):
made a call that I've never been in a situation
where I have to make a call like that. It
doesn't look great. And after the after the mass deportations begin,
he knows the truth of what compromised with fascism where
it was taking everyone. So he went kind of one
last time. He goes and he pledged for the orphans,
their orphanages all over the ghetto. For some rodd reason,

(28:57):
a lot of people have parents, and he asked that
the children not be deported, and they refused him. And
he went home and he were a letter to his
wife and he ate Cyanide and his letter to his
wife said, they demand me to kill children of my
nation with my own hands. I have nothing to do
but die. After his death, members of the June Route

(29:17):
were forced to physically assist the Jewish police and rounding
up people for deportation or face deportation themselves. And at
the same time the cops get told you have to
catch seven people every day or you will be deported yourself.
Yannest core jack Uh, this will be the hardest story
to tell in the whole thing. You got this. He's

(29:37):
a pediatrician and a famous children's book author who ran
one of the orphanages, and he'd been running orphanages for decades,
which he actually he designed his orphanages as a republic.
The children had their own parliament and newspaper, and a
decision making power over their own lives under his care,
which is a century ahead of its time. As far
as that's that's pretty incredible. And time and time again,

(29:59):
both before the invade and even while living in the ghetto,
people are basically like, hey, you're important. Do you want
to get out of here? Like, we will get you out,
we will go through. Even at the beginning it's easy,
and later it's not easy. You know, people are like,
I will risk death to get you out right. And
every single time he's offered safe passage out of Poland
by the Home Army, by others, he refuses. He's not

(30:19):
going to leave his children. When the Nazis came for
the hundred nine years so kids in his care, to
deport them to trib Linca, which is the death camp
that uh Warsaw ghetto people had to ended up, a
lot of them ended up at. He insisted that he
would join his children. He said, you do not leave
a sick child in the night, and you do not

(30:40):
leave children at a time like this. So he gets
on the train, he goes to trib Linca and he's
offered once again a stay of execution. And there's two
stories about this. One is that a guard recognized him
for his children's books that had meant so much to
the guards kids and offered to let him go. Another
is that the Nazis knew he was a prominent Jew,
and they had this special place that prominent Jews could

(31:01):
go stay alive in order to convince the world that
they weren't doing a holocaust. Either way, he refuses, and
he died so that his children wouldn't have to die alone.
Um went with them to the guest chambers. Uh sorry
it yeah, to confirm what they suspected. The Boon sent

(31:26):
a blonde Jewish socialist a lot of the people who
are smuggling their way in and out of the ghetto
where people who could pass his arian And so the
Boon sends a blond Jewish socialists out of out of
Warsaw to trace the railway tracks and confirm, yes, the
deportations are going to Triblinka. But that's not enough. They
also this this boondist guy. He tracks down a Jew
who had escaped the camp who confirmed, yes, this is

(31:48):
a death camp. Those deported would not be coming back.
So this boondist out of Land of Death smuggles himself
back into the into warsaw back into the ghetto, crossing
battle lines and all this ship to report what he's
seen and heard, and his account was was printed and
distributed immediately. Then you know, it's the confirmation of what

(32:09):
they assumed earlier. They're like, we know this is an
extermination project, but now they like no, no. By September,
only forty people out of the original five thousand people
remained in the ghetto. And uh, some of the ship
that happens Now I understand why people didn't talk about
it much. There's a lot of um. Only some of

(32:29):
you get to die, decide amongst yourself, get to live,
decide amongst yourselves. Yeah. And Bernard Goldstein, he's he's in
the ghetto, you know, our our hero from last time,
I've been talking about as much this time. He survives
as one of the most wanted men in the ghetto,
and he's passed back and forth like a hot potato
from comrade to comrade, house to house, hiding hole, the

(32:51):
hiding hole. Like for an hour he's disguised as a baker,
and then they're like, fuck, run go into this tiny hole,
you know, and go into this abandoned house. You once
helped my brother who was a part of the boons.
I will come feed you, but if you fall asleep,
you'll die. Like he he has some fucking time of it,
avoiding fucking captures like he's fucking wanted, you know, and

(33:13):
his face is famous. And at one point he's even
actually hidden and protected by a Jewish cop because at
this point their boot licking wasn't saving them. There's only
two left out of the original two thousand. Um, so
Jewish cops no longer I believe at this point serving
their previous function. So this is where during episode one,

(33:34):
when I commented that Comrade Bernard sucked at not getting arrested,
he said he was saving it up. This is only
part of it. This is part of it. This man. Yeah,
the I can't call him a patron saint, can I?
That just wouldn't work. Um, But if there were, ann

(33:56):
if there were a patron saint of not getting arrested, Um,
he's very good at not getting here. Yeah, yeah, we'll
go with that. That's a better way to phrase it. Um.
So it was after this is the way I wrote
it down. It was after this nightmare summer and the
orgy of death that accompanied the last week or so
deportation that people in the ghetto really decided, like, we
are going to fight. It's no longer the radicals. Everyone's like, um.

(34:21):
To quote in our Goldstein, every one of the forty
thousand who remained alive burned with impatience to come to
grips with the enemy. They stood at their work in
the ghetto factories. They dragged themselves under heavy guard to
slave labor on the Arean side. Every thought, every hope,
working in only one direction, towards only one goal, a
fight to the death. Everyone in the ghetto, whether enrolled
in the fighting groups or not, thought only about arms

(34:43):
and weapons. So let's talk about the people who are
going to fight. There's three major factions in the uprising,
and in the wake of the uprising, in the war,
everyone fought over who gets to take credit for the resistance.
It seems really clear to me that all three groups
get to take credit for the resistance. I mean, I
have a dog in the fight, right, like I like
the wound, I like the anti Zionist socialists. Um. But

(35:05):
it is absolutely one of those moments where you're like,
everyone is trying to murder us is more important than
political conflict. Yeah. Sometimes sometimes you gotta put it aside. Yeah.
Mostly today we know about the ze O B, the
Jewish combat organization, and no, the z and Zeo B
does not stand for Zionist, it stands for Zidowska, the

(35:26):
Polish word for Jewish. We know more about the Zeo
B because some of its members survived and wrote about
what happened. The Zeo B was started by the Labor Zionists,
who were left wing Zionists, which as as far as
I've been able to find, is the greater chunk of
the Zionist movement before the creation of Israel. And more
or less Labor Zionists wanted to create a socialist Israel,

(35:47):
but messier than that, they didn't actually necessarily want to
create a state of Israel at all, like some of
them didn't. I believe some of them did, some of
them didn't, as best I can figure. So the Labor
Zionists start the Zero B and they invite their political enemies,
the Booned, to join, and the boon doesn't join. At first,
I've read two different reasons, and I suspect that the
answer is both. The boon doesn't join because they're politically

(36:10):
opposed to supporting Zionists. And this is before the deportations
that this organization is getting set up. They're politically opposed
to supporting Zionists, and because they don't want to join,
because they're they're actually slightly more moderate in their support
of direct action and violence, and they don't want to
stir up too much ship really because they're trying to
get the Home Army on their side. That's their strategy.

(36:34):
They're trying to make other allies. Yeah, and I've read
some stuff that's fairly subjective that claims that overall more
of the Socialists were fighting to win and more of
the Zionists were fighting to die. In their own terms,
I can't promise that, and I'm not trying to make
a blanket statement. That's just something I ran across in
a couple of sources. But those were very subjective sources.

(36:55):
Those weren't like the account of the person who was
there or something. Right. Yeah, Well, and and like you said,
people have a lot of motivation to go with one
one interpretation or the other in this situation. It's not
not super neutral yep, totally. And so after the mass deportations,
all that ship has forgotten all the differences, all of

(37:16):
the strategy. How do we successfully have a revolt? People
are like, we just need to fucking fight, And so
the Boond joins the zo Bam and after the uprising,
the Boond, which has most of its supporters in New
York City, and the Labor Zionist, who are strongest in Palestine,
spend like the next century or so fighting over who's
uprising it is. At the very beginning, the Buddhists were

(37:39):
more known to be involved, but soon after the Zionist
learned that it was their guys who actually started the
Zeo b uh whatever, They all definitely this is the
most important issue exactly, Like I don't care. Um, I mean,
I'm also notch groups that weren't there can claim ownership
of the actions of the people. Yeah, Like whose history

(38:02):
is it? It's it's Jewish history, you know anyway, so
said the non Jewish person telling podcast. Um, so that's
the zo be. But then there's they're actually only a
little over half the fighters registered to formal groups. I've
seen different spreads. One was like five hundred to fifty,
one was six four hundred whatever. I mean, the whole

(38:23):
whole fucking ghetto fought, so whatever right that was gonna
be A question I had is like how many people
who fought had no political affiliation beyond uh, not getting
murdered by Nazis or murdering not or you know, killing
Nazis on your way out. So it's like mostly I
think people were more and more people were joining these
fighting organizations, these specific militia formations, UM, and we're generally

(38:45):
joining one of the sort of politically aligned ones because
I think the by and large, my understanding is that
the political culture in the ghetto was was very like
you have your crew, you know, you're working with these people.
Are these people, and a lot of the mutual aid
groups are set up by these various crews. But again
it's like you're talking about a thousand people out of
forty people, and at least Bernard is like everyone wanted

(39:07):
to fight, you know, um at this point. So the
other half there's the zo B, which is made up
of these two leftist but very different ideas of what
that means groups. The other half is the ZZW, the
Jewish Military Union and their right wing Jews and at
most of whom at the start had been fighting and
serving in the Polish military. A lot of them smuggled

(39:29):
themselves into Warsaw the fight because they were otherwise on
the front lines. And they were revisionist Zionists, which was
the right wing half of the Zionist movement at the time,
which meant that they were territorial maximalists, basically believing Israel
should be a state and should be the only state
in the area. All right, no, no, okay, quiet disapproving sound, yeah, yeah, no, okay,

(39:49):
And I mean, yeah, fuck fuck that. Well, it's like
I will make a louder disapproving sound fuck that. Yeah,
I mean, like to oversimplify things dangerously. In nine thirty five,
the Zionist Executive the like sort of worldwide Hionist organization
is they refuse to say that the goal of Zionism
was to create the Jewish state. They don't say the

(40:09):
goal isn't that as far as I can tell, but
they they're like, they there's a specific Someone's like, I
propose that the whole point is to create Jewish state,
and they're like, no, that is not the point of Zionism. Um,
I'm not trying to This is my best attempt at
a neutral presentation. Of these things. I'm really not trying
to present a whatever. I don't like the right wing anyway,
okay whatever, I mean, it doesn't have to be neutral.

(40:30):
I think I think we know where you stand. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And so so that creates the revision of Zionists, um,
the revision of science or like oh hell no, we
want it all is ours and basically the larger chunk
of Jewish folks at this time see these people as
the Jewish fascists. And this is why these are two

(40:51):
different political organizations because as much as like we have
bigger enemies than each other, they're still kind of this
like but they're fascists, you know, Um, they just Jewish fascists.
At least that was as was seen. Yeah that makes sense.
I mean if if like there was a like an

(41:12):
alien invasion or something and we had to team up
with everybody to to fight off the alien invasion, like
we would still be like, it's a little gross that
I'm fighting alongside of you know, some of the people
who be fighting alongside it. We probably would still do
it because you know, something bigger was happening. But like, yeah,
sometimes you do things and feel gross about it. At
the same time, and I mean, honestly a lot of ways.

(41:33):
It reminds me of what's happening in Ukraine right now.
Um about like the fact that there are right wing elements,
Nazi elements within the Ukrainian defense side, and there's also
far left elements within the Ukrainian defense side. Um, and
they are not That's probably a better example than Aliens.
The thing that I came up with for some reason,
no no, but I mean like it and so and
they're doing what they do in the ghetto is that

(41:56):
they coordinate on some level, but to not you know,
to sort of be in the same fight, even though
that they cannot fucking stand each other, right, But you
know what you can stand, You can stand the concept
of music. I even like actual individual music, not all

(42:18):
of it. I like a lot of it, but not
all of it. Uh, Sophie shows me pop music that
I like because it's sad pop music. If it's happy
pop music, I'm not gonna like it unless it's from
the eighties, in which because it's still in a minor
key even though it's supposedly happy. You are so goth.
I can't help it. You really are the goths. Thanks Um,

(42:43):
I'm wearing a bright blue skirt, but you can't see it.
I don't know why you would admit that. I mean, no,
that's that's very it's a it's powerful. I'm I'm glad
you have that much confidence, even though you're wearing blue
right now. And you know who else will sell you
things like products like skirts or Usually when I listened

(43:07):
to ads on this network, it's usually other podcasts, but
you know it might be some other stuff. It's these
ads and sponsors. Hooray, and we are back and we
are talking about the fact that the far right participated
in the worst I'm kind of uprising too, and people
don't like talk about it because it's very politically inconvenient,

(43:28):
but it makes the story complete and therefore allows you
to actually understand what happened and therefore for all conclusions. Um,
I mean it's not complete, right, I'm not telling the
complete stories is the best that I can research, but whatever. So,
the ZZW has its roots in the military, and they
have more connection to the Home Army, and they received
the lion share of the guns and the training. But
they were actually written out of most of the early histories,

(43:50):
and they were written out for two reasons. First because
most people don't want to admit that the right wing
Jews have done a lot to Poland became communist after
World War Two, and in particular, they did not want
to talk about any right wingers that didn't think good.
Not that I whenever, I don't care um. Secondly, because
almost every single one of them died. Uh. There was
only one of their leaders who survived the war, and

(44:10):
his memoirs weren't published until the nineteen sixties. And I
really hate to say I like a right wing guys
book title, but the title is and we Are Not Saved,
which is just an objectively good book title. That is
this good book title. And to make things messier when
they did write themselves into history, finally they lied. No

(44:35):
way the fascist lie be shocked to know this. There's
this guy named David Appelbaum who was supposedly one of
their great leaders. He probably never existed like modern like
more recent research, just like, yeah, we did a lot
of looking into this guy that you all keep talking about,
and there's no record of him. No. That's awesome though.

(44:57):
That's so much better than like just making up stories
about somebody real is to just like completely invent a
cool guy out a whole CLIs. It's like, yeah, all right.
And so the other thing that they did that they're
probably lying about is that there's this whole mythology in
it where the ZZW in the Home Army had two
matching gold rings with Jewish symbols on them, and that

(45:19):
when the two would meet up to discuss things, the
Home Army person the Polish person and the and the
jew This already sounds so they would they would have
their matching rings to show that they were who they
said they were. But that's not enough because what if
they captured the rings. They also have to describe the
meanings of all the different symbols on the ring, and
these rings probably never existed. Um, the one remaining one

(45:43):
of these rings is probably a forgery. But you can
tell you're proud of your history when you make it
up and forge artifacts. Well, what's funnier too, though, it
wasn't the right wing Jews who made this up. I
think they might have made up the David person, but
I'm not sure it was Wait who made up the rings? Okay,

(46:04):
was it Tolken? You know? Right now? Is this Polish
Home Army guy named henryk Owanski Evanski who he probably
did a bunch of really brave ship in support of
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but he like made his fucking
name as like I am the fucking Polish hero of
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Wait, so you're saying that it
was a Christian who made up the story about the

(46:26):
Jewish symbols, that you have to see I knew it,
because that doesn't that story doesn't work if it's Jews,
because unless you have like a predefined like these are
just the passwords you have to recite, it's like, oh,
what does this symbol mean. It's like, well, let me
tell you what this symbol means. It's like, that's not
what this symbol means. It's like, it is what this

(46:46):
symbol means. And then you have like an twelve way
argument about it, and like that's how you discuss what
symbols and the idea that like, no, the symbol it
means one thing. That's the idea that is a Christian
making up a story about some fake ass Jewish rings.
And they completely gave themselves away with the idea that

(47:06):
you could just agree on symbols that tracks. Another thing
that he made up was that he he talked about
how his own son died in defense of the ghetto
under his command. He never had any son have a son.
I know it fun this guy everything in history, like

(47:29):
how I agree yet happy? That made Miriam. Well, I'm
mad about it, but I was ready to be mad
about it, So I'm glad it turned out I was
right to be mad. Your feelings are valid, they're confusing.
I'm delayed. So after the deportations, people in the ghetto

(47:56):
are getting ready to fight, Bernard Goldstein gets himself smuggled
out of the ghetto. Rate expense and difficulty. Some some
airport workers, like Jewish workers who have to go to
work at the airport every year. Every day they come
and go from the ghetto every day or not actually
every day. They come back for like one day every
two weeks or something like that. And when they're leaving
the ghetto again, he's added to one such group. There's
a problem. He's old as fuck, and well he's actually

(48:18):
not that old, these in his fifties, but he looks
old as fuck because he has been having a hard
time and he had to grow. He's been having a
hard time since he was sixty and he grew this
like huge beard in order to disguise his his famous face. Um,
but that is not the look of a young Jewish worker.
And he's like sick, and I think he's walking with

(48:40):
a cane at this point. He'll be walking with a
cane shortly there after either either way. So while he's
like walking through, everything's fine, everything's fine. But then they're
like the people who are supposed to meet them are late,
and so they're waiting there, and then the Gestapo come
up and start checking names, and someone has to come
over and bribe the ship out of the Gestapo, and
he gets out, uh, And he moves in with members

(49:03):
of the Democratic underground, like some Polish Polish family who
would get shot if they were caught hosting him, and
they're on the outside. People work to get arms into
the guy. He's not the only one doing this, but
he's the person who's story I'm I'm tracking, you know.
So he gets out, but like out of the ghetto,
not out of roland. He's he's still there and still organizing.

(49:24):
He gets out to be where he is most useful,
which is acquiring guns and working to build this revolt
on the outside, and so this isn't easy to get
guns in this current situation, people both Jewish and Christian
are getting caught with stashes of firearms to smuggle into
the ghetto and are getting shot like so like they'll

(49:45):
they'll get a bunch of guns together before they can
smuggle them over they all die. And well, most of
the world is silent to the treatment of Jews right,
and huge swaths of the Polish population was basically like, oh,
thank god, we hated these Jews too. The there was
also a ton of support from the polls. The government
and exile of Poland actually set up the Council for
Aid to Jews or Zagoda, which is also the name

(50:08):
of a badass band from a couple of decades ago
and which I didn't know the connection until I read this.
I was like, that band was extra cool. And almost
all the Polish parties are represented on on this council
and it works to supply Jews with documents and apartments
and raise money and get weapons. They're not doing as
much as they could, but you know they're doing something.

(50:32):
The zo B buys guns everywhere they can. They buy
stolen guns from army depots they buy guns off of
German soldiers they buy guns from Imagine that. Imagine me
a German soldier and someone comes up being like, you're
gonna buy that gun? I want to kill your friend.
It's like, well, on the one hand, um, I'm not
supposed to do that, and I don't particularly want you

(50:54):
to shoot my friend. On the other hand, I would
like to get drunk tonight. So yeah, I assume that's
how that went down. Kind of assumed too, even though
it sounds bag, you know, as I know that, like
making sure soldiers don't sell their guns is like a
huge part of like military history. And this is this

(51:16):
is like a side note, but in um earlier, in
earlier military history, when like guns had a piece of
flint in them that made them fire, a major thing
that armies had to do was make sure the soldiers
weren't selling the flints. Because it's kind of obvious if
you sell your gun, but if you just sell the flint,
like people buy flint, they need flint, and then you

(51:36):
just replace it with a sharp Now you just take
a sharp pebble in there, and then your gun just
wouldn't fire. But what do you give a funk. You're
in a line of fifty guys shooting in a line
of another fifty guys. It doesn't matter if your gun
fires or not, like that doesn't affect you as an individual.
So that why the hell wouldn't you sell your flint
for booze money? So they would like actually have to
go and inspect and check everybody's that's amazing. So they

(52:01):
buy guns from Poles who work in arms factories, and
all the wild people are being arrested by the Nazis.
Several prominent socialist, Polish and Bundhist leaders are executed by
the Soviets, of course, which sucks up morale. And and
this is when the Soviets are ostensibly enemies with our enemies.
I can't say ostensibly I will I will give so
Union credit for one thing. Um you do not under

(52:24):
any circumstances have to hand it. But but anyway, on
January eighteenth three, the fighting groups go into action for
the first time. They were caught off guard a surprise
German invasion and deportation drive into the ghetto, and most
of the fighters weren't able to respond in time. Four
different units within the different fighting groups fought back I'm

(52:45):
under the impression it was mostly the zd W, the
right wing, but I am not certain about that. They
fought back, They fired on the Nazis, they threw hand
grenades and ship They killed about twenty Nazis and these actions,
probably at least for the day, saved about three thousand people.
The Germans managed to steal five thousand people out of
the eight thousand that they had planned, and this had

(53:07):
other effects. The Nazis were fucking shocked. The Polish resistance,
Jewish and Gentile was fucking stoked. The Home Army immediately
smuggles in fifty revolvers, fifty grenades and some explosives. Again,
he could do better, but you know, um morale rises
in the ghetto. German soldiers stopped feeling safe to walk
around the ghetto alone, and the fighters immediately they're like, okay,

(53:31):
this place is ours now. They turned their eye on
the Gestapo informants who were tracked down and shot. One
was even shot outside the ghetto. He had like he
gets shot in the ghetto, but he managed to get
out right and then he's like walking out of a
restaurant outside the ghetto and warsaw and someone no one
knows who walks up and shoots him. Ah, I have

(53:52):
a theory. That theory is named Bernard with a gun
in his cane. I have no it in to support this.
We have to be but I believe you. Yeah, because
he writes about him like, oh I got shot. It's
a very passive voice, but I think he probably would

(54:14):
have been like, yo, I fucking shot that guy. I
don't know, I don't know he does. Yeah. I mean
maybe he just was trying not to brag. You know.
He's like working on his autobiography and he's like, well,
if I tell them everything I did, it's going to
sound a little bragging. So we'll just say that this
guy was shot. He actually really does play down his
own like work. It like doesn't his bio autobiography doesn't

(54:36):
even talk much about the work he did. It talks
about what he saw and what he survived and like
what happened, and you know, his own like escapes and
ship like that. But even most of the cool biographical
stuff was biographical sketches that other people wrote. In the
introduction to his book, oh wow. Yeah, see he's humble.
That's why he didn't tell you that he Yeah, exactly

(54:57):
exactly now we all have learned classic comrade, you know,
oh Bernie. Uh So the jude and rout was now
completely ignored by the residents of the ghetto. They're like,
you're not in charge. The fighting groups are in charge,
and everyone looks the underground organizations for leadership. Some houses
are turned into barracks. They're full of fighters on guard,
so they're not going to get caught off guard. Like
last time. Thousands of leaders of benzine Or smuggled into

(55:20):
the ghetto and an entire factory like is created like
Or shifts production to making explosive bottles, which are like
super fancy Molotovs with detonators. And later, like twenty years later,
someone unearthed this factory and finds a hundred thousand explosive
detonators that they had made, and their explosives expert was

(55:42):
an Arian passing Jewish Bundis chemical engineer named Michael Klepfish
who had been on a train to Trablinka and had
pulled the bars out of the window of the train
and escaped and smuggled himself back into Warsaw, first to
the outside, working on the outside, and then back into
the ghetto to be at. This guy did not pick safety,

(56:04):
you know, And as as quoted by by Bernard uh
he was alive pretty much for it. Okay, it's not
the start of the quote, but he was alive pretty
much for the desire of revenge. Quote. My father and
mother have already been burned. My sister is buried in
a Christian cemetery, my child is in a foundling home,
my wife is a servant in a gentile home. All

(56:24):
I want now is to be consumed in the battle
for vengeance. And I think that kind of sums up
the attitude in the ghetto at this point, especially of
the people who are like literally going into it, you know, yeah,
to to go into the ghetto at that point, well, okay,
I'll get to that. Tens of thousands of people spend
months building bunkers overseen by Jewish engineers, like, you know,

(56:46):
because there's engineers there, because there's every people of all
walks of life there. Some bunkers were double walled safe rooms,
hidden behind wardrobes, or you might just like crawl through
an oven past all the pots and pans to reach
into the bunker. Some more sellers built underneath sellers tunnels
were built between courtyards. Friend of the pod tunnels passages
between addicts. Tunnels were dug out to the areaan side

(57:09):
or into the sewer city system, which weren't like the
big happy tunnels. Like a lot of the media talks
about how they get out through sewers at the end,
and there's two things I think they are worth noting
about that. One is that these sewers are not like
big happy like um, teenage mutant ninja turtle things where
you can like walk around in the sewage is like
a little trickle at the bottom. Thank you. I was

(57:30):
gonna like reaching for a reference for what sewers look like.
I was going to say The Third Man, but I
think the teenage muting ninja turtles is probably a more
like you'll actually know what that was like. Yeah, I
don't know the Third Man. Oh it rules. It's great movie.
The sewers for big happy sewers nerds. Yeah, Yeah, there's

(57:52):
huge sewers, like really spacious sewers in that movie. Not
in Warsaw, or at least the parts that they have
to escape through. Um, they're like eight inches tall the
pipes that they're crawling through, and like an awful lot
of people, like uncountable people died lost crawling through ship. Um.
And also the other thing worth knowing is that it

(58:13):
wasn't just like, oh, pop open the manhole. They did this.
They dug the tunnels to the sewers. They they were
the people who saved themselves, you know. Yeah. And as
for the question of like why didn't everyone just smuggle
themselves out of the ghetto at this point, since there's
some ways to get out sort of during this period,
many Jews heading outside the ghetto actually smuggled themselves back

(58:34):
into the ghetto, not just to get into the fight,
although a lot of people did that, but because life
outside the ghetto meant hiding and being blackmailed, and the
life expectancy was like not fucking good. Yeah, there's there
was no fucking safety for Jews in Poland. And also
here it's like we're talking about these people who built
bunkers and the people who hid themselves, not just the
people who fought, are like fucking heroes. And um, I

(58:58):
don't know all that it, right, I guess I've I've
hit this point numerous times, but yeah, but you know,
it bears repeating that, like there are multiple ways to resist.
So the Germans know what's happening. They know that they've
lost control of the ghetto, and they're like they switched strategies,
and they try to play nice. They're like, hey, come
on out of the ghetto. We'll take you somewhere nice.

(59:19):
It's totally not a death camp this time. It's like
we learned our lesson. No more death camps come to
work for us, and everyone ignored them this time. Yeah,
I would hope. So when when Germans tried to move
the factories out of the ghetto, the workers set everything
on fire. Ah, fucking good strategy. Fire solves a lot

(59:42):
of problems. Sometimes both sides us are very effectively. But
and so the Germans back off and they wait, preparing
for a single great confrontation the people and the ghetto.
They are waiting for the exact same thing. Two am
on April Sunday, Nazis and Polish, not the collaborators, which
is to say, Nazis and other Nazis surround the entire

(01:00:05):
ghetto outside the wall and it's the first day to
pass over. Miriam. Let's passover. About passover is about resistance
to oppression, and you know, and some other stuff and
a giant frog. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about the So

(01:00:27):
at five am, the gates are barred. At six o'clock,
the Nazis move in, armored cars, machine guns, tanks, the
whole fucking deal. Resistors wait until the front of the
column has gone past, and then they just opened fire
from the buildings. They rained down fire and bullets. Germans died,
Jews didn't. Some Nazis burned to death in their tanks,

(01:00:47):
and the German army retreats from the ghetto. April Hitler's birthday,
the Nazis cut off electricity and water. They then invade
the ghetto again. This time they take it more serious.
They don't march in in a column. They send in squads,
moving under cover, firing into every window and alley, basically
like how you should take a city. And they're met

(01:01:09):
with dynamite, molotovs and hand grenades. As they do this.
At one point three d Nazis get exploded from a
landmine buried under the street. There's a decent Yeah, there's
a lot of different death counts. Everyone has a real
different death counts. I don't I'm not even gonna offer
a death count. Um but the Nazis set fire to buildings.

(01:01:30):
Fighters run from building to building from the passages they'd
carefully built over the courses of month. So they said,
fired to a building, you just run into the next one.
The fighting moves inside Florida floor roomed a room. Michael Kleppfish,
the explosives engineer who built that factory and smuggled himself
back in the ghetto. He he throws himself at a
German machine gun to cover their treat of the unit
that he led, and dies. And even those who hadn't

(01:01:54):
enrolled formally in the fighting organizations joined the fight, whether
as couriers or fighters. Fighters disguised themselves and stolen Nazi
uniforms to ambush the enemy. Nazis were terrified the resistance
would spread to the Polish population, and they evacuate everyone
who's close enough to see the fighting, like anyone who
can see into the ghetto from their buildings get evacuated.
But the rest of Warsaw wouldn't resist until about a

(01:02:16):
year later, in a fight that we won't get into
much now, which of course, the Jews also fought in.
Even though during the Ghetto uprising, the boned calls for
sympathy strikes from the non Jewish polls, even the generally
reliable socialists, and nothing happens met with silence. Artillery rained
down onto the ghetto, huge swaths of it burned, while

(01:02:38):
people hid in bunkers are fled through tunnels, and the
fighting lasted for weeks. On May one, mayde A, the
ghetto fighters undertook a one day offensive offensive gets put
in quotes um in Bernard's retellion of this, because they're defeated, right, um,
but they're holding on and they're like, fuck it, let's
let's go on the office, let's go on the fence

(01:03:01):
May day and uh, you know it doesn't go well,
but it was worth doing. And that evening, to quote
Bernard again, they quote held a roll call of their
decimated ranks and saying the International Polish Socialist sewer workers
together with professional smugglers, they helped map away out through
the sewers. Some fighters actually finally did escape. They spent

(01:03:24):
two days in twenty inch tunnels with water up to
their lips. The Polish Underground was supposed to meet them
to guard their exit, but the Home Army never showed.
So these emaciated fighters are covered and ship and they
hold submachine guns to hold back the crowd as they
evacuated themselves out to the forest and there to continue
the fight. And over the next while the ghetto was

(01:03:47):
entirely destroyed, Polish volunteers did demolition work in exchange for
the right to steal valuables, and in the end the
whole place was raised like three stories down below the ground.
Bernard Goldstein didn't fight in the uprise, and he worked
outside in the Arian area and was racked with guilt.
He got weapons and helped plant things, but he also
just tried to help him just tried to survive, and

(01:04:09):
he was driven from home to home, wandering the streets homeless,
trying to organize to help twenty thousand or so Jews
who were scattered around the area and hiding in the
city and countryside after the after the ghetto was destroyed,
the boond itself was responsible for about three thousand of
these people, finding them documentation and shelter and food and
all of that. And I suspect that the three thousand

(01:04:31):
people that he helped support. We're glad that Bernard did
what he did best, which was organizing network instead of
fighting and dying in the uprising. Um. Yeah, so they
stayed hidden as best as they could, They organized as
best as they could, just fucking hard for them to
do the organizing, it was incredibly risky. They'd have people

(01:04:51):
over to their very secret apartments that were like, you know,
hidden even from the four year old in the room
next door, and shipp you know, right, I mean, the
they are not sup was to be like in the
country at all at this point, much less much less
trying to organize. And they're still trying to fucking do it.
And they organized best that they can for a year

(01:05:11):
until as the Allies draw near and the Soviets bombed
the city, which is not inherently bad. But the Poles
get to go hide in shelters, right, and they're like cheering,
They're like fun, Yeah, the Soviets are bombing our city,
but they're glad and for good reasons. Um. But the
Jews can't, right, they can't leave their hiding places to
go hide in shelters. And the Polish underground prepared to

(01:05:32):
rise up and retake Warsaw. The Jews couldn't really aid
in the planning. Um, they could show their faces until
August one, when Warsaw rose up, which is also cool.
People did cool stuff. Picking out the Nazis out of
your city is fucking cool. Always. Yeah, the Jews came
out from hiding and women and men joined in the fight,

(01:05:53):
even though they were often treated like ship by the
people that they were fighting on the same side as.
But one cool thing about the Warsaw sing uprising. Not
the worse I'll get uprising, but this one is that
Girl Scout troops through molotovs at tanks. Got that fucking rules. Um.
You can see interviews with the Girl Scout leader who's like, oh, yeah,
that's what we did. It's a perfect girl Scout activity.

(01:06:16):
You've got like the crafting at the beginning. Then you've
got the like athletic, like competitive portion with the throwing.
It's like at least two Merit badges right there. I
think so like that we worked in a Merritt bad
reference into this. That's so cool. It's teamwork. It's it's lovely. Yeah,

(01:06:41):
totally absolutely. Um So that the Soviet Union takes control
of Poland and once again Comrade Bernard has a death
sentence from the Communist put on his head. He's just
collecting them at this he is, and because he was
part of a socialist group that wasn't Bolshevik. So that's
that's a that's a kill I ever heard one. He

(01:07:02):
made up his mind to flee to the US. Before
he left, he went to visit the remains of the
ghetto one last time, and he describes the experience quoted.
My entire life had been part of the lively, rushing
stream that had poured through these streets and alleys. I
had known every corner, every house, every cobble stone. Now
all was dust. I could not even tell where the
streets had been. One patch of rubble was exactly like

(01:07:24):
the next. I felt a deep and bitter sorrow. The
blue sky and bright spring day mocked me. I felt
the lonely emptiness of a disembodied spirit who wanders aimlessly
over the deserted ruins after the cataclysm, who had cheated
the Nazis, those who rotted beneath broken stones, or were
ashes and some charnel pit or I sentenced to live

(01:07:44):
out my days and nights with the tortured memories of
what had been. This was the end. This was the
sum total of hundreds of generations of living and building,
of religion of Torah, of piety, a free thinking, of Zionism,
of bud buds, of struggles and battle of the hopes
of an entire people. This this empty desert, I looked

(01:08:05):
around me at what had been the Jews of Warsaw.
I felt one hope, and I feel it now. May
the sea of emptiness bubble and boil. May it cry
out eternal condemnation of the murderers and pillagers. May it
forever be the shame of the civilized world which saw
and heard and chose to remain silent. With the help
of a go ahead, Oh, I was just I was

(01:08:28):
doing real, real good on the not crying thing. Yeah. Before,
dear listener, before Miriam and I decided to do this
podcast episode together, it was a little bit not totally collaborative,
was a little bit more collaborative than a lot of
our episodes, and we talked about what it would mean
to do an episode where the tone might might take

(01:08:49):
some shifts from the usual slightly more upbeat. So with
the help of a sympathetic Soviet officer and a Jewish
American officer, there's a there's a Soviet we can be
sympathetic too, right there, you go. Ye. Uh so, now
any any tankis listening, can't complain? Yeah, exactly, be like

(01:09:11):
the one good one and help the people that have
a death sentence escape. Yeah, there you go, easy roadmap,
easy roadmap to us liking. Yeah, state communism, state communist communist. Yeah,
let's be real. And the Jewish American officer, the two
of them not together, but at different times in his journey,

(01:09:33):
they help Commrad Bernard smuggle himself one last time, this
time to the U S where he wrote his memoir.
And that's pretty much where we're gonna leave it today. Originally,
this episode was going to be more broadly about Jewish
Partisans and Jewish resistance to the Nazis in general, but um,
I think I'll have to do more about that later.
Like the Bielski Partisans, which is a group of more
than a thousand people who lived in the forest in

(01:09:54):
Poland or the other ghetto uprisings, there was like a
hundred of them, the Warsaw is the largest. Some were
even led by survivors from the combat units in Warsaw.
They would like go to other towns and basically be like, yeah,
this is what we did. I got some guns, you know,
and a decent number of the fighters escaped, each uprising

(01:10:14):
off into the forest to continue the fight. And it's
still accidentally privileging armed resistance too, right because before they
really know what's going on, resistance meant teaching children so
that after the war they could re enter society educated
or uh, once was clear what was happening, Archivists who
really I want to learn more about buried everything that

(01:10:34):
they could so that culture would survive. And for decades
people were on burying these time capsules of Jewish history
and culture that was as important as anything else that
anyone has ever done in the history of a fucking planet.
It's really hard to like not privilege certain types of

(01:10:57):
resistance narratively, just because some forms of resistance fit narrative
forms and like better than others and like make for
cool and exciting stories. But you know, like we keep
saying that, that doesn't make them the only valid forms
of resistance, or or even the most valid forms of resistance,

(01:11:17):
just the ones that it's kind of easiest to talk about,
although I don't know if easy to talk about is
like necessarily something that this topic, but um, yeah, yeah,
and you know, in the again, like I I told
most of the story from the position of this particular

(01:11:39):
character and this particular political orientation, which isn't actually my
political orientation. When I say it's the one the most
empathetic too, it's like you know, um, but but I
think one of my main takeaways researching all of this
was really, how um, how much anti fascism um crosses

(01:12:01):
uh political lines or should you know, um, you can't
let people do ship like this whatever whatever you think
like society should look like. I got one answer, which
is not that that is not what society should look like. Yeah,
and like so so stop it, listener, stop it, make

(01:12:27):
that not happen. Yeah, I mean, if there is to
be one takeaway, it does seem like it should be, um,
resist fascism early and often, yeah and through and go ahead,
sorry whatever, yeah, and with with whatever and whoever, we'll
we'll stand with you and then watch your back if

(01:12:47):
you win, because state communists will come back. Yeah. History
teaches us that the other thing of history is like
really like you know, I spent a lot of my
time talking should on bunker mentality and preparation, you know,
like preparedness culture. People like want to get their like
bunker full of guns and hole up and like fight

(01:13:08):
their neighbors or whatever. Fucking nonsense and fill a bunker
with m R. E s and yeah and guns. I'll
be real. Like reading about World War two, I'm like, man,
you know what everyone should do. Build safe places to
hide people. It's never a bad thing to have. Yeah,

(01:13:28):
it's just think of it as your bonus closet, you know,
or bonus really you can like you can store stuff
in there and then if at any point, um, people
need to hide there, it's there, and like very important,
don't talk about it. That's why I'm not playing it.
But yeah, I'm not. I live in a rental like

(01:13:52):
but um, you know, uh, we live in a culture
that is is very excited about having will talk about
anything they do that could be construed remotely as a
form of activism or praiseworthy in any way. You gotta like,
if you don't tell people about it doesn't count. And
like this is something where if you tell people about it,

(01:14:13):
it doesn't count, like secret or does not count, which
by the way, goes for any other laws you might
be thinking of breaking in the future. Um, no need
to talk publicly about how you feel about whether you
would help somebody to break a law related to their

(01:14:36):
health care, for example. And you're not fooling anybody by
talking about camping trips. That's not super relevant. But this
feels like something I say is always better to be
a secret badass where you know you're a secret badass. Absolutely,
you know what's you know what doesn't help when when

(01:14:56):
fighting down, when fighting when facing down fascism flout, Okay,
your cloud will not save you, except as a counterpoint.
That's what Bernard used. But I guess it's okay, But
that wasn't organizing Organizing than sasty to charisma. Organizing is

(01:15:19):
even more important than anything else you can do, and
that you can do publicly, at least some aspects of it,
and should do publicly because people should know that becoming
organized as a possibility. Uh. And before you ask, I
don't immediately now have any solutions for people because I'm
a podcast or not an organizer because I quit organizing.
Because anyway, so that's our episode. Any any plugs at

(01:15:42):
the end here, Miriam, Um, Well, not not for me personally,
because I don't really want to talk to anyone or
have them talk to me. But I would like it.
If people would find the I Fact Fund on Twitter,
that's at I A k f U N d UM.

(01:16:03):
And what the I I Fact Fund does is they
take your money and they turned it into individual first
aid kits and they put those into people's hands so
that people can help each other when people need help
mutual aid. They have a cash app you can donate to,
which is I Believe Dollar sign I Fact Fund. I

(01:16:28):
don't know how cash app works. I'm not on cash app,
but yeah, give them some money. Yeah, and organize effectively
and within your community and other like minded people. Yeah.
I mean this is a history podcast, has nothing to

(01:16:48):
do about the present. Yeah. No, I mean obviously, historically
it is good when people organize within their communities with
like minded people. So if you where can people find
you on the internet? I mean I guess you could
find me on Twitter or Instagram. I'm not going to

(01:17:10):
tell you what it is, but you could probably find me, Okay, Margaret,
you got any books coming out? Why s I do?
It's available for pre order now. It's called we Won't
Be Here Tomorrow. And if you pre order it from
a k Press box car Books, which is literally a
bookstar in a box car in rural Maine, red Emma's

(01:17:32):
which is named after a friend of the pod Emma Goldman,
or Firestorm Cafe, and Asheville. You will get a free
art print with your pre order, because pre orders are cool.
And yeah, because like the algorithm runs the world algorithm.
It's incredibly frustrating, but does drink the algorithm. Sorry, Sophie

(01:17:55):
if I stole your line prompting Margaret to talk about
the books. I'm exciting about the book, is all. It's
just nice that I don't have to ask. Yeah, I'll
always I'll always talk about Margaret's books, Margaret Wite's Great
bart Books. Listen. Margaret has written a bunch of books
that you should read, and a few of them, off
the top of my head are a Country of Ghosts,

(01:18:18):
The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion, and the barrel will
send what it may. Just go go buy those books.
They're but they're all three of them are short. You
can probably read all three of them in one day
if you like, didn't have a lot of other stuff
going on. They're fantastic. Thanks all right, by everyone. By

(01:18:40):
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