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Robert Evans here, enjoying my first fall in holiday season after getting LASIK and my vision is still 2020. Everything is easier, no more fogged up glasses, no more putting up contacts in the morning. It's just wonderful. LASIK Plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States. They have over 20 years of experience in the industry so you know you can trust LASIK Plus. Right now you can get 20% off LASIK when treated in December. That's over $900 off when you're treating both eyes. Just visit mylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. That's mylasikoffer.com to schedule a free consultation today. This holiday season 12 strangers 12 tails. Something was out there. Whatever it is it's ravenous. Is that the last person to see you alive? 12 ghosts starring Malcolm McDowell. Who are you? I'm the in-keyball. Presented in immersive 3D audio, a co-production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listen to 12 ghosts on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Truth is stranger than fiction and reality TV stars know this better than anyone but what you may not know about them or even believe is actually criminal behavior. I'm Kaelin Miller-Kees and on my new podcast True Crime Reality I will be joined by reality TV stars as they dive deep into the details of the crime they have a direct connection to. Listen to True Crime Reality on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Mary Hollamis it's behind the Chris Bastard miss Robert Evans here podcast God with me today is Margaret Killjoy and Sophie Lichtenman Margaret how are you doing? I'm good I'm here for the the Christmas song special isn't what we're gonna do is just sing Christmas carols that's right we're going to sing the version of frosty the snowman that I wrote while on an acid trip that takes seven and a half hours and is largely a retelling of the ring cycle. Okay so yeah also extremely pornographic so if you have children listening you need to get them away it is actually a crime in 37 states for them to listen to my version of frosty the snowman yeah and the worst part is is that actually if anyone listens to it Robert goes to jail that's right that's right um so Margaret you will be here to do the 26 minute long kazoo solo which I'm very excited about um I brought bells oh you did actually you do literally half bells sweet silver bells bells that are perfect for ringing in Christmas which is great because this is our yearly Christmas episode now normally Margaret normally for Christmas we do a non bastard right like we do a hero to kind of have everybody up at the end of the year but last year and this year really you launched a podcast called cool people who did cool stuff that's basically a regular weekly version of the Christmas podcast of the Christmas episodes that we used to do so this year I'm doing something a little different something we've never done before which is we're gonna be covering a group of people who were rad as shit for 80% of the story and then things take a dark turn so 90% of the revolutionaries in human history yeah and this is there's a lot of fascinating moral questions with the the group that we're gonna be talking about have you ever heard about a terrorist group called Nakam no I don't think so awesome I don't know we'll find out yeah we will find out indeed Margaret before we get into this episode I want to do a little thought experiment for everybody here I want you to imagine that a few years down the line a church or a political party rises up in the United States um and starts trying to spread a fascist gospel around the country and this this gospel takes off among a significant chunk of the population and let's say it's far fetched but yeah far fetched and let's say that that these fascists are specifically targeting people like you and the folks that you love whatever whatever thing you identify as whether it's you know gender orientation religion uh sexuality uh political ideology they're targeting like you and the people that you love and let's say imagine they get into power right maybe it's a coup maybe they they actually just straight up win an election but they get into power and a lot of violence falls a tremendous amount of violence and you lose a lot of the people that you love most in the world virtually all of them over a terrifying period of years and years of violence now being fascists they do eventually lose which is what always happens to fascists and at the end of that period you in the folks who have survived are are hardened um are a lot better at doing violence and are thinking who do we make pay for this right who is it moral to punish for this obviously the ring leaders right the the the people that were leading the movement the people who at did death squad shit the people who are actually carrying out the killings but what about what about the churches full of clamoring extremists what about the civilians who supported the movement and and bade and howled and cheered as they committed their murders to what extent are those people guilty right is it uh huh is it wise to to just let them all live because the war is over or by doing that are you potentially endangering your remaining loved ones even more because if there's not consequences is it the case that maybe they'll do it again so that's a question to keep in your mind right as we as we start to talk about eastern Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s that was a fun time to be around yeah yeah yeah so that's what we're going to be talking about and specifically we're going to be really focusing on one individual today of a pretty fascinating fellow named Abba Kovener he was born Abel Kovener on March 14th 1918 just as the first world war was ending in a town called Sebastopol on the southern tip of Crimea now if you've casually glanced at European history you will know that the southern tip of Crimea in 1918 as a Jewish person is a pretty rough place to be that is not one of the top places in times I would choose to be born now Abel's parents weren't quite orthodox Jews in a in the fall of a sparrow a Stanford biography of Kovener they're described as moderately traditional I don't entirely know what that means but that's that's kind of the the way in which they're they're generally described by the best biographer Kovener has now Sebastopol did not have a large Jewish population this is not a city that has like a particularly significant like sizeable community in it and in Zaris Russia which you know is what Kovener's parents had lived under right up until about 1917 the ability of Jewish people to hold jobs had been strictly limited right you can't really teach it colleges if you're Jewish at least you're you're heavily limited from doing it they have quotas there's a lot of different like jobs you just can't do your your there's an apartheid system really in most of of of Zaris Russia now luckily for Abba by the time he's born the Zars are out of power and his family is is he comes into like a fairly affluent family they're large and they're extremely close his father had been an expert appraiser of antique jewelry is this a did when with the revolution of 1917 to Crimea what happened to Crimea did it get into the USSR did it do its own thing I don't know if it's part of the USSR yeah okay but but also 1918 things are a lot less yeah the upper US sorry at that point yeah yeah there's still a little bit more like moving along right yes and his family is is moderately well off one of Abba's earliest memories is sitting around the table at a family dinner and a man admiring his grandmother's pearl necklace which had been in the family for 150 years so he has not just a large family but a family that like that they have managed a lot of continuity between the generations which is not necessarily the most common thing in this part of Russia because of how many pogroms there are because of how yeah common the violence is the fact that his family has like managed to keep these things in their possession for so long says a lot right yeah um Abba is a very smart child he is pretty much universally regarded as having been particularly a burly an artist in very charismatic everybody really likes this kid he's very inclined to the arts particularly poetry and he had his family members recalled he had a unique ability to memorize and recite things that he'd read and he would do this to keep everyone entertained especially during holidays and family gatherings he would read books and then he would recite them to his family is like you know basically it's the early 1900s and sabastical they don't have like TV or radio this is the best entertainer you gotta get saw this YouTube video this is what I learned yeah normal only only bearable yeah only bearable yeah he's like describing andore to everybody and he's doing like the satire or whatever because this is the difference right like if you describe what happened in andore it sucks but if you if someone were to just act out andore in front of everyone that would rule yeah have you ever seen that movie I forget the name of it I think rain of fire is the name it's about like dragons destroy civilization yeah it's a poca liptic Britain there's a great scene where like the bunch of post apocalypse survivors are like sitting around a campfire doing star wars for each other yeah yeah see that that rule is a vaccine it out is great yeah yeah yeah that's what coveners doing he's very creative everybody finds him very entertaining now this is again 1918 rough time to be anybody in sabastical but particularly Jewish and his dad is arrested by Soviet secret police when he's four in 1922 this is because private cop private commerce was forbidden in the Soviet Union obviously in the earliest stages kind of after the czar's fall it's possible you know business and stuff continues in regions it's not like evenly distributed at this point but by the early 20s the Soviet state is kind of starting to to to lock into place and he gets fined for his bourgeoisie decadence as you know being a jewelry guy and he's put in prison for several months this is probably had at or at least his biographer who is I should say this right now his biographer is like super pro Israel and a scientist and a Zionist his father is also a known Zionist and I when I say this we're all of these folks that we're going to be talking about in the 20s and stuff are Zionists that doesn't mean entirely the same thing that it does to this day in part because a lot of people who a lot of Jews who are Zionist in this period are also socialist are also communist and are less thinking about I want to establish you know a state of Israel as it currently exists which is shall we say deeply problematic right more we want to liberate like the Palestinian mandate from the British imperialists and establish establish a socialist community there right and that's kind of the line Abbas father falls in on his his family is very left wing one of Abbas cousins is going to found the Communist Party of Israel when that all happens okay so like that's that's the so they are very left wing despite the fact that they're they're somewhat affluent but Zionism is not allowed in the Soviet Union right because a big part of it is like we're going to number one religion is is a not encouraged in the in the in the early USSR in particular but number two a big part of it is that like well we're we're not going to stay here right like if you're Zionist that you pretty fundamentally don't want to stay where you are in the USSR and they're also not thrilled with that so that probably played a role in his dad getting arrested and he stays in prison for months until the family can put together enough money to secure his release which is interesting to me because he gets arrested for doing commerce and being good right but he also is too rich to get it out rich enough yeah I don't know you know whatever uh by 1926 the coveners had decided that the Soviet Union was not a great place for them um they felt they're yeah yeah especially since again most they are fairly religious yeah and they see kind of not that just their religion but their nationality is under attack so they decide to move some place that's going to be a little bit more friendly for them it's also again sabastopol doesn't have a huge Jewish population so some of it's just like well maybe we'd like to be in a place where there's a larger Jewish community I'm so nervous about where they're going to move to um well they're going to move to a place that never has any problems in the early part of the 20th century Lithuania yeah okay yeah now Lithuania is part of like pol- specifically they move to Vilno which is today the capital of Lithuania if I'm not mistaken but back then is part of Poland right yeah um so they are attempting to and they've got family in the area right you know so they're they're not just like moving sight unseen they have a lot of relives there too um this is a good move and for a while the family is affluent again but that period quickly ends because Abba's father seems to be a really generous guy and in this period because of the civil war in Russia because of all of the chaos after World War I there's a ton of refugees moving into Vilno right and his dad kind of spins money faster than he can make it helping out other refugees in the area because he's a pretty pretty nice guy yeah um Abba you know goes to a Hebrew school um and then he goes to an art university when he graduates I think it's called a gymnasium I don't entirely I believe that's broadly speaking like a or a primary school um that's what's my impression but I always get confused when I'm in Europe and people talk about going to gymnasium look everyone does schools wrong but Europeans particularly do schools wrong and I think it's okay to admit that uh they at least name them wrong however they name them very wrong I think I think the US overall the schools a little bit wronger yeah um I don't I hate the word gymnasium and I'm angry at them so that's fair I'm biased here yeah but he goes to a Hebrew school and then he goes to an art university and he is studying I think specifically poetry um and he's actually being published as a poet he's quite good yeah and he's he's studying poetry when things in Europe start to take well I say start to take a dark turn he is in Vilna in the nineteen twenties it's been dark for a while but they start to get a lot darker in the early 1930s um and again Vilna is a part of Poland that is smack in between Russia which has just gotten through a civil war that's killed millions and Germany which has just gotten through like a famine that killed like a million people after World War War one is they're on the they're on this slow road to fascism it's a terrible place to be and they're about to get split up between the two nations are they ever a market are going to agree to invade together and then hold the joint fucking parades it is going to be a it's not again one of the worst places you could possibly be in this period of time yeah so Abba's father dies in 1932 right is Hitler's rising to power in in Germany um I you know he's just he's is stressed out guy I think he's kind of older it's not uncommon for the man to be significantly older than his wife in this period in time um he dies and his mother Abba's mother is forced to support the family by starting a restaurant and this is very difficult to her because she had a chronic injury to her legs so his mom is like one of these parents who is like physically disabled and also taking the burden for feeding and supporting her entire family under herself by starting a restaurant but she's a very good cook it is a successful restaurant okay um in 1935 when he was 17 covener dropped out of Hebrew school having decided that his studies were useless and the teachers were all old assholes by this point he was convinced that he is hard not to like in this period and he's convinced in this point that his future lay in Palestine as a pioneer okay all throughout eastern Europe in this period Jewish communities are watching the spread of radical political ideologies that often adopt an anti-symmetism as planks of their belief young people in young Jewish people who are paying attention to these trends started to form their own youth organizations um and these are both for a mix of like self-defense and to aid them in carrying out this kind of migration over to Palestine right okay and not all of them some of them are our communist organizations that are not Zionist right communist and socialist organizations that are organizing along left wing lines and and plan to stay that's also a significant portion of this but all of these Jewish youth organizations are based heavily on the Boy Scout movement that had been launched by Robert Baden Powell because it is a quasi-military movement right yeah that oddly makes sense there was a lot of that going on in Europe around that time where there was a lot of like hiking clubs would be where you would like go learn discipline and marksmanship and hang out with your buds yes and it's not hard to see why a lot of Jewish youths in a place like Vilna would be like yeah we should probably be like training for some of this stuff yeah yeah it looks like shit might get a lot harder very soon yeah um so I want to read a quote from the Jewish virtual library about these youth groups quote many Jewish youth affected by the process of modernization which had begun among Eastern European Jewry saw the means of maintaining their Jewish identity and culture outside the stifling barriers of the straddle and the orthodox Jewish life on the other hand they were troubled by the crumbling of the foundations of society around them and by the growing anti-Semitism which threatened their very existence in its early stages the movement was heavily influenced by the Boy Scout movement organized by Baden Powell and it embraced scouting as a basic principle to teach ghetto youth self-reliance outdoor life and a love and knowledge of nature another important influence upon them was the wonder vocal movement in Germany which emphasized youths independence and creativity and the wonder vocal movement is there's a mix of the Nazis that are kind of like inspired and related to it and there's also a lot of reaction to it because one of the things that happens in the wonder vocal movement is a lot of German youth are having gay sex yeah and they go camping right yeah um which is one of the reasons camping is rad and that is something that the Nazis do not like we'll talk more about the wonder volleve movement okay yeah no yeah i covered them a bunch on the gay resistance in nazis episode and so like i'm pretty excited about how both the like right and left wing were like deeply part of the wonder vocal movement yeah um it's very interesting and messy and cool and it's a full enough yeah yeah we don't it doesn't get talked about much now this is all stuff that like you people like the message it no no no no and it's stuff you have to really be reading your your history in order to actually get to yeah once you do you realize like oh this was central to a lot of what was happening yeah this period yeah um so there's a lot of these groups some of them are revolutionary and communist in nature others are kind of centrist and even conservative and a much more focused on Zionism um and again when we talk about Zionism in this period some of these people are we're going to like take our own state in Palestine by by force but a lot of them are just we're probably all going to get killed if we stay here and like farming in Palestine seems like a better life so what if we just did that right yeah there was like right wing and left wing Zionism that are like dramatically different and then even among left wing Zionism i think that there was kind of a split about whether or not they were trying to create a state whether or whether they were just like basically trying to go live where they were kind of originally from yeah and where like they wouldn't get murdered and you do have to when you're kind of parsing this out keep that all in mind they're all aware that they're under the gun here yeah yeah it's really weird to look at this from the current context of Israel being on a great thing yeah yeah um but the the right wing versus left wing Zionism versus also the left wing non anti Zionist like all three groups were doing their thing sorry i got like say that about the stuff yeah yeah yeah they're all they're all also there's a tremendous amount of conflict between them yeah totally um and we're the part of the story today is how a lot of that conflict comes to an end in the line okay um the specific youth group that abacovna joins is called has showmer hotzer um i i'm sure i'm not getting that quite right but it's it was kind of i've heard different things they are a Marxist group they are a Marxist like socialist youth organization i've also heard them described as kind of like soft socialist so they're they're more compared to the people who are like outright communist revolutionaries there are there are a lot more moderate but they are Marxist right they're not just like social democrat they are specifically using Marxist and analysis yeah propaganda in the way that they see the world abba's cousin again becomes like the founder of the Israeli communist party so this is like a whole thing in his family yeah um and it's interesting he uh big obvious you might suspect because his dad gets arrested by the Soviets because his family has a tough time in the USSR that they might have had there might have been a reactionary strain in them and they would have like pulled away from those politics um but that's not really that's not at all really abba's uh uh uh uh uh uh like his that's not that's not the tack that he takes we'll talk about that a little bit in a second yeah but the hat's Omar hotzer advocated for Jewish people to abandon the industries they'd traditionally worked in um in you know places where they were living and instead become laborers and farmers so that they'd be able to settle in Palestine one day and you know all of that stuff uh some of them had started trying to do this as early as 19 19 they are sending there are people moving over there this is how the first kibbutzes get established right it's these guys so by the time world war two is getting ready to kick off and that's in the background is as abba's joining this group as he's as he's kind of moving up the ranks he's becoming a community organizer he's making propaganda the Nazis are taking power and consolidating power you got your light along knives you got your angeles you got your warbell starting to ring for the invasion of Poland um now on kind of the eve of the invasion of Poland the Jewish population of filma is about 60,000 and it's one of the most cohesive Jewish communities in all of europe it hosts what's called the strussian library which is the most famous Jewish library in all of europe uh abba spent a lot of time in that library and he spends the years in the run-up to the war kind of throwing his life into the hutch omar hats air and he eventually becomes like one of the leading figures in his local chapter okay this passage from a book about abba called the fall of a sparrow describes him just as the war clouds began to gather in europe he headed the local branch its governing body and the regional leadership his physical appearance was also exceptional he wore his hair long and dressed like the older hashomar hats air members with his shirt collar rather rather than his jacket collar upper most wide pants stuffed into his socks and in later years into his boots his dress was influenced by the Bolshevik revolutionaries and he turned it into his own personal style covener wrote an exceptionally beautiful Hebrew a great deal for the group's newspaper which was posted on the clubhouse wall his sense of humor was well known in the movement summer and winter camps he was as familiar with happiness as he was with sadness said one friend he was always an intellectual challenge he had an in an original way of asking questions or discussing problems and impressed everyone with his self-control and seriousness the younger members admired him and the movements instructors recognized his leadership qualities he radiated authority they said 50 years later and that's one of the things you'll notice about colvner because a lot of the people who knew him then get get interviewed again like literally half a century later yeah and there's almost this awe they all had for him he's just a deeply charismatic young man um yeah he's just one of those people that is kind of magnetic to folks which mean he also do terrible things or he could he could and it's one he doesn't seem it one thing he does not seem to have any particular personal desire for power okay which is interesting he's he's really focused on organizing um but not focused on kind of like there's no sort of a cult of personality he just seems like a deeply likeable kid um I don't know I have yeah this certainly at this point in time he's nothing but rad yeah um and again it's interesting that he he's very focused on kind of cultivating this image of himself as as a Bolshevik um especially considering the problems that his dad has but his earliest memories he never because he's very young when the family is affluent he doesn't remember that period at all his earliest memories are after they move to Vilna when they're very poor you know when his dad dies when his mom's got to try to keep the family together and so he is he is very dedicated to the poor he's very familiar with kind of like class consciousness and he's he's very humanist he's a secular guy right like he's not particularly religious he is he is he is admitted to martin's parents basically no no no he he grows up a committed Marxist who's very aware of like the divide between rich and poor you know yeah um everything changes in his life on September 1st 1939 when germany invades Poland uh at once they begin to implement the early stages of the final solution which had not yet been fully plotted out but was broadly understood by the nazi elites they started forcing Jews into ghettos and mass killings were common in the parts of Poland that the Germans took over thousands of men were taken by gunpoint at gunpoint and put into forced labor battalions now by the terms of the Molotov ribbon drop packed which is the the the the treaty that the Germans and the Soviets sign before the partitioning of Poland Vilna is an apportion of Poland that is invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union as things begin to settle down and the new Russian occupiers start to take effective control it became clear that the youth movement was going to be forcibly disbanded the issue was of course sionism which the Russians wanted to discourage yeah rather than risk being split up or disrupted by secret police calvner made the decision to have his organization go underground officially the hatzomer hatzair had ceased to exist in reality it was just hiding dina parat in death of a sparrow writes the underground's first task was to find or invent new methods for continuing their activities as soon as the younger has shown her hatzair members understood that they were not being dispersed but rather that necessity dictated a new modus operandi they enthusiastically began to construct underground cells they were organized by the leadership into groups of five a method learned from reading pre-revolutionary literature recounted covener and only the most reliable members were accepted key members were sent to places outside Vilna disguised as Christians in private homes and outside the city limits they continued to study Hebrew hit books taken from the great libraries closed by the Soviets which had been the heart and symbol of Jewish Vilna and even held a few seminars and again at this point their primary goal they're helping refugees they're trying to continue to carry out the practice of their religion the study of their history and they're also continuing they're they're not able to continue to help people immigrate over to Palestine right now but they are they're trying to like keep that infrastructure setups that they can again one of these days yeah now they're not an insurrectionary organization at this point and they don't have any desire to fight a rebellion against the Soviet state but writers want to be able to keep doing their shit while the Soviets are that and covener in a number of others are aware that like shit with the Nazis is going to cook off and there will be a need to fight at some point and so they are kind of consciously setting themselves up in a structure that will be able to survive and resist in the in the days that are coming and those days come pretty quickly well June 22nd you know it comes before other things what's that Margaret it's the ability for people to exchange money for goods and services that's right Margaret that's really the most revolutionary activity is exchanging money for goods and services absolutely mm-hmm Robert Evans here it's been more than six months since I got LASIK and I am still seeing better than 2020 I can't tell you how much this has changed my life for the better I was recently out for three days over landing in the woods camping and I didn't have to wake up you know with my eyes not working every morning in pop and contacts I didn't have to keep track of glasses didn't have to deal with glasses in the rain everything is just so much easier since I got LASIK and of course the whole process was easy the exam was simple and convenient treatment just took minutes I was back to work the next day and now I'm looking forward to the holiday season without glasses in contacts LASIK plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States over 20 years in the industry they've performed more than two million treatments LASIK is all they do so they can focus their expertise so right now you can get 20% off LASIK when treated in December that's over nine hundred dollars off when treating both eyes visit mylasicoffer.com to schedule your free consultation that's mylasicoffer.com to schedule your free consultation truth is stranger than fiction and reality TV stars know this better than anyone the truth is we're all obsessed with our favorite reality shows and reality stars but what you may not know about them or even believe is actually criminal behavior so many reality stars have a story it happened to them their friend their family a house break in a hostage situation adultery kidnapping armed robbery financial scams paternity fraud identity theft and even murder these stories will shock you I'm killing Miller keys and on my new podcast true crime reality I will be joined by reality stars as they dive deep into the details of a crime they have a direct connection to the who the what the why and the what were they thinking listen to true crime reality on the iHard radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts in the bleak midwinter frosty wind may moan earth stood hard as iron water like a stone this holiday season something was out there in the woods whatever it is it's ravenous 12 strangers 12 tails the shattered rocking adds the heat of your feet tells me you don't belong here is that the last person to see you alive was there something that could have done 12 ghosts starring Malcolm McDowell who are you I'm the end keeper who are you a chilly new collection of stories presented in immersive 3d audio the wailing started as I knew it would an awful sound like a baby that would never tire a co-production of iHard radio and grim and mild from Aaron makey listen to 12 ghosts on the iHard radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts we're back I got my socks tucked into my fucking boots because I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a radical yeah what if you start with them tucked into your socks that was the look that I was more nervous about when he had his pants tucked into his boots that's always a solid look right no no notes tucked into your socks I don't know I got to see it what about it what about having your boots tucked into your socks what if you put your boot your socks on the outside of your boots if you're attempting to move across terrain in ways that you don't leave noticeable tracks while doing things at night I've heard that that's a reasonable thing to do well this has been Margaret's advice on how to carry out an insurrection welcome now it's time to go back to the story yeah so we've just been talking about Kovener and his fellows are kind of preparing themselves for the future inevitability of a guerrilla war right and that inevitability becomes inevitable I guess on June 22nd 1941 when Germany institutes Operation Barbarossa which is still the largest military organization operation in human history I think they invade with like three and a half million men or something it is a tiniq operation um and if you try to get it in a lot worse than the Titanic but it's go it goes great for a while again like the Germans carry out the largest encirclement operations that have ever happened there's like million man blocks of the Soviet army that are just like annihilated or surrender or whatnot it's a whole big thing it's not going well for them at first yeah and the Germans fairly quickly into the Lithuanian portions of the USSR including Vilna this comes as a shock everyone Kovener's ready for something to happen right he's he's not shocked by the fact that the Nazis do not see shit but everyone's shocked at how poorly the Red Army performs right by the fact that they fall apart so quickly um and so they don't really they're not able to get away from this right some Vilna Jews handfuls are able to escape but nearly everyone is trapped by Luftwaffe bombardment and Vermachtin's circlement so Vilna is going to be because it's one of the first large Jewish communities that the Nazis take over during Barbarossa and they're going to use it as kind of a proof of concept right they are testing out extermination it is it is one of it's one of the first large Jewish communities that's going to be annihilated by the Germans um now when they go in and start exterminating people most of the actual killing is being done by members of the Lithuanian right wing members of actually kind of adjacent to these Jewish youth movement organizations right these right wing uh clubs and and paramilitary organizations who had been underground under the USSR but when that yeah when the Nazis take over they're like hey we would love to take vengeance on Lithuanian leftists and Jews and the Germans are like absolutely guys yeah I'm gonna quote from Dina Puerat again when I'm sets commando nine entered Vilna in early July it immediately became clear that the wave had reached the city's Jews as well I'm sets commando nine bug along to the I'm sets grouping the SS units that followed in the Vermacht's train and their principal mission was to kill the Jews and communist party activists who had remained behind the activities of national Lithuanian institutions were drastically curtailed and only those dealing with urban matters were left intact the Lithuanian police force was placed under SS command and right wing units were integrated directly into it that left little behind the facade of Lithuanian independence and the Lithuanian murder of Jews whether committed on their own initiative or under German ages brought them nothing in return the coordinated effort of the two German authorities the SS and the army and the Lithuanian units began on July 4th and marked the beginning of the oppression and eventually the destruction of the Jewish population in Vilna the German military government issued decrees which the Lithuanian urban administration put into operation the Einsatzgruppen sent Lithuanians to kidnap and murder Jews sometimes participating themselves were the Vermacht kidnapped Jews for forced labor the Jews called the Lithuanian kidnappers Chappoons and some were local youths who had received a small bounty from the Germans for every Jew turned in they broken to homes at will robbed and beat with no fear of retribution and made the lives of the Jews intolerable these are the proud boy types right yeah the oath keepers and shit yeah well and how the Germans are doing it here it's fitting because like when the Nazis take over they just use the existing police force and then added added more right wing stuff to the existing police force this is that tracks yeah yeah that it it it completely tracks there's a lot going on here that again is going to become very common among the rest of the areas the Nazis have taken and it's because number one these Einsatzgruppe units are not great at most things there's certainly not good at anti-partisan conflict okay there's not a shitload of them and it it's kind of again most of them are like not like like the the participating in these mass killings like leads to a lot of suicides and drunkenness among the Einsatzgruppe so whenever they have the opportunity to use locals to do the killing for them they're going to prefer that just because it kind of preserves German unit strength yeah there's a number of reasons why they do it this way the Jewish community and villain is taken wholly by surprise by this many chose to hide themselves in an attempt to survive Kovner recoils at the prospect of hiding and of fleeing the ghetto and but he does he's kind of forced to right because members of his organization are like no we we're going to get killed if we stay here we have to try to like hide with Gentiles who are friendly elsewhere in the city so that we can take action later yeah um Kovner agrees to do this but he writes that he's covered in shame by the idea of hiding in a closet he is a fighter he does not want to be hiding right um but sometimes you have to make strategic decisions about when and where you fight yes and they do and he he takes shelter in a group in a Dominican monot or a Dominican convent um that's like these nuns by the way this is normally a shown generally when we bring up nuns on this show it's very negative these nuns are based as shit these are the coolest fucking nuns I have ever heard about you're gonna love these nuns so these nuns take Kovner and a couple of his friends in and they are you know trying to like he's he's he's he agrees to do this but while he's locked up he's sending out letters he's arguing whenever he gets faced to face with someone that we need to get back in the ghetto to fight back and defend like our our community um part of this is because his girlfriend gets is he doesn't he doesn't get to escape with her she stays in the ghetto and for a couple of weeks she's sending him letters about how bad the conditions are and then the letters stop abruptly and they never pick back up again and he doesn't know what's happened to her she's obvious she's been killed yeah um but he doesn't he's he's not able to find that out he has no good information about what's going on and in the early days all these all the Jews and Vilniha have are conflicting rumors about the slaughter because what the one of the ways the Germans carry out the massacre is they put together a second ghetto and this provides them with the ability to move large numbers of the Jews without making it seem suspicious we're not you know yeah we're taking you to the next ghetto and then these guys all get taken out in massacred right but they don't have to say we're going to kill all these people and there's a little bit of plausible deniability so it stops a panic from taking like like happened in andor in the jail scene exactly like that um so most of these people which is tens of thousands of people from mid to late 1941 are taken to a place called Pornari which had previously been a pignicking spot and they were gunned down and tossed into mass graves most of the actual killing again is done by Lithuanian right wing partisans one local witness to the slaughter later wrote 11th July lovely weather it's hot out there are white clouds and a general breeze shooting can be heard from the forest presumably from training the shooting started at 4 p.m. then I was informed that many Jews were transported to the forest via the road to grodno and were then shot this was the first day of executions a depressing feeling the shooting stopped at about eight in the evening for the Germans 300 Jews or 300 enemies of humanity for the Lithuanians 300 Jews or 300 pairs of shoots of shoes trousers and clothes damn that's such an interesting like way of breaking it down about like well the Germans hate the Jews and we just want to steal all the shit from the Jews yep that is a big part of what is happening here yeah um so that's good when the Germans occupied Vilna the ghetto has again a population of 60,000 I've also heard 80,000 because of the refugees there's not you know I got to get there's not like a census right being taken that's that's particularly good by December of 1931 though less than a third remain 41 like 20 to 30 yeah December of the same year okay so in less than a year they go from 60, 70,000 people to 20th thousand cool um because of how many are massacred but while these massacres are occurring because the Germans there's some plausible deniability and there's not great again there's not like the internet social media there's not like a lot of good ways to figure out what's happening outside your door yeah so a lot of Vilna's Jews still don't believe that the annihilation is being carried out yeah um what's happening what's also yeah well in part of why they don't believe it is they have friends and relatives over in war saw and at this point in time a lot of the correspondence that the Vilna Jews are getting from their relatives in the west is that like yeah there was some killing earlier but it's calmed down and like we think it's gonna be okay yeah and again this is also we're talking centuries of Jewish history we're like yeah there will be these these eruptions and there will be massacres but then things will calm down again you have to deal with some bullshit laws but like we don't get wiped out right um and that's kind of what people think is happening um and so there's this there's this belief among a lot of this or even though a lot of people have been killed that like it's not going to be as bad as it is as it clearly is yeah and this again I'm saying this these people are not like irrational they're not weak they're not shitty they're they're dealing with an unprecedented situation right now as early reports of German atrocities start to leak out in the middle of 1941 the standard belief so there's this group and this is every ghetto right there's an organization called the Yudon rot which is rot is like a it's spelled rat like the animal but it's like a governing council right this is just like a general word in the area and the judon rot is the governing council of the ghetto right and the Nazis endorse and establish judon rot in the ghettos that they they take you know control of yeah and to make people think that they have any control over their own lives yeah and it's it's a mix of some of these guys who are part of the Yudon rot are as with you find in any community like self-serving assholes who they get better kind of conditions better food by by doing this a lot of them though are just people who are well if we work with them we can avoid getting massacred we can like reduce the amount of violence our community has to suffer again there and again a lot of like people in specifically radical organizations are really angry at a lot of the folks who agree to be in the judon rot obviously I'm not going to come down morally on anybody who's trying to survive the fucking holocaust like this is a fucking nightmare yeah but in this case you know there is there are these reports are starting to filter in to the ghetto and the judon rot's official line is that the killings that have occurred outside of Vilna are the results of an isolated crazy German commander not a broad policy of genocide and it's going to be okay right their job is to keep everybody calm right and that's what they're trying to do I feel like the judon rot is like they it they in the end it was the wrong call right yeah they didn't know it was the wrong call the people who who joined at least again the only one I've like looked at as the one in Warsaw and it was like a lot of the people who are part of the judon rot were like yeah this is how we think we will best survive this intact and and they were wrong but they were wrong but they didn't there was no way to know they were wrong besides like yeah yeah they're not wrong because like they were people or whatever they're wrong because in part because this was not in a lot of times in which Jewish communities had faced danger in the past stuff like this had been the right thing to do yeah right had been the thing that preserved the community yeah um this again this is just an unprecedented time they are wrong but I have no I have no I have no interest in morally judging totally any of the people making decisions but you know we'll possibly situation oh the products and services that support this podcast Margaret yeah they they think all times are precedented yeah as shit and they don't care about you yeah but that's because we care about them it's a one way yeah it's like an anxious versus it's like an attachment style problem you know that we have with ads oh I would just say that we have so much love for them that there's no there's no cosmic space for them to love us left it's our fault yeah it is our fault yeah Robert Evans here it's been more than six months since I got LASIK and I am still seeing better than 2020 I can't tell you how much this has changed my life for the better I was recently out for three days over landing in the woods camping and I didn't have to wake up you know with my eyes not working every morning in pop-in contacts I didn't have to keep track of glasses didn't have to deal with glasses in the rain everything is just so much easier since I got LASIK and of course the whole process was easy the exam was simple and convenient treatment just took minutes I was back to work the next day and now I'm looking forward to the holiday season without glasses in contacts LASIK plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States over 20 years in the industry they've performed more than two million treatments LASIK is all they do so they can focus their expertise so right now you can get 20% off LASIK when treated in December that's over $900 off when treating both eyes visit mylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation truth is stranger than fiction and reality TV stars know this better than anyone the truth is we're all obsessed with our favorite reality shows and reality stars but would you may not know about them or even believe is actually criminal behavior so many reality stars have a story it happened to them their friend their family a house break in a hostage situation a adultery kidnapping armed robbery financial scams paternity fraud identity theft and even murder these stories will shock you I'm Kila Miller keys and on my new podcast true crime reality I will be joined by reality stars as they dive deep into the details of a crime they have a direct connection to the who the what the why and the what were they thinking listen to true crime reality on the iHard radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts in the bleak midwinter frosty wind may moan earth stood hard as iron water like a stone this holiday season something was out there in the woods whatever it is it's ravenous 12 strangers 12 tales shattered rocking at the heels of your feet tells me you don't belong here is that the last person to see you alive was there something I could have done 12 ghosts starring Malcolm McDowell who are you I'm the in keeper who are you a chilly new collection of stories presented in immersive 3d audio the wailing started as I knew it would an awful sound like a baby that would never tire a co-production of iHard radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky listen to 12 ghosts on the iHard radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts ah we are we are that because we think that's right I think we're the first people to come up with that idea yeah so these guys you know again we have no interest here in morally judging the members of the new rod yeah but the fact that they make this choice to try to and convince their people that annihilation is not imminent um it it's not going to be the right thing to do right it does not wind up helping the matter um in late summer a number of women escaped from mass graves at Polnari um and this is a thing that happened right these are you know they're either they're wounded but they kind of feigned death and they wind up under a pile of the corpses of their loved ones and then dig themselves out in the night and they make it back to the fucking ghetto holy shit or or back to villa and they managed to find like friendly people to talk to yeah and they try to warn everyone right they try to be like no guys like they are going to kill us all yeah they're already doing it um and again I'm gonna pass over to Dina Pirat here um the Yudon rot forbade anyone to meet with them but even individuals far removed from the Yudon rot had the greatest difficulty in believing the survivor's accounts pesha aeronowitz who arrived wounded at the home of dr. marked foretski the ghetto children's physician managed to convince him although he hesitated for a long time before believing her others however were certain she had gone mad and she stopped telling her story it was in villma and lithoania the first places in europe to see mass murders that people began to doubt the stories of those who had escaped death whether they recounted them to Jews who live nearby and were candidates for the same fate or to those living in safety perhaps the opposite was true that those who lived near the killing pits and the train stations from which the transports left did not believe because if they had they could no longer have continued living this is the i know that there's no bottom to the worst thing that one could experience during this time but this is up there you survive a mass shooting i mean a mass grave situation you survive execution you crawl out underneath your friends and family you go and warn everyone and everyone is like okay Cassandra you're just crazy yeah because they can't believe the enormity yeah you're telling yeah um and no one believes women i mean i mean i well yeah that's probably not not a part of it yeah right um so abacoviner like most villan a jews did not know what to do at first because he's not getting he's not he hasn't sat down face to face with all these people he's just it's just rumors right yeah and it's rumors that he's hearing while he's hiding underground in a Dominican convent right now he does eventually succeed kind of an in late summer early fall in leaving the convent and moving to a safe house in the ghetto with some of his comrades and in september a group of two women and one eleven year old escaped the burial pits and make it back to Vilna they visit a doctor again who is a member of the hatzomer under abacoviner so this is a guy who's like one of his his his his his boys and when the doctor hears their story he invites covener to come and talk to them okay so for the most part covener spent the early months of occupation focused on smaller tasks right he's establishing communications lines he's helping get safe houses he's getting these people in position he's trying to facilitate their movement wherever he can and this is the first moment because he's kind of just been keeping himself busy this is the first moment where he's forced to come to terms with the fact that his community is being exterminated yeah is immediate thought was that he needed to kill himself um he just wants to die like the second he learns that this is happening his immediate urge is to commit suicide yeah um which is valid yeah I mean yeah of course yeah yeah literally any reaction would be yeah exactly yeah uh but of course he can't he decide he like he can't he wants to do that but he can't do that because his people are in danger yeah so he decides to opt for the next best thing to suicide armed resistance now yeah let's get back to those nuns I was telling you yeah I'm really excited about this I'm really excited when snowflakes actually do good the mother superior who had hosted who had hid covener and his friends in the convent had been distraught when they left she did not want him to leave she wanted to help she repeatedly told him that she wanted to fight alongside them um she's a pretty good ally and after hearing a bunch of this covener basically tells her if that's how you really feel get us some weapons and so one day in December of 1941 she shows up in full nun garb outside the ghetto with a bunch of hand grenades hidden under that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's fucking rad yeah yeah that is quality none she she has officially won my favorite none awards yeah um so good good on you there there's a ton of really good ones uh there's the whole like thing clear if you see in the map of like Catholics versus voters of the Nazi party in Germany yeah it's just an inverse map um yeah which is interesting of course because Catholics were very down with fascism in Spain at literally the same time but like it's just it's interesting I I find it interesting look there's like a billion of them yeah there's there's a wide variety of Catholics yeah and this this one rocks she tells him that she wants to join the Jews and fight with them because God is now in the ghetto that's that is her like it's very I think this is pre liberation theology but she is very much like the place for me because is is with the people being oppressed because that's where God's going to be totally which is fucking based yeah um smuggling grenades into the ghetto in your habit is yeah radish shit yeah um so she and she is like let me come I want to fucking kill some Nazis with yeah I need you to go back to the convent like this is how you can help us best we're not ready to do that yeah but thank you for all of these hand grenades yeah um he later wrote quote I mixed in with the column of Jews returning from their day of forced labor I felt my soul torn what would happen if it the grenade fell from my hand or if I tripped and fell but and because of me a whole community were to trip and fall as well till that day I had never touched a hand grenade I didn't know how to use one so he's got some weapons now he doesn't really know what to do with them that's that's a process right yeah um so while he and his partisans planned for their first attacks against the German occupier Covner puts it upon himself now that he knows what's happening that he knows the stakes are complete annihilation he takes it upon himself to put out a warning to the rest of Europe's Jews the mass killing of the Holocaust had started in Lithuania and Vilma's Jewish community was among the very first to be wiped out Jews further west still had no idea what was coming for them and the international community knew even less he had to warn them so the same month he gets those grenades December of 1941 Covner writes a message that is soon smuggled into ghettos all across the east particularly in Poland and makes its way out of Nazi Europe and across the world I'm going to read it to you now Jewish youngster do not trust those that deceive you of the 80,000 Jews and the Jerusalem of Lithuania Vilma only 20,000 have survived in front of our very eyes they tore our parents our brothers our sisters from us where are the hundreds of men who were abducted for labor by the Lithuanian kidnappers where are the naked women and children who were taken from us on the terrible night of the provocation where are the Jews who were taken away on Yom Kepur where are brethren from the second ghetto whoever was taken out of the ghetto gates never returned again all the roads of the Gestapo leave to lead to Pornari and Pornari is death Hitler is plotting to annihilate all the Jews of Europe it befell the Jews of Lithuania to be first in line let us not go like sheep to the slaughter it's true we are weak and defenseless but the only response to the enemy is resistance brothers it is better to die as free fighters than to live at the mercy of murderers resist to our last breath yeah fucking like this guy yeah yeah this is the first major warning that comes out that like what is on the table is complete annihilation yeah Havana is the one who gives it so that's uh we're gonna end part one all right uh um lots of good stuff well actually I mean I don't know I have no idea what's gonna happen next so it is this is a fascinating story Margaret yeah but at this point I mean Covener's an amazing man yeah uh and at this point like a guy who is handling himself impossibly well in an impossible situation yeah um as are a number of other people including that based as fucking mother superior yep uh uh what what a what a what a rad lady yeah so think about that and uh go smuggle hand grenades to someone who might not maybe um uh probably should just Margaret you got some plug-ables to plug I have a story about nuns coming out oh you do or rather I have a story with some nuns in it I have a book called Escape from Insel Island that X does what it says on the title on the cover and it is coming out from strangers in a tangled wilderness on uh February 1st and you can pre-order it at tangled wilderness dot org and get a a free poster of the cover it's a really cool cover I think it'll people will be excited about it um it's a cool cover it's a very good book and you know when you think about it Margaret the Vatican is kind of an in sell island yeah this I'm sorry the Catholics are definitely the good guys on this episode but I couldn't resist that one that's fine I guess they're volsell you know yeah yeah yeah definitely volsell yeah ostensibly ostensibly yeah that's that's what I got I also have podcast people can check out called cool people you do it's really good oh thanks sure yeah sometimes Roberts there Sophie I am so I'm yeah I'm always there yeah I'm also sometimes on sub-stack where you can find me yeah it's shatterzone dot sub-stack dot com uh check that out I write things usually is one thing every week so you can read more shit from me if for some reason I'm not in your life enough um anyway go to hell and uh Robert we're doing we're there's a behind the master show at SF sketchfest in in January right really you'll be there really okay I've never heard you do that boy so before and I didn't enjoy it I'm just letting you know yeah I didn't enjoy it either it was a little it was a little loud uh honestly I feel terrible about that yeah it's uh January 20th get tickets yes I don't know there's probably a link hell yeah I won't make the sound sketchy joke again I already made it once I enjoyed it I enjoyed it the first and second time thank you I appreciate excellent and bye behind the bastards is a production of cool zone media for more from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this holiday season 12 strangers 12 tails something was out there whatever it is it's ravenous it's the last person to see you alive 12 ghosts starring Malcolm McDowell who are you I'm the in keep up presented in immersive 3D audio a co-production of iHeart radio and Grimm and mild from Aaron Manky listen to 12 ghosts on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts truth is stranger than fiction and reality TV stars know this better than anyone but what you may not know about them or even believe is actually criminal behavior I'm Kaelin Miller keys and on my new podcast true crime reality I will be joined by reality TV stars as they dive deep into the details of the crime they have a direct connection to listen to true crime reality on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I'm munga Shatekler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe you can find in major league baseball international banks kpop groups even the white house but just when I thought I had a handle on this subject something completely unbelievable happy with me and my whole view on astrology change whether you're a skeptic or believer give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too listen to skyline drive on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts